10 . Sebasticook River (bass)

       Location: Central Maine, about a 1-hour ride from Bangor, a 2-hour ride from Portland; a 3½-hour ride from Boston, Massachusetts; and a 3½-hour ride from Manchester, New Hampshire. Full-service airports are available in all four cities.

      “For years I’ve fished for smallmouth bass in Maine’s

      ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers. My all-time favorite

      is the Sebasticook River—I try to go back every year.”

      — Lefty Kreh

      From its humble beginnings at Great Moose Pond in the central Maine town of North Dexter, the Sebasticook River makes a slow and lazy course roughly 45 miles through the small towns of Burnham, Pittsfield, and Benton, before terminating at the Kennebec River at historic Fort Halifax in

      Winslow. Its tannic waters transition from shallow riffles, deep pools, and small impoundments, as it drains approximately 985 square miles of low-lying forests, swamps, and farmland. A hydroelectric station located on the lower end of the river at Benton Falls is the only dam left between there and the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 60 miles away.

      While the Sebasticook River may not be as well-known as many waters in this book, it has a much deeper history in regard to fishing than most could ever imagine. In fact, the river is the site of the oldest known fish weir in North America. This submerged wooden structure predates the pyramids of Egypt.

      The Sebasticook River was in the national news when the Fort

      Halifax Dam in Winslow became the second dam in Maine to be slated for removal in support of fish passage. As part of a 50-year relicensing agreement, the owners of the 492-foot-wide, 29-foot-high, early 20th century hydroelectric dam were required to provide safe passage through the dam for anadromous fish such as American shad, alewives,

      blueback herring, striped bass, sturgeon, and endangered Atlantic salmon. However, because of the dam’s marginal electricity generation capacity, they chose to remove the structure rather than install a costly fish ladder. After a short court battle involving impoundment shorefront owners who were opposed to its removal, the dam was finally breached in July 2008. This marked the first time in 170 years that fish had unobstructed access from the Atlantic Ocean to the town of Benton.

      My first experience with the Sebasticook came late one summer in the mid-1980s while I was driving back to college. Armed with a fiberglass fly rod, Pflueger Medalist reel, a pair of shorts with the pockets full of deer-hair poppers, and an old pair of wading sneakers, I hooked and lost more hard-fighting, acrobatic smallmouth bass than I was able to land. From that day on, I became enamored

      Slow water section. King Montgomery

      with the Sebasticook’s high numbers of large fish and the fast fishing action. I spent the rest of that fishing season migrating between college classes and the river—while exploring every foot of its dark waters. This river was one of the reasons that my college career took 5½ years as opposed to the planned 4 years.