(HOST) Writer, storyteller and commentator Willem Lange has spent decades trying to catch a particular fish – one that has proven to be especially elusive.
(LANGE) In 1971, on a pond deep in Maine, I caught a strange-looking trout. It was grayish-blue along the back and upper sides, with brook trout spots and white on the leading edges of its fins beneath. I held it for a moment and slid it back into the water.
Later, when I described it to an old Maine guide, he said, "Oh! That was a blueback. They’re in there, but you don’t hear of ’em being caught very often because they live down deep." As I recall, I feigned credulity and later, when I had a chance, looked it up. To my surprise, there was such a thing: Salvelinus oquossa.
So for almost forty years I’ve believed I’ve caught one. But there remains the haunting thought that maybe I haven’t. So during those years I’ve made two more trips to that pond – about an 8 1/2-mile hike – and been blown off the lake both times.
Last fall I made my third and last try. I drove 394 miles and eight hours from East Montpelier to north of Portage, Maine. All for a trout that rarely exceeds 12 inches in length?
The blueback, brook, and lake trout are not true trout, but char. The landlocked varieties were stranded inland by the retreat of the last continental ice sheet.
The blueback was once the most numerous species in the Rangeley Lakes of western Maine. They were speared or netted by the cartloads to feed guests at the summer hotels. Then someone introduced landlocked salmon, supposedly to improve the fishing, and that was the end of the blueback in the Rangeleys.
It was considered extinct early in the 20th century. Then, in 1948, a fisherman in northern Maine sent a "strange appearing trout" to the Fish and Game Department. Biologists investigated the pond it had come from and caught several more. They’ve been found in eight ponds in far northern Maine. That’s where I headed last fall.
No one knows exactly why, but bluebacks prefer colder water than brook trout. Colder water contains more oxygen, but down that deep, food is sparser. So, although the bluebacks live about two years longer than brook trout, they never get as large. Where they coexist in the same ponds, most of the brook trout live in the upper 30 feet of water, and most of the bluebacks below. The guide I fished with told me I’d need only two flies: a Black Ghost Marabou and a spare. Not as thrilling as fishing for brookies on the surface; but when you’re after a unicorn, you have to adapt.
The blueback gods, however, did not smile upon me; I got skunked again. I trudged back to camp where I’d prepared a victory toast on the porch, and instead drank to the next attempt. I know I said that was my last try. I lied. There’s no such thing.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.