Three Days On a River Nobody Alive Has Ever Seen ...
By Doug Watts, Friends of the Kennebec Salmon, June 19, 2000.
Please file this under:
"You know it's a crappy day on the Kennebec when you take an afternoon
walk and only see four bald eagles flying, six Atlantic sturgeon leaping,
nine great blue heron fishing, ten thousand alewives spawning and no mosquitoes."
Anyways:
1. I saw leaping Atlantic sturgeon in downtown Augusta (Friday, June 16th).
Saw 8-10 jumps in a couple hours. The east side of the river just upstream
of the Father Curran Bridge is where they seem to like to jump the most.
This has been a steady pattern for at least the past four years.
2. Saw 3 sturgeon jumps in the big pool at Five Mile Island on Saturday
(6/17) at noon, just above Bacon's Rips; saw several more jumps at the boom
islands at dusk just upstream of Cives Steel where Bacon's Rips flatten
out.
3. Saw 2 sturgeon jumps at the Sidney boat launch on Sunday (6/18). Some
guy coming down from Waterville in a canoe said he saw one jump upstream.
4. Saw four immature bald eagles at Five Mile Island on Saturday; saw two
adult and one immature eagle at Six Mile Falls on Sunday.
5. At dusk on Saturday, eight great blue heron were along the big pool at
the top of Bacon's Rips, and one was sitting at the very top of a huge pine
tree. They were eating alewives.
6. This past week, I have seen fresh moose tracks on the river bank below
Six Mile Falls, below Seven Mile Stream and literally, right in front of
the main gate at the Edwards Mill site on Northern Ave. Deer and coyote
tracks are all over the shore of the river from Augusta to Six Mile Falls.
7. Killdeer and sandpipers are very numerous at Five Mile Island. They seem
to really like the gravel at that spot and squawk like crazy when you walk
on the shore. There's a patch of pink ladyslippers under the big pine trees
on Five Mile Island and a nice hard hat along the sand bar.
8. There is a male and female killdeer inside the fence of the mill site
with several little babies. They run around in the grass where the power
canal and upper turbine building used to be. There's also a bubbling spring
in the mud bar along the river just above where the upper turbines were.
9. The big boom islands around Five Mile Island are really ugly. It's almost
impossible to get a scenic photo of the river there without those stupid
things blocking the view. Too bad the Army folks up at East Machias couldn't
blow these things up as a training exercise. The stones that fill the timber
crib were all pulled from the river.
10. On Saturday, the river from the top of Bacon's Rips to the mouth of
Seven Mile Stream (about two miles, mostly very slow current) was filled
with spawning alewives in mid-channel. Their splashing and thrashing made
a pretty big commotion and noise. River herring (not sure which species)
are also spawning now in significant numbers at the Edwards Dam site in
very shallow, flowing water (bluebacks, perhaps).
11. Stripers were feeding on herring in mid-channel at the big pool at Five
Mile Island on Saturday and at mid-channel a mile above the Sidney boat
landing on Sunday.
12. Saw what appeared to be two Atlantic salmon jumping at the railroad
trestle in Augusta on Friday on the rising tide. Too small to be sturgeon,
too big to be anything else. Too far out to get a good look.
13. Sea lamprey are spawning from Ticonic Falls to Augusta. In spots they
have completely dug up the riverbed in patches as big as a car. I have never
seen so many lamprey nests below the dam site Augusta as this year, which
is ironic, since the lampreys now have full access to the river. For whatever
reason, we have a BIG run of sea lamprey this year. A funny thing, when
sea lampreys are done spawning they will come up to the surface and poke
their heads out of the water and look around like little submarine periscopes.
14. On Sunday, I caught a striper in heavy current at the tail of first
gravel bar island above Sidney boat launch. While this was really cool,
something else made it the coolest. This striper wasn't even 12 inches long.
It was maybe 11 inches. If this wasn't a native, juvenile Kennebec striper
I will clean my car.
15. Also on Sunday, caught two brown trout at Six Mile Falls and saw quite
a few jumping. This is a first for me, at least. I did not catch, nor hear
of a trout being caught there last year.
16. A big stonefly (2 inches long) landed on my arm below Six Mile Falls
on Sunday. These critters must have cool, swift-flowing and very highly
oxygenated water to survive, in fact, if you put them in a fish tank with
an air pump, etc. the nymphs will still die in a few hours.
17. The main ledge drops at Six Mile Falls have changed markedly since
last fall, with much more current going over the final drop on the west
side of the river compared to last fall. The banks have been scoured a lot
in and below the falls, exposing ledges that were buried in silt last year.
The large deposit of gravel and cobble at the foot of last drop at Six Mile
Falls is gone and the flow is much stronger and the channel much deeper.
There is a huge amount of sand and peastone in the channel that is moving
downstream a few hundred yards or a half mile at a time. This part of the
river is going to change a lot in the next few years. In general, any part
of the bank that is not ledge, boulder, cobble sand or blue clay will probably
be gone in a few years. If the bank is soft silt or studded with the ends
of pulpwood, it will be gone. These areas are all artifacts of the dam impoundment
and will be scoured further down to hard stuff with each spring flood. This
is already very obvious at Six Mile Falls. The spot where I camped last
Labor Day at Six Mile Falls is now almost underwater because the bank has
been chewed away by 5 feet or so.
18. On Thursday, I saw (and almost ran over) a 3 foot long milk snake on
the dirt road next to the Edwards dam site. About ten seconds later, I saw
a Baltimore oriole sitting on the chain-link fence.
19. On Sunday, after the rain started, I almost hit a big toad that was
crossing the road toward the river at Goff Brook in Sidney. It was safely
"trap and trucked" to the river side of the road.
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