Early-morning view of pretty Pinkham Pond from Bog Road.
Pinkham Pond is a 21-acre body of water located in Alna, Lincoln County, Maine (see The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer map 13 E1). The public access to the pond is located at its southern tip, right besides Bog Road. Parking is along the shoulder of the road. It would be best not to leave your vehicle at the nearby fire truck water intake as that might potentially result in a ticket or a tow.
I was glad to catch this trout soon after starting to fish this morning
Pinkham Pond is a pretty little lake. Surprisingly, given its close proximity to the Augusta metro area, this water body is largely undeveloped, with only three houses on its western shore and none along its eastern shore. The surface water is crystal clear and the surrounding landscape is forested. Fortunately, Bog Road is not a main artery and its occasional local traffic does not impinge on the general quietness of the place. I am attracted to this location this morning because the state stocked it with 400 13-inch brook trout earlier this fall. That represents a respectable stocking rate of 12 one-pound trout per acre, which definitely gets my attention. The pond has a maximum and average depth of 14 ft and 9 ft, respectively, making it relatively shallow. Click here for a depth map and more fisheries information. General fishing law for the South Zone applies, even during the fall fishing season, meaning that brook trout can be caught using all legal means, and can be kept under the applicable daily bag limit rule.
It’s great fun catching these larger trout so late in the fall while wading along the shoreline !
I pull in at 8 am. It is a cold (33°F) but wind-still and sunny late-fall morning. No one else is there. I layer up with warm clothes, don my waders, and quickly enter the water. That water, which feels ice-cold to the touch, must be in the high 30’s to low 40’s, max. I am fishing with my usual set-up: an ultra-light spinning rod, a small spinning reel spooled with 6 pound test line, and a #2 Mepps spinner. It is a great combination for the kind of fishing I do this morning, i.e., slowly wading knee-deep along the shoreline while casting my lure out into the deeper water. Note that I cut off the third hook of the treble and flatten the barb on one of the two remaining hooks to facilitate lure removal and minimize damage to the fish. I notice that the substrate consists of a firm layer of fine sand, overlain by 2″ to 10″ of organic muck, which loves to suck in my wader boots! I start casting right by the road and am pleasantly surprised to hook and land a 13″ brookie five minutes after starting. Great, the fish are there! I stay at that exact spot for the next 20 minutes and land another four one-pound brook trout. I love it when the fish read the memo and follow the plan!!
A wonderful way to end my morning on Pinkham Pond
The bite stops, presumably in response to all the commotion associated with me hooking and retrieving five trout in short order, and then another angler pulls up next to the pond. I decide to move away and slowly wade my way up the western shoreline for several 100 ft, all the while casting and retrieving my spinner. I don’t get a single bite in the next 45 minutes… The new angler fishes in the same general area where I was casting earlier in the morning, but leaves without catching a thing. I walk back to where I started and give myself 20 casts before calling it good. My two feet feel like ice blocks and I need to warm them up soon. By cast 18, I catch a furtive glimpse of movement in the corner of my eye about 30 ft to my left in 3-4 ft of water. OMG, I see about half a dozen male brookies circling each other over a patch of clean sand. I cannot resist the urge to cast the spinner a little ways past the group and slowly retrieving it right through the frolicking fish. True to form, one of them lurches forward, grabs the lure, and gets hooked! It does not get more exciting than this kind of sight fishing! Unfortunately, his teammates do not fall for the trick, so I let them be and I leave a happy angler but with mighty-cold feet!
The results: I caught five 13″ brook trout in 1.5 hours of fun fishing.
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