A bunch of us headed up to the Rangeley area for some late June fly fishing and much needed R&R. We camped on the shores of Cupsuptic Lake again at a campground named for the same. It’s become a favorite base camp for us there because of the great new facilities and proximity to a number of good fishing opportunities. The Fly Fishing in Maine organization was having their annual Spring Conclave there again this year so decided to go up that weekend and see some familiar faces.
We had great weather for a day and a half before the thunderstorms moved in and washed out one afternoon but, fish were caught! Brookies only. I bagged a decent one on the Magalloway. I’m growing to like this river the more I fish it. The upper reaches where the water is rapid you best do early morning as, starting in June, they do releases from the dam for rafters and kayakers starting about 11:00am and it seems to blow out the fish, or at least mess them up.
Boyd and Brook Trout. Magalloway River
The FFIM folks have a silent auction one evening on a bunch of gear and trips, all donated to benefit conservation in the area. Monster Jimmy and I together won on a floatplane fly in to Kennebago Lake with a guide for the day on the lake and the Kennebago River. We’ve already scheduled that for mid September. We also won two nights ski-in ski-out condo with lift tickets for 4 people for two days at Saddleback.. For when the fly rods are useless….
Oh, and about “quarter turn!” mentioned in this post’s title. Monster Dean bought a new tent for this trip as his previous one just plain wore out. His new one must sleep about 18 people or close to it. It has two rooms for Pete’s sake and is best put up by two people at least. Well, Dean arrived last and set in trying to make up for lost time getting this thing up. He claimed he had set it up once at the house to familiarize himself with it before the trip. So, Jimmy and I settled down into our camp chairs with a couple of cold ones and proceeded to watch Dean thrash around with this big thing. We offered plenty of suggestions and encouragement but, after about a half hour it had not even begun to take on a shape that anyone would mistake for a tent so, we got up and decided to lend a hand.
We were all done with only the rain fly left to put on and, despite the fact it can only fit one way, there are four sides and we needed to figure out which direction to orient it on the top of the tent. One would assume that, with only four possible positions, we would by process of elimination find the correct orientation in a maximum of four tries. Each time we tried it and it was wrong, a shout went out “quarter turn!” to which we would walk around the tent a quarter turn holding the fly. “quarter turn!” rang out,.. we would rotate around the tent a quarter turn and try and install the fly. After nine or ten “quarter turn!”s we realized that, with only four possible positions, we should have found the correct one already….at least twice. We eventually got the fly on and for the remainder of the trip whenever someone did something dumb, a shout of “quarter turn!” would ring out to commemorate it.
"quarter turn!"
..more to come soon…