Trout Fishing in 24

Trout Fishing is a passion for reader Pamela Grant, who wrote this piece.

My husband Kevin and I have gone many times to TWP24MD (township 24 middle district) in our great State O’ Maine, to his families old logging camp for a spring/summer trout fishing trip.

This “camp” has been in his family since his grandfather was a young man and, although still standing, is unusable by my standards as it has become a haven for several hundred bats each summer. Although the die hard men in the family still use it every fall for hunting, after the bats have gone, and will spend hours cleaning it for a day or two of rustic living. I however choose to stay in my modern little 14 foot camper we pull into the dooryard of the camp.

This year we went trout fishing with my mother, who we have living with us now. She used to love to brook fish years ago and there were plenty of spots we knew she would enjoy and that would provide her with a good “mess” of trout for supper. So we all planned to stay in our little camper for a week--- my husband and myself, my mother, our dog Dingo, and my mother’s poodle Muffin. I am pretty sure TWP24MD had never seen a 13 year old poodle before, and this house dog sure had never seen anything like 24 ,as we call it.

We discovered several days prior to our trip that this would be our camper’s last days in the wilderness. It seems that a rather substantial leak had developed over the winter and now the walls were damaged and the floor was iffy in spots. We thought of canceling our trip but decided to make the best of a bad situation and do our best to get just one more trip out of it. So far this was not the idyllic trip we had envisioned and we hadn’t even left the dooryard yet.

The weather was predicted to be good just about all week, so we headed out on our journey. Of course it was raining the morning we left. But we were sure this was just a little shower and nothing more, as the weather man had told us warm and sunny and we were placing a lot of trust in him. As it turned out the weather wasn’t bad at all. Although we did have showers most nights, the sun shone daily all the days but one.

The fish were biting better than they should be this time of year in the small brooks and to our delight the bugs were not as bad as we had expected. Between my husband and I we managed to catch 14 trout. Two of them were more than a foot long. Not bad trout fishing for a brook 4 ft across at its widest point. Most of them were caught at the same little hole, too, right off a dirt road. Can’t beat that can ya? Heck I even went trout fishing one morning in my pj’s and caught a nice 10 inch trout in about 5 minutes. My mom ate eight of the trout we caught by herself. It had been years since she had been able to eat trout caught just minutes before. She was in seventh heaven.

The camper held out well for its final trip, although in the end we decided to tear it all apart and see if we will be able to rebuild it somehow. We will have the bionic camper when we are done, full of customized little nooks and crannies. I might even like it better after we are finished with the remodel.

The family camp however is in worse shape than we remembered. The bats still call it home but the roof is weak and the walls are tipping and sinking into the ground. It is a shame really to see something full of so many memories come to an end, but all things must I suppose. In good time, the camp will be torn down and a newer “improved” version will go up in its place. It will ,however, always be the family camp on 24. That place is full of the good and bad trout fishing, hunting, working experiences of four generations of my husbands family and you just don’t tear that down.

I look forward to our next trip there. Hopefully the trout, deer, and grouse will still be plentiful for years to come. The commercial blueberry producers are encroaching on the area fast now. The almighty dollar is winning once again. This year we saw less game than we have in other years. Some of the small ponds in the area are being over taken by weeds because (and this is my opinion) the fertilizers used nearby in the blueberry grounds are leaching into the ponds and causing the weeds to go wild. Some places are not fishable now due to the weeds. What a shame. Still in all, I want to go back. I wish you all could see it , but on the other hand I want to keep all that beauty and peaceful bliss to myself.

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