Moosehead Lake Region fishing report
By Tim Obrey, Moosehead Lake Region regional fisheries supervisor
The drought conditions were washed away this month in the Moosehead Lake area. We received a cool four inches of rain during the second week of August. That really bumped up lake elevations and produced some high flows in our streams and rivers. It’s welcome news for our trout ponds and streams. It should also help with the September flows for our river fisheries for salmon and brook trout.
We typically see the fall drawdowns on our impoundments begin after Labor Day, which is the traditional end of the summer recreational season. We will begin our fall drawdown at Lower Wilson Pond starting on Sept 6. The speed at which the lake drops will depend on rainfall during the drawdown. Camp owners take note if you have boats in the water.
First Roach Pond is full, so this year we will crack a gate on Sept. 1 to give the river anglers an extra weekend of fishing and it shouldn’t impact lake elevations too much. Anglers can expect a flow in the 200–250 cfs range on the Roach River in September.
Brookfield has earthwork scheduled at the Brassua Dam which will require an early drawdown at Brassua Lake. They hope to have the lake down several feet by mid-September. That’s good news for anglers in the Moose River. We are seeing higher flows right now and that will continue through September. This will attract brookies and salmon into the river.
At the same time, Brookfield will also have to begin the fall drawdown on Moosehead Lake. What comes in, must go out. The higher flows coming from the Moose River will be passed downstream via the East Outlet dam, so look for higher flows there as well.
The recent rain has given us a little more water than in past years at Seboomook Lake. It looks like we will have a discharge of 850 cfs to start September in the West Branch below Seboomook Lake. We typically like a flow of 750 cfs or more. It gets tough to travel around Big Island or upstream through some of the gravel bars when the flow is lower. There were some nice fish in Chesuncook Lake this spring, so hopefully that will translate into some good Fox Hole fishing this September.
We should have a little more water in Dole Pond this fall compared to past years. We typically take stock of the available water storage at the beginning of September and calculate how many days we can sustain a higher flow. We adjust the start date to make sure there is ample water to provide flow in the North Branch to the end of September.
You can always check the flow page maintained by Brookfield for specific day to day flow information at https://safewaters.com/
You can get the current flow on the Roach River by calling our flow line at 207-695-4143.