50 Best Places Fly Fishing the Northeast. Bob Mallard

      About the Author

      BOB MALLARD has lived in the Northeast for over 50 years. He has called Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine home. He has spent at least a decade living in each. Connecticut and Vermont were always just a day or weekend trip away. New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania were just a long weekend away. His career resulted in long-term projects in greater DC and New Jersey, giving him easy access to New York and Pennsylvania.

      Bob is on the water more than a hundred days a year, and has been for as long as he can remember. He travels all over the country in search of trout. Bob has owned and operated Kennebec River Outfitters, a full-service fly shop in Madison, Maine, since 2001. He maintains an online fly-fishing forum associated with his business. He teaches fly tying, fly casting, knot tying, and fly fishing.

      Bob has written about fly fishing, fly tying, and fisheries conservation extensively. He has covered tackle, technique, travel, fisheries management, and fisheries conservation. His work has appeared in newspapers, sporting publications, fly-fishing magazines, and books. This includes a stint as the writer of a monthly fly-fishing column, The Technical Fly Fisherman, in a regional sporting publication. His work has appeared in Northwoods Sporting Journal, The Maine Sportsman, Fly Fishing New England, Eastern Fly Fishing, Flyfishing & Tying Journal, Fly Fish America, Fly Fisherman, Fly Tyer, and Angling Trade. He had a trout on the cover of Flyfishing & Tying Journal.

      Bob and his fly shop have been featured in newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, regional and national sporting and fly-fishing magazines, on local and regional television programs, a Maine Department of Tourism ad, and several books. Most recently, Bob contributed two chapters to a book on the country’s best tailwater fisheries: 50 Best Tailwaters to Fly Fish, by Terry and Wendy Gunn (Stonefly Press, 2013). Look for his next book from Stonefly Press, 25 Best Towns: Fly Fishing for Trout, due out in late 2014 or early 2015.

      Bob has been involved with several fisheries advocacy groups over the years. He has been a tireless advocate for Maine’s wild and native salmonids, including testifying in

      front of legislative committees on behalf of never-stocked-over brook trout, self-sustaining brook trout, remote ponds, fishing regulations, Arctic char, and the use of live bait on wild salmonid waters. He was instrumental in simplifying the regulations associated with Maine’s brook trout lakes and ponds, getting live bait and stocking off Maine’s never-stocked trout ponds and Arctic char waters, and initiating Maine’s float stocking program.

      Bob Mallard. Joe Klementovich

      Thomas Ames, Jr.

      Foreword

      WHY THE HECK should anyone pay the least bit of attention to one man’s selection of the 50 best places to cast a fly in the Northeast? To answer that question, let me sketch you a portrait of the man behind the list. He is opinionated. He is impatient. He is painfully organized. But he is so well informed that he can courageously argue both sides of a question with equal conviction. He is a man I can trust to be good to his word and to be fully prepared for what lies ahead. If you are planning to spend your precious time and hard-earned money traveling to the destinations described in this book, you are going to want to trust Bob Mallard the way I do.

      I have always figured that the best way to catch fish was to study and imitate the foods that they eat. Bob’s flair for fly fishing comes from an understanding of something even more fundamental and, quite literally, deeper. He knows fish—especially trout. He knows where they will be, how they will behave under a given condition, how they will respond to changing conditions, and how they will react when presented with a fly. This is not easy knowledge to come by. I can study trout foods—mostly insects—in an aquarium or streamside, but what actually results in fish getting hooked begins deep under the water’s surface where most of us can’t see it. That’s why Bob pulls fish out of places where most of us would not bother casting a line, using flies that match-the-hatch purists like me do not even carry.

      The kind of fish sense that Bob possesses comes only from time on the water. He spends more time with a fly rod in his hand than anyone I know. I used to wonder how he could devote himself so single-mindedly and whole-heartedly to fishing until I realized that he treasures each fish hooked as a lesson in angling learned. Bob has caught some big lessons, and a lot of them, but has yet to satisfy either his appetite or his capacity for knowledge. We’ve fished together every year for at least the last dozen, and I’ll begrudgingly admit to having learned a lot more from Bob than he has learned from me. He has shared what he has learned freely, and with all of the tenderness of a defensive tackle.

      Bob has both an uncanny knack for choosing the right fly and a practiced and polished delivery, but when a trout chooses to ignore his fly, Bob will not waste too much time trying

      to change its mind with minor changes in pattern or presentation. He will make a radical change or simply move on to the next fish and then return the next hour, the next day, or the next year with a whole new strategy for capturing the missed one. Bob doesn’t wait for things to happen, he makes them happen.

      In his second life as a fly-shop owner, Bob applies the same painstaking attention to minutiae that brought him success in a career in information technology. He scrutinizes every piece of fishing tackle, every stitch and seam on a vest and pair of waders, every fly rod, line, and pattern, with the idea that landing the fish of a lifetime will ultimately depend on the performance of his gear. If an item is flawed, poorly designed, poorly manufactured, or otherwise substandard in any way, he will not sell it to a customer, and he certainly will not get caught using it himself.

      Bob has chosen both the waters and the writers for this book with the same exacting standards. No starry-eyed romanticism, no nod to nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia, has clouded his judgment in making his selections. No storied past in and of itself will earn a river or stream a place in this book if it is flawed or substandard and can no longer support a healthy fishery. If it is accessible, well-regulated, and well-maintained, it probably made the cut. If it is deficient in any of these qualities, he will not waste his time, or yours, by including it.

      Just think: if you live in the Northeast you will never have to sit in another crowded airline seat to get to a fishing destination. If you made a list of the great waters you have fished in your lifetime, would there be fifty? Here are fifty great fisheries you can visit within a day’s drive of home. Here, too, are the resources you will need to make your trip worthwhile, including tips about where to and how to fish them, by expert anglers who know the water.

      —THOMAS AMES, JR.

      Thomas Ames, Jr. is the author of Hatch Guide for New England Streams, Fishbugs, Caddisflies: A Guide to Eastern Species for Anglers and Other Naturalists, and numerous articles on fly fishing.

      Chris Major on the upper Saco River. Fly Fish America

      Introduction

      I ALWAYS KNEW I would someday be involved in writing a definitive guide to fly fishing in the Northeast. Over the years friends, associates, and peers encouraged me to take the plunge and write down what I knew. I started several times, but I never finished. I struggled with the format. Where-to guides come in many flavors, and I just did not know where I wanted to go with it. Sometimes there seemed to be too much information. Other times, too little. Sometimes there were glaring omissions. Other times, odd inclusions.

      I wasn’t interested in writing the kind of kiss-and-tell book that identifies specific pools to fish, where to park, and what fly to use. I was not sure that level of detail was