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Date: April 15, 2024 Body of Water: Upper Range Pond - Poland, Maine Boat: amybaby22 With: A! Target: Trout Time: 9 AM - 12:30 PM Moon Phase: Waxing quarter moon Conditions: Clear and bright; calm to mild southerly breeze < 10 mph; 50 - 60 degrees. Water temperatures 44 - 46 degrees F (+/-); very clear water. With the day off (Massachusetts and Maine both celebrate Patriots Day!), A and I arrived at a quiet ramp just before 9 AM. It was great to have some help launching the boat, and we were soon setting our first line near a rocky reef along the lake's northeastern shoreline. It was sunny, calm and peaceful; a great way to start the third day of our long weekend. I'd just placed an orange Thomas Eel 150 feet behind the boat and placed the rod in the holder when it bucked heavily and the drag slipped aggressively. A kept both her calm and the rod bent, and a few minutes later I scooped up a beautiful, 19-inch rainbow. Nice! I turned the boat around to reset lines over this same water, and this time I was able to set all three without interruption. With some eating fish obviously high in the water column, I offered the following: top-lined small orange Thomas Eel 150 feet back; orange and black DB Smelt off two colors of lead; and an emerald shiner DB Smelt spoon off a single color of lead. I deferred on adding a fourth presentation to avoid tangles and provide a more relaxing trip for A and myself. Targeted speed was 2.0 - 2.2, but I bumped between 1.6 and 2.5 mph while also adding many twists and turns to activate our lures. We continued our search through known productive waters, focusing on about 20 feet of water adjacent to rock structures. Nothing happened for a half hour or so. Instead of continuing along the shoreline break, I turned towards the main basin with the intent of searching that while returning to our original starting point for more of the same; it had worked the previous two days, after all! The boat had just touched 38 feet of water when the top-line rod bent over again; A landed her limit rainbow (it was released, of course), a cute 14-incher. I circled around and re-set lines, and now the rod with two colors of lead jumped, hard! After the apparent swing-and-miss, the fish came back almost immediately and buckled the rod over. I was hooked up with a tenacious brown trout that surprised me with its modest size (16 inches or so) when it hit the net. This fish and a subsequent pair of hard strikes on this same set-up kept us in the area for a while as I bounced between about 20 and 40 feet of water. A couple of rocky hillocks provided some interesting structure in this basin area, too, and in my mind provided another reason for the fish to be concentrated here. When the action had obviously slowed, I picked up lines and ran to the lake's south end. We completed our day with a leisurely troll along the lakes western shoreline and adjacent basin, all the way through my favored inside turn at the north end. Despite changing everything up and rotating through a bunch of spoons (while also maintaining the same basic presentations), I could find no other biters. By 12:30 PM we were hauling the boat, on our way to a nice lunch at Pineland Farms! Pondering the questions of core essence and finding meaning in unexpected ways
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