Moving to Maine in 2007 was a big step, having lived abroad for many years. We were excited by the natural beauty and recreational opportunities around us. I was keen to learn about fishing the myriad lakes, ponds and streams in this lightly populated state. I found a few friendly souls through volunteer work with conservation groups, but fishermen can be close-mouthed about their favorite fishing holes and secret techniques.

In any new location you will encounter vocabulary that might leave you temporarily dazed and confused. Maine hunters look forward to October 1st each year to enjoy the pursuit for the partridge, the popular name for the ruffed grouse. Got it. A popular target for fly fishermen is the so-called square tail, which I learned is a brook trout. But I kept hearing guys talking about the big togue they were catching through the ice. Finally, I had to ask, what is a togue?

In the Finger Lakes region of NY that I call home, we use the proper name, lake trout or just laker (Salvelinus namaycush). I have also heard Mainers refer to the fish as the gray trout or the mackinaw. Anything to confuse folks from away, I guess. No matter the name, this is a native species and the largest freshwater fish in the state. Northern pike and muskellunge can reach 30 pounds in Maine but they are not natives, introduced in the 1970s to Maine and Quebec, respectively. These species are now considered invasive and can negatively impact highly valued native species like brook trout and landlocked salmon.

In fact, the lake trout is not a trout at all, but a member of the char family, which just adds to the confusion spawned by fishermen. The brook trout falls in the same family, as does the increasingly rare blueback trout, more properly known as the Arctic char. Lake trout are distinguished by a deeply forked tail and creamy white spots on a dark background of bronze, green, or gray, depending upon age, diet, genetics and the time of year.

This fish is an apex predator perfectly adapted to Maine’s deep, cold, and low-nutrient (oligotrophic) lakes. Their preferred water temperature range is 55–60°F, so you will find them on or near the surface of lakes only during winter months or right before and after ice-out when they are easier to catch than during the summer. They are primarily deep-dwellers in warmer months, often found at depths exceeding 45 feet and have been recorded as deep as 300 feet in some Maine waters. Because they require high levels of dissolved oxygen in cold water, they are restricted to the state’s most pristine, deep-water lakes.

In their first few years, lake trout exist on zooplankton, insects, and small crustaceans. After they reach roughly 8 to 10 inches in length, the fish become opportunistic piscivores, preying generally on other fish species. In Maine, their preferred forage includes smelt, whitefish, suckers, perch, minnows, and unfortunately, landlocked salmon. The laker is also a cannibal, happy to prey upon smaller fish of its own species.

Lakers spawn in the autumn, in Maine typically from mid-October to mid-November. Unlike others in the Salmonid family, the females do not dig nests (called redds) with their tail in the loose gravel of a stream. Instead, they congregate at night over shallow, rocky shoals or wave-swept shorelines, where eggs are fertilized and deposited in the protective crevices of boulders and rubble. Tracking tagged fish has confirmed that, like most Salmonids, lake trout return to the same spawning grounds each year.

Males are capable of fertilizing eggs each year, but females are known to spawn every two or three years because producing thousands of eggs is an energy intensive process. The eggs rest over the winter months and hatch in late winter or early spring. Other fish species will consume the eggs where possible. Mature lake trout have few natural predators other than humans as long as they avoid exposing themselves in shallow water to Bald Eagles, Ospreys or river otters. In the Great Lakes, invasive sea lampreys will attach themselves to lake trout, but that is not a big problem in Maine’s deep lakes.

Due to genetics and a slower metabolism, lake trout have much longer life spans than other trout and char, up to 20 years in Maine, and large specimens in northern Canada were estimated to be as much as 70 years old. This allows them to reach epic proportions for a freshwater species with the current Maine record at 39.2 pounds, from Richardson Lake. The world record fish from Alaska topped 102 pounds.

Maine’s history of fish stocking goes back to 1895, one of the first programs in the US. By the 1930s and 1940s, over a million lakers were stocked annually but this was executed without much scientific input and most of the tiny fry were eaten by predators. As with many other fish species, some of the stocking was indiscriminate, resulting in significant damage to less aggressive species in small bodies of water. Maine now manages 30 waters as “wild” lake trout resources that have never been stocked. In other lakes, maintenance stocking is used to supplement natural reproduction to meet public demands for good fishing.

Since the 1930s, Maine has used planes to stock remote backcountry ponds, a program that continues today using small high-wing aircraft equipped with specially designed oxygenated tanks. Maine also produces a hybrid cross between a male brook trout and a female lake trout, known as a splake, designed to provide fast-growing fishing opportunities in waters where pure lake trout or brook trout may struggle to thrive. The splake is a rare hybrid that is genetically capable of reproducing but it requires very specific conditions and as such, is considered quite rare in the wild.

In Maine, the legal fishing season for lake trout in the southern half of the state is essentially all year long, depending upon the waters in question. There are specific regulations for the northern part of the state where most lake and pond fishing is limited to April 1 – September 30, with restrictions on the use of bait after August 15. The lake trout is an important species for those who enjoy ice fishing with bait, small spoons, or jigs. Because regulations can vary significantly by specific water body, you must refer to the state’s regulations before wetting a line.

Nearby Sebago Lake is a deep, cold-water fishery that had a historic reputation for world-class landlocked salmon. In the 1970s the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife decided that the lake could also sustain lake trout. Unfortunately, the experiment went awry as the lake trout population became self-sustaining and the smaller salmon became fodder for the ravenous lake trout. In a fly shop conversation with one of the responsible Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife biologists, he admitted the stocking program was one of the worst decisions of his long career.

Today Sebago Lake has several special regulations for lake trout that differ from Maine’s general law. Rather than the general law for lakers that has a two-fish bag limit with an 18-inch minimum length, Sebago Lake is currently managed to encourage the harvest of smaller togue to reduce competition with landlocked salmon. There is no daily bag limit on lake trout under 23 inches (just one fish over 23 inches may be harvested), and the use of live baitfish and smelt is permitted. During certain periods fishermen are required to release other trout and salmon to encourage reproduction. The special regulations for lake trout are primarily designed to protect the native landlocked salmon population by reducing competition for food and space.

The lake trout is a survivor, blessed with longevity and an ability to eat a wide range of foods. But like so many other species, they are vulnerable to habitat degradation, climate-driven changes in water temperature, and the illegal introduction of competing species like bass and pike. Today they are an important recreational species in the waters where they thrive. I am heading into the northern reaches of Canada this summer in hopes of catching not only large brook trout and northern pike, but hopefully a couple lunker lakers to round out the week!

If you like Ed Robinson’s writing, check out his two Nature Notes books! Click here for more information.