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Upper Androscoggin River
The sun breaks from the clouds and brightens the colors of everything it touches. The long grass along the water’s edge softens to pale green. The Upper Androscoggin River turns silver, with bright white ripples floating like frosting on the current.
“I got a rainbow,” a fisherman calls out. “Bring the net.”
The Androscoggin was once one of the most polluted waters in the nation, but now it’s become an angler’s dream—good fishing, gorgeous scenery and a great environmental success story.
“The water just keeps getting cleaner and the fishing just keeps getting better,” says Rocky Freda, a Bethel fishing guide.
Thanks to the Clean Water Act, outdoor writers now compare the Upper Androscoggin to the fishing meccas in the Rockies, Cascades, Adirondacks and Laurentides. It’s been featured by Gray’s Sporting Journal, Fly Rod and Reel, New England Game & Fish, ESPN’s Jimmy Houston, the Boston Globe and many outdoors websites.
Brown trout, rainbows, brookies and smallmouth bass can all be found in the 26-mile stretch from the New Hampshire border to Rumford Point. On a good day you might land an 18-inch brook trout or a brown up to 24 inches. Last year an angler landed the state record rainbow trout—24 inches, 6.52 pounds—on the Upper Andro, which boasts one of the few wild rainbow populations in Maine. The state also stocks plenty of fish, including 13,600 brown trout, 3,350 rainbows and 1,000 brook trout this spring in the 13.6-mile stretch from Gilead to Rumford alone.
As the water warms up and trout fishing slows, anglers can go after smallmouth bass up to 4 pounds. Some anglers call the stretch below Rumford the best bass fishery in Maine and some say it’s the best on the East Coast.
A few anglers are even starting to worry the Upper Andro might be getting too popular, but fishing regulations have been put in place to prevent over fishing and allow trout to grow larger. The stretch to Gilead is catch-and-release and local outfitters also are working together to insure the river doesn’t get crowded, Freda says.
“Sure, there are more people out there on weekends, but during the week you can still float down the river without seeing anyone else all day long,” he says.
Some favorite fishing spots are upstream of the bridge off Route 2 in Gilead; where the Wild River meets the Androscoggin; the boat launch in West Bethel, and Moran’s Landing, where the Bear River flows in. Two of the nicest ways to fish the Upper Andro are from a canoe or a drift boat.
For anyone with a memory stretching back more than a decade, it’s still amazing to hear the Androscoggin referred to as “destination fishery.” Amazing, but true. Fishing hasn’t been this good for about 200 years.
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