Look for this sign on the Park Tote Road for the trail to Round Pond.
Round Pond (a.k.a. Caverly Pond) is located in the southern portion of Baxter State Park (BSP) in Piscataquis County, Maine (see The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer map 51 D1). To reach this location, drive 1.1 miles on the Park Tote Road from Togue Pond Gate, the southern entrance to the park. Look for the brown “Kettle Ponds Trail” sign on your right. Very limited parking is available on the road shoulder. The pond is located about 600 ft. down a well-maintained trail. One can rent a locked BSP canoe at the put-in for 1$ per hour. Talk to the Togue Pond gate attendant to obtain the keys, if interested. I do not require this option because I brought my own craft. I do note that the BSP canoe does not have swimming vests or paddles, which the user needs to provide.
A pretty view of Round Pond from the put-in.
Round Pond is one of a dozen and a half beautiful and unspoiled ponds that dot this portion of BSP. Unlike most water bodies in this area of the park, this one does not contain a self-sustaining brook trout population and instead is stocked each fall with 250 small (5″ or 6″) brookies. The water is slightly tea colored. By the end of the summer, the shallow (< 8 ft.) edges of the shoreline support a lot of submerged aquatic vegetation. The fishing rules are strict, as follows: closed to ice fishing, use of live bait is prohibited, motor boats are not allowed, artificial lures only, a daily bag limit of two trout, and minimum keeper size of 6 inches. The pond has an average and maximum depth of 8 ft. and 19 ft., respectively. Click here for a depth map.
I don’t have much to show for all my efforts this morning…
I arrive at the trailhead for Round Pond by 6:15 am and paddle off with my canoe 20 minutes later. The air temperature is 45°F and the surface water temperature is a surprisingly cool 57°F, when one considers that summer ended only two days ago! I do not get the hoped-for royal visual treatment because clouds envelop Mount Katahdin and I can only see nearby Abol Mountain. On the other hand, and thanks to Hurricane Fiona working its way up the eastern seaboard, the wind is bad, even on this tiny pond, with occasional 40 MPH gusts. My usual strategy when fishing for trout in a canoe early in the morning is to cross two rods between my legs. My 8-weight fly fishing rod fishes two lures at depth using lead core line, whereas my ultralight spinning rod and small reel fishes two additional lures a foot or two below the surface weighed down by a couple of split shots. I place the lures on the lead core line only one full color down (about 6 ft. below the surface) because the water is cool and the light levels are still relatively low this early in the morning. My trusted trout lures of choice are 2-inch ACME Phoebe spoons and 1 and 1/4 inch ACME Thunderbolt spoons. I also use my portable depth finder to remain over water 10 ft. or deeper in order to avoid entangling my lures with the aquatic vegetation. I suspect that this vegetation would be less of an issue in the spring.
These big boulders make for a nice shoreline.
I start the proceedings by casting out the two surface lures. The rod starts shaking when I am still releasing the lead core line on the second rod. Boy, this fish could not wait to hook itself! I bring in an 8-inch brookie, presumably one of last year’s stocked fish. The action is slow and the paddling is tough. Moving downwind is a breeze (pun intended!), but turning the canoe into the wind takes a lot of arm juice. The wind constantly blows me off course into the shallow vegetation during the turning process, which is quite frustrating. It requires bringing the lures in, removing plant fragments, and paddling upwind first before resetting the lines while being pushed back downwind. I catch four 8-inchers after two hours of huffing and puffing. That is not much to show for all my efforts. I suspect that larger trout are hiding deeper in the water column. Under normal circumstances, I would go look for them by placing my lures on the lead core line two colors (about 12 ft.) down. However, the area of deeper water in Round Pond is quite restricted (maybe three acres) and the harsh wind prevents me from making the required sharp turns to stay over the deeper water without entangling my lures with the bottom or the plants. It is now 8:30 am; I am hungry and my arms are tired from the hard paddling. I call it good. Let me end by saying that this would be a fun little pond to fly fish or spinner fish in the evening from mid- May into late-June when conditions are more angler friendly. I am sure that we will meet again in the future!
The results: I caught 4 tiny brook trout (all about 8 inches) in 2 hours of frustrating fishing action.
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