The boat launch at Upper Richardson Pond is spacious. Notice the low water level!
Upper Richardson Lake is a remote reservoir located off Route 16 in Richardson Township in Northern Oxford County (see The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer map 18 A2). To access this lake from Route 16, drive north in the direction of Rangeley, turn right on Mill Brook Road across from West Richardson Pond (look for the official blue boat launch sign), and drive for about 1 mile until you reach the water. The launch is spacious and provides ample parking.
A little brook trout caught by your blog author on a streamer fly high up in the water column
Upper Richardson Lake is an essentially undeveloped GORGEOUS body of water surrounded on all sides by mountains and forests. When combined with its smaller twin to the south (Lower Richardson Lake), the lake covers a total of 5,100 acres of unspoiled habitat. And because it is late September in western Maine, the leaf colors are peaking and the surrounding woods and hills are ablaze in multiple shades of reds, yellows, and oranges. It is truly a sight to behold. The lake has excellent water quality and supports a thriving salmonid fishery centered around brook trout, landlocked Atlantic salmon, and lake trout. The State stocks the first two species on an annual basis to augment their numbers. Water enters this reservoir from Mooselookmeguntic Lake to the east via Upper dam and exits Upper Richardson Lake at Middle Dam as the Rapid River. The annual fall draw down, combined with the severe drought conditions of the last two months, are clearly visible: the bouldery shoreline is fully exposed and it looks like the water level is down by about 4 or 5 feet. General fishing laws apply, except that the daily bag limit on brook trout is 2 fish with a minimum length limit of 10 inches, and only 1 brookie may exceed 12 inches. The lake is also closed to ice fishing. The maximum and mean depths are 108 ft and 44 ft, respectively. Click here for a depth map and more fisheries information.
We were surprised to catch this little landlocked salmon close to the shore in about 10 ft of water.
My son Joel and I arrive at the boat launch at 10 am. OMG, it is a beehive of activity down here! About a dozen anglers are fishing a small bay just to the left of the launch formed where Mill Brook (the outlet of Peppernot Pond located further upstream) enters Upper Richardson Lake. It is the last weekend of open-water fishing in western Maine and they’re hoping to catch a salmon or trout swimming up the brook to spawn. We talk to two guys walking back to their car who tell us that the fishing at the outlet was lousy because little or no water is flowing down the brook on account of the drought. But this great intel is golden and will be remembered for future use. We take off at 10:30 am with the goal of trolling the upper half of the upper lake. We have to motor quite a ways out before reaching deeper water (> 40 ft). The weather this morning is beautiful, and is actually too “nice” for trolling. Partial sunshine, light wind, and 69°F (the surface water temperature is 62°F). We deploy our lures (various spoons and one- or two-hook streamer flies) from 5 to 30 ft below the surface using portable downriggers teamed up with medium-action spinning rods and lead-core line teamed up with our 8-weight fly fishing rods. Over the next hour and a half, Joel and I each succeed in catching one small (about 10″) brook trout near the surface. We are totally underwhelmed by these results and decide to try our luck closer to shore.
We just couldn’t catch any salmonids of decent size today…
The new tactic is to motor along the shoreline over about 10 ft of water to see if we can scare up a fish hiding in the structure below. We eliminate the downriggers to avoid getting the weights stuck on the bottom. Joel fishes right below the surface and I use lead core to place my streamer flies half-way down the water column. Fishing so close to the shoreline really highlights the tremendous, but now exposed, trout habitat that would be present if the lake were full, consisting of an endless number of cobbles and large boulders. We are impressed with the structure but the fish do not seem to want to play. We keep on chugging along when Joel suddenly hooks a small trout to great acclaim. It is not much of a fish but lifts our spirits. As he is reeling in his catch, I get a much stronger hit! Great, we just double-hooked! To our surprise, I caught a 14″ landlocked salmon which puts up a spirited fight. We turn the boat around to re-troll this stretch of shoreline (always a good strategy). Within minutes, Joel hooks into another fish which he declares to be the biggest brookie of the day. The fish fights doggedly and takes several runs before breaching the surface and announcing itself as a 15-inch “triple F” (fucking fallfish)!! It’s the biggest fish of the day al right, but we did not come all the way here to catch fat chubs. We get a good laugh out of this one. Unfortunately, the time has come to return to the launch in order to drive to our next fishing target.
Upper Richardson Lake is a big beautiful body of water!
The results: We caught 3 brook trout (all about 10”) and 1 landlocked salmon (14″) in 2.5 hours of fun fishing.
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