Sunday Reads Trout Fishing in the Rangeley Lakes
Sunday Reads Trout Fishing in the Rangeley Lakes; Edward Seymour was a classic Eastern “sport” — one of the those wealthy New Englanders who were among the first to frequent the nearly pristine wilderness of the northeast. His article reproduced here is widely considered one of the most important pieces of fishing literature of its time, important not just for influencing many others to try the fishing in Maine but also for its amazingly detailed description of life in a Rangeley camp. The article gave greater fame to the author when it was collected into a book of fishing essays in 1883, and as late as 1918 was being excerpted at length in major sporting magazines. It’s still a joy to read almost a century and a half after it was written and is a wealth of information to those seeking to understand fly fishing in the nineteenth century. — Ed.
TROUT-FISHING IN THE RANGELEY LAKES
By Edward Seymour
………..Before describing Camp Kennebago in detail, it may be as well to give in brief a sketch of the history of the Oquossoc Angling Association, of which organization this camp is the headquarters. So long as thirty years ago, a sportsman now and then worked his way through the wilderness to these lakes, but it is only within the last fifteen years that the Rangeley, Kennebago and Cupsuptuc Lakes, with the upper end of Mooselucmaguntic, have become at all well known to anglers. The Richardson Lakes — Welokenebacook and Molechunkemunk, with Umbagog, forming the lower lakes in the chain whence the Androscoggin River derives its mighty power — have for the last thirty or forty years been frequented by a score or more of Boston and New York gentlemen. These sportsmen were invariably found at “Rich’s” “Middle Dam,” Mosquito Brook, or the “Upper Dam.” Hundreds of spotted beauties, weighing from two to eight pounds, were captured by these anglers year after year, but they wisely kept their own counsel, and if an item ccasionally found its way into the New York or Boston papers chronicling the arrival of a six or eight pound speckled trout, those who claimed to be best informed dismissed the paragraph with a sneer at the ignorance of editors who did not know the difference between brook trout and “lakers.” In 1860, Henry O. Stanley, of Dixfield, now one of the efficient commissioners of fisheries for the State of Maine, organized an expedition to penetrate to the lakes from the upper end. Twenty years before, Mr. Stanley’s father had made the survey of much of the lake country, and discovering the extraordinary size of the trout, had frequently repeated his visits……….
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