Moosehead Lake Outlet
This is the upper Kennebec River, just below its birthplace at the
outlet of Moosehead Lake. Moosehead is just beyond the railroad bridge.
Moosehead is Maine's largest lake. Sebago is Maine's second largest lake.
Like Sebago Lake, the outlet of Moosehead Lake has a dam to control
downstream flows and lake levels.
Like Sebago Lake, Moosehead Lake has a large population of lake-dwelling
Atlantic salmon which attract thousands of anglers to the lake each year.
Like Sebago Lake's outlet, the upper Presumpscot, Moosehead's
outlet, the upper Kennebec, is a very popular destination for trout and
salmon anglers.
But unlike Sebago Lake, Moosehead Lake has a working fishway
for landlocked salmon at its outlet, operated for decades by the Maine Department
of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife.
Salmon and trout can move freely between Moosehead Lake and upper
Kennebec
Salmon and trout are barred from moving between Sebago and the upper Presumpscot.
The Moosehead Lake Outlet fishway is operated specifically to
allow adult landlocked salmon from Moosehead Lake to drop down into the
Kennebec River to spawn; to allow wild, juvenile salmon from the river to
enter Moosehead Lake to grow to adulthood.
Years of study by state fisheries biologists indicate that nearly
all adult salmon which drop out of Moosehead Lake to spawn in the upper
Kennebec return to the lake within a year after spawning. They are not "lost"
from lake and provide angling opportunities during their time in the river
and in the lake.
Years of study by state fisheries biologists indicate that most
of the wild salmon born in the upper Kennebec by parents from Moosehead
Lake swim upstream into the lake during the summer of their second or third
year in the river, or at about 6-8 inches long, and remain in the lake until
they reach spawning age.
Upper Kennebec River
This is Paul Johnson, the state's senior fisheries biologist for the
Moosehead Lake region, at the "Beach Pool" on the upper Kennebec
River, a mile or so below the Moosehead Lake outlet dam and fishway.
Paul is explaining a cooperative project between his department and
the Kennebec Water Power Company to improve spawning habitat for the landlocked
salmon of Moosehead Lake that use the lake's outlet for spawning.
The project expanded and deepened an existing salmon spawning site that
often dried up during low winter flows. Downstream, workers cleaned out
and expanded a side channel on the river to create quality growing habitat
for newly hatched wild landlocked salmon.
A few weeks after this photo was taken in fall, 1998, more than 50 landlocked
salmon from Moosehead Lake spawned in the shallows where Johnson is standing
-- the most he had ever seen.
Johnson's goal is to improve spawning and growing conditions in the
upper Kennebec so that stocking of landlocked salmon in Moosehead Lake will
no longer be necessary.
Friends of Sebago Lake fully supports such a program for Sebago
Lake.
Back to shore.