2025 Recap
2025 absolutely flew by. Fishing started slow on the rivers with lots of rain and high water made it harder to find pockets of trout. Luckily the turkey hunting was great and we had another very successful season harvesting lots of big, mature toms on some extremely exciting hunts.
As we transitioned into bass fishing and the lakes in late May the fishing started off slower than usual but when it got good it stayed good all summer long. I spent a good bit of time dialing in my larger boat, figuring out how it ran and how I wanted to deck out the boat. The biggest additions were I added a 9” Garmin fish finder decked out with side vu and clear vu, and I put a new Minn Kota Terrova Instinct Quest on the bow of the boat. Having the quieter more powerful trolling motor was a huge upgrade from the power drive that I had on my smaller boat. The biggest upgrade was having spot lock which was a huge help once striper season arrived and for staying on beds or fishing in windy conditions while bass fishing. I also used the drift and Jog features a good bit and there are plenty of features that I haven’t gotten to yet.
As June arrived the anticipation of Striper fishing was huge after an extremely successful 2024 season. I fished most of June with very little sign of striper or bait but the water was colder and I knew at some point when the warm water finally pushed north we would get into the fish it would just end up being a little later then previous years. The fishing didn’t really pick up until the end of June. The fish were acting different then in previous years, we were marking tons on the fish finder along with seeing fish in the shallows but the water was still colder then normal. This seemed to be the trend for the entire summer. We had fish in the bay in solid numbers and we could find fish all summer but they were acting slow or lethargic.
I think with the colder water they weren’t opportunistically feeding as they normally would when they would just eat whenever something presented itself infant of them. They would only feed in bite windows. This would be evident when you would be in and around fish for hours and a switch would flip and they would eat like crazy for 30-45 minutes and then it would just shut off, the fish would still be there but they just weren't eating. All summer it was really a game of just being in the right place at the right time for the bite windows and every once in a while catching a few random bites.
The slower fishing made us learn and adapt and figure out different tactics to be successful, even though we didn’t have the huge numbers of striped bass landed as we had the previous year we still boated a lot of great fish including a bunch in the upper 30s but we weren’t able to break 40”. I am hopeful that the 2026 season brings warmer water and the fishing bounces back strong but no matter what we will figure the fish out and stay after them.
All that being said with the slower saltwater fishing the freshwater fishing stayed hot all summer long with a lot of 40+ fish days and lots of big fish including two 5lb+ bass boated later in the summer while fishing drop offs. So we will definitely be keeping busy on both the fresh and the saltwater moving into the 2026 season.
Although my plan was to keep both my boats and run the polarkraft for freshwater and the alumacraft for saltwater I found myself always running the alumacraft as It was bigger and could take more people and had the newer feature rich trolling motor and fish finder. The Polarkraft ended up just sitting for the majority of the year so I made the decision to sell it. Tons of memories on that boat and thousands of fish boated over the 5 years I owned it, the boat that I started my business with but with growth comes change and this bigger boat is proving to be a good investment with the added space.
Wrapping up 2025 I Guided two successful moose hunts for the 4th year in a row keeping me at 100% success rate and during the October season I guided my clients to my biggest guided bull at 50.5” a true north Maine woods monarch. Fishing wise we finished the year at 573 fish over 171hrs coming in a little under our goal of 600 fish and 200hrs so that’s what we are going to shoot for in 2026.
I hope to see you on the water.