The Upper Andro Anglers Alliance in co-operation with Trout Unlimited will host a free family fishing festival on Saturday, June 2. The festival will be held at Angevine Park on the North Road in Bethel, from 9 am to 2 pm, rain or shine. Free casting workshops and fly-tying instruction will be available throughout the day.

Local Maine guides and members of the Mollyockett Chapter of Trout Unlimited will teach the workshops. Instruction will include both spin casting and fly casting for older youth and parents. Maine’s Hooked on Fishing-Not on Drugs Program will supply complimentary rods and reels for use at the festival.

Families can practice newly learned casting skills in the one acre pond and are welcome to take home their catch. The pond will be stocked with trout courtesy of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Each young angler will receive a mini-tackle box complete with bobber, sinkers and hook courtesy of the Upper Andro Anglers Alliance.

Kids can learn how to tie flies with materials provided by local outfitters and fly shops. Children will be able to take home their hand-tied flies.

Families participating in the event will be eligible for door prizes from local outfitters and businesses as well as L.L. Bean and Kittery Trading Post. The Bethel Fire Dept. will host a barbecue of hotdogs and hamburgers, chips, and drinks and families are welcome to bring a pack lunch.

The weekend of June 2 & 3 is a free fishing weekend in Maine. Resident and Non-resident freshwater fishing licenses are waived each day.

The Family Fishing Festival is one many nationwide events that provide families with an opportunity to have fun on the water. The events are promoted by the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (www.rbff.org). For those families wishing to stay overnight and fish or canoe the Androscoggin River on Sunday, special family packages are available for the weekend at local lodging establishments.

For information on the Family Fishing Festival, contact the Upper Andro Anglers Alliance at 207-824-3694, fish at upperandro dot com or www.upperandro.com.

Say what you will about the pros and cons of this foolishness we call wind energy. I’ve heard and read people argue relentlessly about whether it is cost effective, etc. but the damned things are an eyesore and a destruction of the environment. What kind of a moron would believe that in order to save the environment we must destroy more than the end result will realize us? Forget that question. I already know the answer. I deal with these people on a daily basis.

Consider rural Maine and the intrusion into the pursuit of life and liberty that comes from forcing wind turbines onto the landscape. The following photos and information was provided to me by Albert Ladd who lives in the area where these wind turbines have been erected.

In the Roxbury/Byron area, 22 wind turbines have been installed on Record Hill. Record Hill sits east of Ellis Pond and Southeast of Little Ellis or Garland Pond. Garland Pond has approximately 70+ summer camps that sit mostly on the northern end of the pond. Now many of those camp owners will be able to see some or all of the 22 turbines on Record Hill.

The first photograph below shows Ellis Pond and Little Ellis Pond. The Red line to the east of Ellis Pond is the line of 22 wind turbines. If you look closely, on the northern end of Little Ellis Pond, you’ll see a red splotch or an arrow-looking mark. This is the location the photographer, Ladd, was standing when he took the second photograph below.

Notice also on the Google map, a straight yellow line that runs near the north end of Record Hill and also intersects the northern part of Ellis Pond. That line is the town line of Roxbury, Maine and Byron, Maine. The Town of Byron voted out any wind turbines, Roxbury did not. In addition, the camp owners of Little Ellis Pond voted against wind turbines and now see what they have to stare at when they are at their camps.

Could this be the end of my troubles of never receiving press releases and other information from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) I keep signing up for?

Laughably, in an email from the MDIFW, I received notice that the department has a new service where those interested can sign up to receive email alerts. In addition, you can be selective as to what kind of alerts you would like to have sent to your inbox. And these selections appear to be quite specific.

If you are interested go to THIS WEBSITE and register. Takes a matter of seconds.

Tom Remington

Spending many hours moving about the Maine woods, certain unusual sights are before you if you take notice. These days hunting in the woods of Western Maine you aren’t too preoccupied with looking out for deer, because there just aren’t very many to see. It’s easier then to be distracted by other things.

Such was the case this day. I was on a relatively gentle sloping hardwood ridge with a southern exposure. Being a relatively cool day, often deer will find a spot to lay down and warm themselves in the glow of the late autumn sun. South-facing hardwood ridges is ideal.

As you can see in the photo, the young beech and scrub oak leaves were still clinging earnestly to their hosts making the site distance for hunting, poor at best.

As I stood on a long finger of land among the young beech trees, standing before me was this white birch tree. What caught my eye was the blackish growth, one on each side of the tree. My first and short impression was it might be a small black bear cub or two.

It wasn’t. Turns out it’s some growth that stands out on a white-barked tree. To help put size into perspective, the birch tree at the point where the growth begins, I would estimate was about 14 or 15 inches in diameter.

Photo by Tom Remington

Willie Nelson used to sing, “On the Road Again” and “Going places that I’ve never been”. In this case I think these two guys went places they ain’t never been but ended up someplace they shouldn’t have been. It was quite the fiasco and I’ll spare all of you the sordid details.

In short, these two guys ended up between a rock and hard place. On the power line, after a foot of snow had fallen a day or two before, these guys descended a pretty steep hill and couldn’t get back up over it after they discovered the large water hole at the bottom.

After giving it some thought, they decided if they just kept moving, they could get across. Didn’t happen. Two guys from hunting camp happened along, and with the aid of two-way radios and cellphones, the posse arrived to haul them out.

They were happy!

Milt Inman photo

Milt Inman photo

Well, I dunno but at least the tracks are visible. There’s a Maine expression that goes like this: “Hard tellin’ not knowin’”. In this case, the photo below, taken by Milt Inman of Greenwood, Maine, shows tracks in the middle of a logging road in between wheel ruts. This is the only photo I have so it doesn’t show the track clearly and is difficult to judge size do to lack of perspective.

However, I have known Milt for many years and when he tells me he saw something and describes what he saw, I don’t question it.

This photo was taken somewhere (I ain’t telling) in Western/Northwestern Maine. As Milt describes in the photo, the tracks were 5-inches wide and 5-inches long. I talked with Milt’s son on Skype one night recently, who was with him when he took the photo, about the track. He told me there was about 18-20 inches between steps. If the track is 5 inches long, then judging the distance between tracks seems to agree with 18-20 inches.

Neither Milt nor his son are “expert” observers but both felt reasonably sure the tracks could have been left by a mountain lion.

In Maine, and perhaps other parts of the country, an outdoor excursion, such as hunting, ice fishing, snowmobiling or a hike, wouldn’t be complete without a hotdog roasted on an open fire. Although not chestnuts, and so there will be no Yuletide carols being sung by a fire nor kids dressed up like Eskimos, a small fire, a crotched stick and a feast to last a lifetime is in the makings.

If only I could find a match!

Milt Inman photo

Ah! Yes! Let there be fire!

Milt Inman photo

As an aside, if you notice carefully in the second photo that there are differently colored “tube steaks” on the fire. One appears brownish and the other two red. For those who are unaware, Maine is one of few, if not the only state, left that permits the sale and consumption of hotdogs cased using red dye – that nasty dye that could kill somebody if they ate it. But let’s not talk about what’s inside the hotdog, Okay?

Tom Remington

Those words are from Aldo Leopold. The entire quote goes like this: “All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.”

I am not very much of an Aldo Leopold fan, nor am I much of an idealist as are most fans of Leopold, Muir, Roosevelt and others.

When hunting in the woods, as I did this past November, early on, even though much of the terrain I cover is the same terrain I and others like me and those before have tread, I sometimes desire to escape to a fool’s paradise, imagining I am some place no man has ever been.

One day I reached a place. It was ever quiet. The sky was deep blue, a light breeze and seasonably warm was the air. Nature’s breath smelled earthen, full of rot at times blended with brief whiffs of sweet fern. In the distance I distinguished the bubbling and crackling of a brook. Dead leaves would drift lazily to the ground as the gentle and yet invisible zephyrs took control, seemingly to steer the leaves where God could best make use of them.

I must be there. I must have reached that happiness that exudes when a man believes he has stood where no man has mounted before.

Okay! This is all made up stuff. None of this really happened but I was surprised when I reached a place where I knew few, if any, hunters probably made their way only to discover perched on a small rock just to my side was an apple core. Judging from the picture, it hadn’t been there too long as some of the apple still appeared white and the elements hadn’t taken the fruit from its lofty perch.

Sometimes we can be just as surprised with what we see as what we don’t.

Photo by Tom Remington

I would like to offer my sincere condolences to the Goodwin family for the loss of Fred Goodwin. I never met Fred and only knew of him and the legend of “The Silver Ridge Buck” from a friend. Mr. Goodwin passed away on November 26, 2011 at the young age of 103. It’s obvious that he will be greatly missed.

I received information about Fred Goodwin the first time from a friend, a reader and contributor of the Black Bear Blog, Richard Paradis. I would like to share some of the things he shared with me as I know they will also enrich your life.

Photo taken by Nani Paradis

Fred was coauthor of a book called, “The Art of Deer and Bear Hunting”. Below is a scan of the book’s cover provided by Richard Paradis.

Fred Goodwin signing copies of his book at age 100.

Photo taken by Nani Paradis

May you rest in peace!

A reader sent me another photo of a bee’s nest that appears just a bit higher off the ground than the one in the photo I published earlier. Below is the new photo followed by the first photo I had published.

Photo by Tom Remington