Willem's Yankee Notebook - September 27, 2007 - Blueback Trout

IN SEARCH OF THE UNICORN OF FISH

INTERSTATE 95, NEAR ETNA, MAINE ¬ In 1971, deep in Baxter Park in Maine, where a beautiful little waterfall ran across a small sand beach into Wassataquoik Lake, I caught a strange-looking trout. I'd been catching small native brook trout, but this one was different: grayish-blue along the back and upper sides, with the usual brook trout spots and white on the leading edges of its fins beneath. I held it only a moment and then slid it back into the water like the rest.

Later, when I described it to an old Maine guide, he said, "Oh! That was a blueback. They're in there, but you don't hear of 'em being caught very often because they live down deep." I've been kidded by some of the best of them over the years; so, as I recall, I feigned credulity and later, when I had a chance, looked it up. To my surprise, there is such a thing, and one of its haunts is Wassataquoik Lake.

So for 36 years now I've believed and occasionally said that I've caught one. But there has remained the haunting thought that maybe I really haven't. The fish wasn't identified in the flesh by anybody who knew anything about it. So during those years I've made two more expeditions to the lake ¬ about an 8 1/2-mile hike ¬ and been blown off the lake both times. Wassataquoik is kind of a wind tunnel between two mountains, and on anything but a calm day, it's anything but calm.

This is my third and last try. My little truck is zooming up Interstate 95. In a few minutes we'll pass Bangor and then swing north up the Penobscot River Valley toward Howland, Millinocket, and Sherman Mills. From there, it's another 75 miles on Route 11 to Portage, where "Directions to Red River Camps" takes over. Map Quest says it's 394 miles from East Montpelier, and an eight-hour drive. All this for a trout that rarely exceeds 12 inches in length?

Actually, neither the blueback nor the brook and lake trout are true trout. A small point, perhaps, but they're char. (Scientists spell it "charr," but that hasn't caught on much.) The word comes from the Gaelic [ital] cear, [ital] blood, for their brilliant red colors during the spawning season. Summertimes in the Arctic we catch anadromous Arctic char, bright from the ocean and almost as strong as salmon. The Inuit net them by the hundreds in season, as casually as Polish butchers stringing kishka, and dry them on racks. But that hardly detracts from the thrill of a hammer-blow strike of a sea-run char and the powerful dash back toward the ocean.

Except for lake trout, our inland char don't get quite that impressive. A seven-pound brook trout these days is a marvel, except in carefully protected waters in northern Quebec and Labrador; we rarely see one over two pounds around here. The blueback is even more diminutive. All of these landlocked species were stranded here when the last continental ice sheet retreated and cut off their access to salt water. We've grown accustomed to the presence of the most common of them, but with habitat destruction caused by clear-cut logging, pollution, and development ¬ and now global warming ¬ they may soon become downright rare or extirpated in this area.

The blueback trout was once the most numerous species in the Rangeley Lakes of western Maine. It was named [ital] Salvelinus oquassa. [ital] after the village of Oquossoc. Nineteenth-century accounts mention them being speared or netted by the cartloads, during their spawning runs, to feed guests at the burgeoning summer hotels. Then someone introduced landlocked salmon to "improve the fishing," and that was the end of the blueback in the Rangeleys.

It was considered extinct early in the 20th century, and, like the passenger pigeon, was mourned by only those who had known it in its heyday. Then, in 1948, a fisherman in northern Maine sent a "strange appearing trout" to the Fish and Game Department. Biologists investigated the pond it had come from and caught several more. A resurrection! Now they're known to live in eight or nine ponds in far northern Maine. That's where I'm headed.

One pond I won't be going to was a few years ago "improved," just as the Rangeleys were once, by sportsmen introducing smelt. Smelt are now the dominant species there; so the pond must be netted for all the trout that can be salvaged, and then poisoned. When it's safe again, the captive brook and blueback trout will be put back in. It'll be a complicated and expensive effort.

For some reason ¬ no one seems to know exactly why ¬ blueback trout prefer colder water than brook trout. The colder water contains more oxygen, but down that deep, the food is sparser and smaller. So, although the bluebacks live about two years longer than brook trout, they never get as large. Where they coexist in the same ponds, most of the brook trout live in the upper 30 feet of water, and most of the bluebacks below 30 feet. The one I caught must have been just coming up for a quick look around. So the fishing this evening and tomorrow will be down deep, with a sinking line. The guide I'll be fishing with e-mailed me that I'd need only two flies: a Black Ghost Marabou and a spare. Not as thrilling as fishing for brookies feeding at the surface; but when you're after a unicorn, you have to adapt.

Meanwhile, the old guide who identified that long-ago blueback (assuming that's what it was) is still with us. Harry will be 90 next week, and isn't sure if he can get to camp. But if he can, and if the blueback gods choose to smile for the first time in almost 40 years, I'll get a photograph and slip him back into the water his family has inhabited in almost complete privacy for 10,000 years. Then there'll be a toast on the porch in the early fall sunset. If they don't smile, well...