When I am guiding a party I prefer to keep some distance from anyone else. Not that I am anti-social rather I feel that my clients deserve to experience the outdoors as personally as I can arrange it. If we are sharing a body of water, which is occasionally the case, I am inclined to keep distance from another boat or party.
I wondered if I was wrong about this on a recent visit to Grand Lake Stream, as famous landlocked salmon fishery as there is in Maine. I watched one evening as a couple of guides were seated in lawn chairs on a gravel bar in the middle of the stream, while maybe a dozen anglers lined the edges of the pool casting for salmon. The anglers were standing maybe fifteen feet apart which sort of stunned me. Granted the fishery is extraordinary and many of them caught fish that evening but it was all a little more social than the fishing experience I prefer for myself or my clients.
While bass fishing Big Lake on my own the next morning; a guide (who I did not recognize) saw that I was in a cove paddling a canoe alone along the shore and left that part of the lake to give me room to fish. Very courteous to be sure but the sort of thing that I would do as well.
Recently there has lots of discussion about the Rapid River; where the fish are caught so many times that the local anglers thought that a barbless hook requirement was necessary to prevent the fish from being injured. I have no idea if the regulation makes sense or not but am left wondering about the quality of experience those folks will tolerate.
If you go on a Maine Outdoors trip of any kind rest assured that it is rarely a crowd scene (unless you count loons) and that I will make every effort to keep your experience quiet and personal. Granted we may not be on some big name water but let me assure you that the quality of the experience will more than make up for it.
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