Skunked Again: Fishing bonanza on Kingsbury Pond

Some of the best fishing comes unplanned, where we rely on that ounce of spontaneity to put a twist on things. My friend, Matt Bigelow, gave me a ring on a recent evening to see what I was up to the following day. Judging by the anticipation in his voice, “Fishin!” was my response, and as I expected, he followed up with full support.

With that being said, the next morning the two of us were bouncing down back roads, high-beams on, trying to make it to Kingsbury Pond in Kingsbury Plantation before daybreak. The pond is located in Piscataquis County, but it’s only a short drive away for those of us in Franklin County. We didn’t quite beat sunrise, but we were close. We eventually arrived, and after packing up the dog sled and establishing a bearing towards where it was we wanted to fish, the two of us slowly took off on foot. I had studied depth charts ahead of time so I had a good idea of where I wanted to fish, and we headed in that direction.

Conveniently, our destination wasn’t far from where we parked along the shore. We picked a point on the northeast end of Kingsbury Pond where the inlet came in (DeLorme Map 31, C-2). After setting down our gear the two of us put on creepers, or ice-pick attachments for your feet, in order to get a better grip on the slippery ice that awaited each step underneath a modest inch of fluffy white snow. It was time to lay some traps and get fishing as quickly as possible. When using one ice auger between two people in order to set your traps, instead of each person “quickly” drilling their own group of five holes, I like to have each person drill one hole right away – that way both of you are fishing immediately. Starting like this is especially convenient in scenarios where early feeding is common and it is better to get started as soon as possible anyway. We soon discovered Kingsbury is one of those early-morn feeding ponds.

While Matt was setting his trap and I was working on my second, I glanced behind me and caught my first trap’s flag springing in the air.

“Ho-Ho!” I yelled like an overly excited Santa Claus. Since I was only 10 to 15 yards away, I arrived quickly to the trap and noticed line being stripped off the spool, feet by the second. I let whatever it was at the other end of the line run with it and waited for Matt to arrive from where he had been setting his own trap. Soon the fish eased up on his rampage, so I gently lifted the trap out of the water and draped the line over my fingers. The fish seemed to sense something at the other end so I had to retrieve some line before finding the weight and play of the fish. Then it was on.

Retrieving the fish ended up being an easy process, though it did put up a stronger effort as it got closer to the hole. When I pulled it on top of the ice I was surprised to see what was flopping around: a 14- or 15-inch splake! A splake is a cross between a male brook trout (speckled) and a female lake trout (togue). These fish get large and live long. However, since splake are a human-made hybrid between two of Maine’s popular cold water fish, these fish rarely reproduce in the wild due to behavioral and social complications. However, as Dr. Malcolm observes in Michael Chichton’s Jurassic Park: “Nature finds a way,” and in some places this rings true with splake.

I was delighted to see the fish sail out of the hole and onto the ice. It looked very similar to a togue, but the fish did not have its characteristic forked tail. Rather, the splake had a tail only slightly forked, showing a little of the square-tail that distinguishes a brook trout; without red spots, I could figure it was not a brookie. Matt and I had been fishing a measly 10 minutes before that first flag had gone up. Excited for the early action, the two of us got back to work putting our traps in, but we didn’t get far along.

Before we knew it, one of Matt’s traps sprung, and we ran over to see what it was. When he pulled the trap and started playing the fish, its fight seemed to be more intense than mine had been and I could tell Matt was prepping for the big one. A serious amount of line had been taken out, and as Matt eventually approached the leader the fish gave him some trouble, making Matt double his efforts in order to get it out of the water. However, he did so quickly and with a fair amount of enthusiasm, only to scowl in disappointment as he realized he had caught a slime-green pickerel. I had to calm him down a little in order to get the fish safely back into the water.

Following that flag, Matt and I quickly discovered it paid off to start fishing early. Matt would soon get two more flags that brought up a small splake each as well as another pickerel, and I caught an additional splake of no extraordinary size. However, the fish of the day came when one of Matt’s flags flew up mid-morning. He didn’t know what to expect at the end of his line, still emitting bad vibes due to the two pickerel he had pulled up earlier. To his surprise, however, after slowly playing the fish towards the hole, Matt nimbly pulled a beauty of a landlocked salmon onto the shore. The measuring stick showed it to be a healthy 16 inches long – a prime specimen of a fish not many places in the world can brag they have.

This is the point in the trip when we ran out of bait. I had only brought just over a dozen shiner minnows, and all we had for back-up was a plastic Folger’s can full of worms that Matt had in the back of his jeep, frozen solid. I did the only thing I could think of, and that was the fire-up the Coleman stove, put a little water in the frying pan, and place the container of worms in that with about a cup of water dumped into the frozen dirt itself. After 15 minutes (12 minutes if you want ’em al dente) and being careful not to bring the frozen-mud mixture to a simmer, we soon had worms squirming, well… noticeably living, in the now-thaw mixture. Exciting as it was then, we didn’t get a single bite the rest of the day on any of our worm-set traps.

The two of us fished from dawn until dusk, busying ourselves with a rugby ball when we got the chance. Matt plays on the current University of Maine at Farmington rugby team so some winter training was not a far-fetched idea. We had a pop-kicking tournament, field goal competition between trees, and we passed the ball back and forth while sprinting to the flags. Of course, with big heavy winter boots on we couldn’t maintain that pace all day. Eventually we made it over to my Coleman stove for some deer steak and hot dogs in order to recuperate. (Don’t worry, we used a clean frying pan). When sunset came we reluctantly had to pack up, tired from the day’s festivities, but with good recently-made memories fresh on our minds.

With plenty of ice on most Maine lakes, I encourage people to take advantage of early ice-fishing season and to get out there! Happy fishing, and safe sledding!