Opening Day
by Kevin McKay
April 2003

About three years ago I was in Mr. PaperBack in Ellsworth looking at fly fishing books when I came across Trout Unlimited's Guide to America's 100 Best Trout Streams. The first place I looked up was Maine. It listed a place I had never heard of, Rapid River. It described it as one of the best trout streams in the world. So this is where my quest began. I started asking people I knew and people I didn't know about this place. I came across this sight on line called: Rapid River Fly Fishing. So I contacted Aldro French about Rapid River. He told me not to bother with the trip unless I wanted to snomobile to the river. So, opening day to Rapid River was out for that year and I never made it out there during the warmer month but it was in the back of my head. The next winter I saw Carroll Ware do a presentation on fly fishing and the Rapid came up again. My dad and I talked to him after and he only knew of travelling across the lake to get to middle dam but had heard of a road to the river. So I got out my Gazeteer and started following the roads to discover the Rapid road was gated and we had to walk two miles to get to the river, but that wasn't stopping us. Opening day 2002 dad and I found ourselves on the road by 5 am heading to Rangeley in a snow storm. As the sun came up it cleared off but the road to middle dam was a maze and muddy. Just when we thought we were lost, we ran into a guy on his way there and we followed him to the river. There was hardly any water coming from the dam and the water was very low. The gentleman said this was the lowest he had ever seen it and told us about a couple of places and headed on his way. We got rigged up and walked to the water. We caught nothing but we really didn't expect to. We had found this famous place and would return many more times with hopes of landing that one fish we all dream about.