Search for the Elusive Blueback Trout (PT. 1)

There are few salmonids that have captivated me to the extent that Maine's relict Arctic char. Ask any fly fisherman what their fish bucketlist is and you're likely to hear a bunch of different classic salmonid species and subspecies, from Gila trout to hucho taimen, along with those flats favorites... tarpon, bonefish, permit, and giant trevally, and maybe a few freshwater giants, like golden dorado or peacock bass. My fly rod bucketlist is longer than most and littered with strange fish you probably haven't heard of, like giant kokopu, goonch catfish, mountain mullet, peacock flounder, or sicklefin redhorse. If you asked me to list my top 25, only four, right now, would be salmonids: sheefish (a whitefish on steroids), softmouth trout, longfin char, and hucho taimen (Longfin char are probably the fish I want most of every known species. Obviously catching an unclassified species would top that).

Up until very recently, blueback trout were one of the 25 fish I wanted most. Though not a distinct species, Maine's Arctic char lived in isolation for long enough to drift away from their less land-locked brethren. Blueback trout are currently considered a subspecies of Arctic char, Salvelinus alpinus oquassa. Originally found in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Quebec, S. a. oquassa was once classified as three different species, split by region, carrying the common name "sunapee" in Vermont and New Hampshire, "blueback" in Maine, and "red trout" in Quebec. Research determined that these populations had all been isolated for the same amount of time, so all three regional populations are now considered the same subspecies. There seems to still be some wiggle room as to whether they could be a separate species rather than a subspecies of Arctic char, and in my own totally worthless, not entirely scientific opinion, they probably should be given a species classification. Now only the Maine and Quebec populations exist. Mainers call their char bluebacks and sunapees interchangeably, and that isn't entirely wrong in places where stocks seem to have actually been introduced from New Hampshire. Red trout seems to be exclusively a Quebec name. Given that the most common name used to describe Maine's population, throughout history, seems to have been blueback trout, that is what I will be calling them from this point forward.

Bluebacks are a rare fish. Introductions of other species into their natal lakes and ponds, especially rainbow smelt, have pushed them out of their own habitat. The Rangeley Lakes, which once had a unique and thriving population that literally fed the giant brook trout that put them on the map, are now devoid of bluebacks largely because of smelt and land locked salmon. The Vermont and New Hampshire populations are gone too. Bluebacks are the poster child for why introducing new species into a niche is a bad idea. They now are found in only a handful of lakes and ponds in Maine.

I could easily write another ten paragraphs about blueback trout, why they are so cool, why they were in the top 25 on my bucketlist, and other such things. But instead I'll leave that to someone infinitely more qualified. Here is a link to a piece written by Ted Williams, originally for Fly Rod & Reel, now on the Native Fish Coalition blog: Whither Yankee Char.
Please do give that a read before finishing this post. It is important to note that although Wadleigh and Big Reed have now both been reclaimed, many of the problems William's discussed in this article still face these remarkable fish.

I had some serious research to do and decisions to make before Noah and I even left CT in regards to our search for bluebacks. The bodies of water that still harbor these fish are scattered throughout the state almost evenly, and there is an interesting variation from one pond to the next. I eventually narrowed down to three places, two of which were isolated lakes, and the third a cluster of ponds in far north Aroostook County. I consulted with Bob Mallard, then made my pitch to Noah. I thought our best chance at encountering these rare char at a less than ideal time of year existed in the unique cluster of waters that was the furthest away.

We were going further north than either of us had never been.
We were going to the most remote place either of us had ever been.
We were going to Deboullie.

We left Mt. Desert Island and got on I95 in Bangor. We went 80 miles to the town of Sherman, over a few gradual rises hills but mostly swampy flat lands.

At Sherman we got on Rt. 11, which took us 68 miles over rolling hills and farmland and a whole lot of nothing and nobody, all the way to the town of Portage.

In Portage, we said goodbye to the paved roads, cell reception, and permanent residences, and our own sanity. Five miles down the logging roads we stopped at the North Maine Woods, Inc. checkpoint to pay our fees and get better directions (it turns out my hand written ones improvised using the newest available satellite imagery were dead on anyway). 20 something miles worth of gravel road later...

...we reached our home for the next four nights.

Pushineer pond, the bottom of the three connected ponds with blueback trout populations, would be our base of operations. Although it was the smallest of the four total ponds in the cluster it was also the shallowest, so it wasn't likely to produce our bluebacks in mid July. Surface temperatures every afternoon were reaching 70 degrees in Pushineer and Deboullie, but seemed colder in Gardner and Black Pond, which is about what I expected. Hatch activity was fairly strong but there weren't enough fish rising to warrant dry fly fishing, which is what I expected. And our best chance at a blueback seemed to be making the portage to Black.
Which is what I expected.

What I didn't expect was how hard it would be to get fish that we marked with Noah's fish finder to eat. On the first evening we fished Pushineer and Deboullie and marked fish consistently at the same depth regardless of overall depth. They were clearly favoring a certain part of the thermocline as much as they were structure. Noah took the first few fish, all small brook trout, vertical jigging. I trailed behind with only one brookie and a couple perch on white jigs. Later in the evening we found a sporadic rise and I managed one decent fish on a Mickey Finn two hand retrieved.

My first Deboullie brookie

That night we learned that the sun sets later and for much longer that far north. Rather, we knew this to be true already but had never seen it before. A hatch came off at the outlet of the pond, some kind of size 14 dark grey mayfly I had never seen before. It brought common shiners and lake chubs to the surface, but those and the other species we found while in Deboullie will have to be the subject of a different mini-series.

We cooked dinner, noted how severely black fly bites bled and how red the turned, then turned in for the night.
Morning came pretty quickly. I rose with the sun and was out on the water and back before Noah was completely up and ready to fish. It wasn't a particularly productive morning session, but I did cover some new territory and had a possible brief encounter with the target species.

Hexegenia limbata

I'd gotten a couple small brookies casting and two hand retrieving, but wasn't getting enough takes to make that effort worthwhile. I set up to troll and basically used the wind to my advantage, changing heading to cover different contours and speed up and slow down the fly. Coming across a point, I felt the line come tight. The fight was noticeably strong for the size of the fish, and when I got it to hand I saw no spots at all and a bit of a forked tail. Then the little bugger released itself. I don't know if that was a blueback. I'm inclined to think that it probably was. That was a pretty serious disappointment, but things would get better soon.
Until next time.
Fish for the love of fish.
Fish for the love of places fish live.
Fish for you.

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