Kayak's Partner

Two Old Town Vapor 10 Angler kayaks fit nicely atop my car and are easy to load, opening an huge number of waterways to fishing/photo outings.

Last fall I got I got a fishing kayak, an Old Town Vapor 10 Angler, and I've been delighted with everything about it. It's stable, comfortable and well set up for fishing, and I can easily load it atop my car. In fact, it's simple enough to tote that I'll toss it atop my Outback for trips to other areas, "just in case," even if I don't know of a specific kayak need on that trip. Owning one has left me longing for a second one, though, and I fixed that when I was in Maine a couple of weeks ago.

Several times since I got the first boat, I've pondered outings to mountain lakes, cypress-filled backwaters, tidal creeks or other waters, but ultimately have decided to stay home. A productive outing to me is one where I get a lot of good photos, so I just can't justify going fishing alone. Selfies and fish close-ups certainly provide some value, but that value is miniscule compared to what can be done with a couple of boats and with both anglers carrying a camera, and it would only frustrate me to hit a good fishing day in a beautiful spot and not be equipped to make the most of it photo-wise.

Cool view, behind the scenes, at Old Town Canoe!

Because I like my first Vapor so much, I couldn't think of anything I would like better than another boat of the same model, and since Old Town, Maine and the Old Town Canoe headquarters are only a few miles from where I would be fishing with Northridge Outfitters, it only made since to plan a visit and pick up the new boat while I was so close. I had explored the retail store at Old Town before. In fact, it was the first stop Asher and I made when we fished in the same area a couple of years ago. This time, though, I got to tour the facilities with Old Town brand manager David Hadden, and I cannot begin to convey how cool it was getting to see all those canoes and kayaks being formed and prepared for shipping. I was super impressed by all the processes used to ensure that every boat a customer buys is exactly what it should be in appearance and performance and that it will remain that way for many years.

The Old Town visit and pick-up took place on the final morning of my trip, and plans were to begin my 1,260-mile trek home when I left. However, I couldn't resist the opportunity to get the new boat wet and run both kayaks together, so Doug Teel and I went straight from Old Town to a spot along the Penobscot River that David Hadden had suggested and slid the boats in the river. We didn't fish long, but we did both catch fish, so the second Vapor had been rightly initiated before I got more than about 5 miles from where it had been built. After catching a few, we re-loaded the boats and secured them atop my car, where they road nicely all the way home.

I left for Florida a few days after returning from Maine and just got back from that trip, so I haven't gotten the two boats out together around here yet. You know it won't be long, though!

The first fish caught from my new Old Town Vapor 10 Angler, caught by Doug Teel of Northridge Outfitters, illustrates perfectly the kind of photo I'm excited to be able to get far more of now that I have two kayaks that I can take out together!

Marvelous Maine

Continuing with fishing travel updates before returning to "favorite destinations" posts, I drove directly from the Pennsylvania Crappie Camp to Maine to spend a few delightful days with Doug Teel of Northridge Outfitters. I also got to visit the home of Old Town Canoe and even picked up a new boat while I was in Maine, but that's another story for my next post.

Doug operates a modern lodge in rural Penobscot County and outfits adventurers year-round. He guides hunters for everything from rabbits to bears to moose, but from mid-May through the end of summer, he turns his attention to fish. Smallmouth bass are the main attraction, but Doug also fishes good waters for pike and largemouths and occasionally, he'll hit beautiful backwoods ponds and flowages for native brook trout or lead other types of fishing excursions. This was my fourth time fishing with Doug, so I admittedly arrived with high expectations.

I wasn't disappointed!

Doug and I squeezed in big variety for only 3 1/2 days, spending one full day running ATV trails and backroads for colorful brookies and splitting the rest of the time fishing two vey different sorts of lakes and the Penobscot River. The river, which is where Doug spends the most time during the summer, was the one "must do" part of the trip, and as a spoiler alert, you'll learn more about it if you continue to follow my list of favorite fishing destinations. Smallmouth fishing is crazily good and highly predictable, with lots of topwater action.

One lake we fished was new to me and about two hours away. Doug promised it would be worth it and was right. Of course, I never doubted that as I've learned to trust his judgement. We spent the whole day catching and releasing chunky smallmouth bass from ultra-clear water and only saw one other boat on the lake while we were there.

I guess my favorite outing was a short, early-morning river stop on the final day. I had plans to be at Old Town at 9:00, so we hit the river from about 5:30 till 8:00 and caught oodles of smallmouths in that short time, mostly on topwater, without ever running anywhere. Doug dropped the trolling motor as soon as we launched, and we just started fishing. If we even got out of sight of the boat ramp, it wasn't by much!

Of course, we ate well. You're supposed to do that in Maine. And if anyone ever asks, I can say without hesitation, that if you have haddock chowder to dinner, lunch the next day is not too soon for all-you-can east fried haddock, and the leftover chowder makes an excellent dinner that evening!

Favorite Fishing Day of 2017

Last year brought many fabulous fishing days in many different settings. My favorite day, though, had to be the one I spent with Doug Teel of Northridge Outfitters on Maine's Penobscot River catching smallies at a sometimes fevered pace. We started at 100, counted down to zero, and left with the fish still biting. I told the whole story at the time on Rebellures.com.

Our top producing lures that day were Rebel Wee-Crawfish, especially in the new Flaming Junebug color. We also caught several fish on top on Baby Torpedoes and Crazy Shads.

Beyond the great bite, a day on the river with Doug is always big fun, and our smallmouth catchfest capped three days of fishing and was part of a super stay at the Northridge Outfitters lodge.

New (to me) Fishing Car

I'm so excited about my new fishing car that I almost wish I was driving it to Maine this morning. "Almost" is a fairly important word in that sentence, though. In truth, driving it to the Greenville/Spartanburg airport and flying the rest of the way will be just fine!

New, of course, only means new to me. It's an '08 that has already traveled just shy of 100 K miles. It seems to have been nicely cared for, though, and is in great condition.

Car is a Subaru Outback, which should be awfully perfect those rainy and snowy days when I still want to fishing and for those times when I want to go a little farther off the pavement but also comfortable for the many highway miles I log. It doesn't quite get the crazy good mileage of my Ford Fiesta, which served me mighty well for three years, but it still gets a pretty good 27 MPG on the highway.

I'm also glad to say that the Fiesta isn't going away. My 19-year-old son Nathaniel needed something that gets a little better mileage than his '95 F150 for a season.

Enough writing now. I'd better hop in the new car and drive to the airport. Smallmouths, pike, largemouths and beautiful Maine brookies are waiting at the other end.

Thinks it's a Truck

I really debated taking my Expedition on my most recent trek with Asher because I was a bit concerned about clearance with my Fiesta on some logging roads in Maine. I was told that I "should be OK," though, and decided to hope for the best.

Just as it did last summer, carrying us 8008 miles and conquering mountain roads all over the West during the Rebel Trout Trek, and just as it has on so many Southern Appalachian back roads, the little car performed nicely as we added another 3000+ miles to its odometer. It got seriously dirty, threw a few rocks and bumped bottom once on a New Hampshire logging road, but it kept trucking along and never flirted with getting stuck anywhere.

What I like most about my little car, not surprisingly, is its fuel efficiency. At 40 mpg, it's mighty practical for long drives. What impresses me, along with surprising toughness, is how much junk fits in such a small car with a good hatchback design. Much larger sedans and even some small SUVs would carry less or make gear much harder to access.

Asher and I have learned how to pack the Fiesta so the stuff we need the most stays pretty handy. Not that we don't sometimes lose that order in two weeks on the road with too much junk. We do. But it doesn't take long to get it back in place.

There may be a 4WD or AWD need somewhere in the future, but for now we'll let the little car keep pretending it's a truck!

Whole Lot of Packing Going On

Asher and I are in full packing mode because tomorrow we leave on this summer's biggest adventure. We're pointing the car north this year, instead of west, and headed for New England. I suppose the primary targets would have to be the beautiful brook trout that live in the ponds of northern New England, but we'll be hitting a variety of waters in New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine for brook, rainbow and brown trout, along with smallmouth bass, pike and whatever else wants to cooperate, and we'll even spend a day or two saltwater fishing on the Connecticut coast. If you followed last year's Rebel Trout Trek, this one won't be quite that grand. We were gone nearly a month and traveled all the way to Olympic National Park just outside of Seattle on that trip. I think we'll end up being on the road a little less than two weeks on this summer's trip.

At one point I thought we'd fly and get a rental car, but the more I thought about all the junk I wanted to tote and the scheduling freedom that comes with driving, the more I became convinced that the hours behind the wheel would be well invested. Now I just have to decide which wheel. My Ford Fiesta has been a mighty fine "trout car" and handled last year's cross-country trek, and it is the most likely choice. I need to check logging road conditions in one area of Maine, though, to make sure ground clearance won't present a problem. If that's too iffy we'll spread out more in the Expedition, and I'll just have to spend a little more time squeezing gas pump triggers.

I'll be sharing stories and photos from the trip on the Rebel Lures website and Facebook page beginning Aug. 1, which is around the time we'll likely be returning home. In the meantime, I'm sure I'll post a few travel updates here, on my Facebook fishing page and on Instagram and Twitter (@jeffsamsel on either).

Maine to Alaska

Last year's fishing trips certainly spanned the miles. Best I can figure by looking back through blogs, I needed fishing licenses from 17 different states (plus Ontario) in 2011. Geographic range was from Alaska to Maine to Texas. Nine fishing days were on the ice in Minnesota or Colorado. Prior to 2011, I had spent a grand total of one day ice fishing.

I enjoyed the opportunity to spend a quite a bit of time casting for smallmouths last years, including inaugural visits to Maine's Penobscot River and Wisconsin's legendary Door County. I didn't spend as many days trout fishing as I normally do, but a friend and I did get the opportunity to introduce Nathaniel to our favorite river -- the West Fork of the Chattooga River.
My fish-catchingest days of 2011 (and among the most fun) were just a couple of weeks ago, with Frank Campbell on the Niagara River. We literally caught hundreds of pounds of steelhead, brown trout and lake trout. Another favored day included minimal fish catching because the river was low and the bite wasn't happening. That was the day I floated Arkansas' beautiful Buffalo River with Nathaniel and few good friends. I also really enjoyed the two days when then-6 Asher took Nathaniel and me to fish-catching school, catching almost all the fish, and the afternoon I spent with Stephen Browning catching Lake Fork largemouth doubles on tiny tandem rigs.

One of my most noteworthy individual fish came from Fork on the following afternoon when Gary Dollahon and I were trying to catch white bass for photos. Instead of a white bass, my spoon got the attention of an 8-pound largemouth. Also high on that list would be the halibut pictured above. It wasn't even sort of big by halibut standards, but it was still my best halibut, and I was standing in a boat close to a Volcano and in Alaska when I caught it, and that made it mighty memorable!

I'm very thankful for the opportunity to make my living collecting and recording fish stories, and I'm excited to see where the new year's fishing adventures take me!

Smallmouth Bass the MAINE Attraction

"Moose!" Doug Teel called out, pointing everyone's attention to the massive, dark-colored animal that was right beside the truck for an instant and then crashed into the thick Maine woods and disappeared.

Teel, who operates Northridge Outfitters & Guide Service, was driving David Hart, Lawrence Taylor and me from the Penobscot River to his lodge after a day of fast-action fishing. Spotting a moose only added to the whole Maine experience, as did the loons we saw and heard on the water, the steamed lobster we'd have for dinner the next evening and the black bear we would also spot while riding Maine backroads.

Smallmouth bass, however, were the "Maine" attraction, and the clear but dark waters of the
Penobscot did not disappoint. Heddon Torpedoes, XCalibur Zell Pops and Rebel Pop-Rs prompted crushing surface strikes for two full days. Top producers beneath the surface included YUM F2 Dingers an XCalibur Square Lips crankbaits.

Teel's two favorite lures, by far, are a Bullfrog-colored Torpedo, which he presents with patient pauses and steel nerves, an a Bumblebee Swirl YUM Dinger, which he rigs wacky style and weights with a small bullet weight. A Zell Pop, fished the same way as Teal works his Torpedo, was the top producer for me.