Gillies and Fallon Guide Service
207-389-2300
824 Main Road
Phippsburg, ME 04562
First Impressions:
My friend Tim and I went striper fishing with a fly rod for the first time in August of 2004. Our day began on the Kennebec River with Captain Peter Fallon of Gillies and Fallon Guide Service.
As I neared the dock, all I could see was this small, old beat up boat. This made me kind of nervous but as I got closer to the dock, I was pleasantly relieved to see his 20' Lund Alaskan center console, powered by a 100-hp Yamaha four-stroke.
Peter was all smiles and happy to see us. We put our equipment on the boat and he instantly went to work putting things away. He also went through his safety routine showing us where everything was in case of an emergency. Peter was very organized and stayed that way all day.
Peter's "office" is incredible! The area is very beautiful with the high cliffs and rocky shore. There are beautiful homes and old fishing boats everywhere. When you imagine Maine's coastline, this is it. There was an old fort from the Civil War at the mouth of the Kennebec where we fished.
Peter took us into a small bay where the tide was going out. As he drifted us into the bay we saw a shadow in the water. It was a small sturgeon slowly swimming off. The water was beautiful, clear and pure. The bottom of the ocean was all sand.
A guide's goal is to show you a good time and put you onto fish. Peter did just that. I was able to land a nice striper of 24 inches and lost a couple. I also foul hooked a small flounder, which was a big surprise.
You could see it in Peter's face; he wanted to put us onto even more fish. However, it was 9:30 pm and although he just didn't want to quit, it was late and we had a long ride home. This was a day well spent and we look forward to going out with Peter again this season.
Who They Are:
Background
As a kid, I spent every day of the summer on the ocean, whether I was surfcasting in Nantucket and sailing with my father or catching flounder and smelt with my grandfather's friends. In high school and college, I worked as Mate and then Captain of a 48' Egg Harbor sport fishing boat and, by 1986, I had earned my U.S. Coast Guard Captain's license. On the Egg Harbor, I took the boat owners and their guests fishing for blues, stripers and bonito from Boston to Nantucket. At the time, my family owned a 20' center console that I also fished from Cape Ann to Newport. My first introduction to fly-fishing was in 1985, when I brought a fly rod to Florida; I didn't know what I was doing and my guide thought I was wasting my time trying to catch a redfish with "that thing."
Fly-Fishing with a Job
In 1988, I worked on a farm in New Zealand in exchange for room and board. The fellow I stayed with was a guide and an "All-Black" a member of the New Zealand National Fly Fishing Team competing at world championships and he took me to catch my first brown and rainbow trout. A year later, in college at Umaine, Orono, my housemate was a guy who taught himself to identify every aquatic insect in the Deerfield River by its scientific name when he was 12 years old. He and another friend got me officially hooked on fly-fishing and tying flies. We spent many days and nights on the West Branch drifting quill flies for salmon. I managed to concoct some awful creations at the tying bench. For graduation, my folks gave me a Sage RPL 5 wt. I spent the following summer catching stripers in Massachusetts and on the Kennebec. My first fish fell for a Mickey Finn. That year, I worked as a stern man on a lobster/tuna boat out of Cundy's Harbor and paid off my debt to UMaine thanks to a few blue fin tuna.
Eventually, I got my father interested in fly-fishing. We went to schools at LL Bean and Orvis where my father and I had a great time. Soon we started traveling to fish in Florida, Labrador and the Bahamas. We're headed to Ireland this spring in search of salmon.
In 1993, I started working with my guiding partner, Gordon Gillies, at Hebron Academy to help build and teach an outdoor-education program for students in grades 6 through 12. The program combined such traditional skills as canoeing, map and compass, leadership, first aid and axemanship, with forestry and farming. We led many canoeing, backpacking, and winter-camping trips for students and faculty. At that time, I crafted for 11th and 12th graders my own Environmental Science curriculum that included a trimester focused on natural-resource management in which we used John Cole's Striper as one of our texts. I also coached skiing and lacrosse. Running the boys dorm at Hebron had me up late most nights, which gave me plenty of time to tie. It was the best job I could imagine, in part because the school calendar allowed me ample opportunity to fly-fish.
In the mid ´90s, I bought an 18' Lund Alaskan and spent most summer days and nights fishing up and down the Kennebec-sort of the coastal version of trout bumming. For spring break, I would trailer the boat down to the Everglades and Keys or spend the three weeks in the Bahamas. As my friends started getting married, I needed to find a summer base-camp and eventually I landed in Phippsburg on the Kennebec River.
After a few years at Hebron, I successfully worked my way up to becoming Dean of Students a job that had me inside almost all of the time. I enjoyed the work but I missed teaching people about the outdoors. I needed to spend more time with my dogs and less time on the phone. Gordon Gillies and I partnered up to launch our guide service; I quit my job; and I bought a travel-trailer and spent four months chasing birds from Montana to Arizona.
Fly Fishing as a Job
I currently guide out of a 20' Lund Alaskan center console, powered by a 100-hp Yamaha four-stroke. The boat offers a clean layout for fly-line-friendly casting with good space in the bow and a raised casting platform in the stern. Twin trolling motors on the lower unit of the engine offer smooth and quiet control in wind and current.
My business partner, Gordon Gillies, was born and raised on the Kennebec River and has been a Registered Maine Guide for many years. He is a former lawyer and retired Coast Guard officer. He currently teaches English in the "off-season". He is passionate about the history of this watershed. Gordon and I have a blast working together: sharing observations at the end of a charter; prospecting new waters; tying flies on snowy Sundays in February; figuring new methods for teaching the double haul.
The Kennebec River offers an amazing variety of productive water to fish. Endless ledges, coves, mudflats, and marshes combine with great water flow and ample bait to create a great bass habitat. Oceanside sand beaches and flats provide fun sight casting when the weather cooperates. Rocky points and islands can produce seductive whitewater. When the wind blows we have lots of places to "run and hide." From where I launch the boat it is a quick trip to the Sasanoa, Sheepscot or Back River. On busy weekends in July I can find solitude on the New Meadows River and it is only five minutes from my house.
Sight-casting to fish in clear skinny water remains my favorite fishing activity. We have some good opportunities to sight-cast for stripers here in Maine. When the wind is down and the sun is up, sandy-bottom bays and beaches can produce good opportunities to spot bass cruising the shallows. Catching 20" bass this way can be a blast and, often enough, the targets are much larger fish. At times, stripers on the flats are a more challenging quarry than bonefish. The bones do the vast majority of their feeding in this environment. The stripers have lots of other choices for feeding opportunities and can get very finicky and selective. "Matching the hatch" can be more important in Maine than in the Bahamas.
I prefer to start a trip fishing BIG flies tied to imitate mackerel, pollack, herring, squid, eels or pogies. A large offering attached to a heavy line fished with great patience in moving water is the most consistent way that I am able to fool big bass. I will move away from the whopper flies when the fish dictate by matching sand eels, shrimp, small green crabs and juvie flounder with some comparably small patterns. This can be especially important in clear water and up on the flats. Nothing is more satisfying than decoding the slurping sounds of night-feeding striped bass when they will only hit a dead-drifted size-2 shrimp fly after refusing every piece of hardware in the spinning tackle boxes. Large schools of juvenile baitfish (pogies, alewives and herring) are in and around the river during parts of the season, especially in the fall. The smallish patterns that imitate this prey are perfectly matched to a six or seven weight rod on a windless day.
I usually catch my first striper here in the Kennebec River between the 15th and 20th of May. Last year's first fish came on the 19th. There are some large females that show up early in the migration, but usually the vast majority of fish that we catch in the lower river for the first week or two are small - 22 inches and under. The last five or so years, we have seen a good push of larger fish come into the river right at the beginning of June. I have log entries from June 2nd and 3rd from past years noting catches of fish 35" long. Last season did not match this trend. It was a slow start all the way around, with the fish over 23" not showing in significant numbers until mid June. Some people attributed this delay to our slow to warm water temps. Others felt that an abundance of big bait off the Massachusetts coast held up the usual migration progress. My guess is that it was a combination of both, along with other factors that we don't recognize. We catch a few bluefish in late June, but they are more consistent once the waters warm up in July and August. Each of the last three seasons has been progressively better for blues here in mid-coast Maine. Some folks turn their noses up at chasing blues, but they are a heck of good fighting fish, especially the ones over ten pounds. Watching someone strip a crease fly through a pod of blues busting bait and seeing their expression as the reel starts to sing is worth losing a few flies. Our fall fishing can be outstanding. The stripers and blues are consuming calories in anticipation of their migration south. The clouds of bait can be so dense that casting into the "dark water" results in a hook fouled with bait on the first strip. The baitfish seeks shelter in the shallow waters of coves and flats, making for some fabulous sight casting fun. There are few other anglers out on the water in September and October, but I don't complain.
Lately, I've been spending more time chasing school blue fin tuna with heavy-duty spinning and fly gear. I find myself afflicted by tuna fever. I have yet to get one of these fish to eat my fly, but I have had my chances. The 14- and 15-weight rods are easier to cast than you might expect. Tying tuna flies has become another winter obsession and I enjoy learning more about rigging for big game. Every fall I spend more and more of my free time south of Cape Cod, chasing false albacore and bonito.
I will admit to chucking hardware with more frequency in the past two years. It is an efficient way to cover the water when I'm prospecting for the next charter. Bouncing jigs off the bottom or live-lining a mackerel around the rocks can lead to many discoveries, even if my dad says I'm cheating. I've also been experimenting by applying fly-tying techniques to make jigs that imitate herring, pollack, sand eels and lobsters.
I love teaching people to fly-cast, read the water, tie knots or run a boat. Whether with friends or clients, it's just as satisfying for me to put them onto fish as it is to catch them myself. I'm not sure if I prefer talking gear with a fellow guide or teaching a twelve-year-old to cast a spinning rod. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to take guests out on such an amazing stretch of water. Every day that I run up and down the Kennebec I am struck by how beautiful it is and even on the slow days there is no place I'd rather be fishing.
Capt. Peter Fallon