Dennys River Salmon Club

The Dennys River Salmon Club was established in 1936 and consisted of mostly local Maine residents right up until it faded out of existence in the early two thousands. The corporate entity was dissolved in 2004 but the club lingered on until at least 2006. In that last annual report that I could find there were 58 members listed. 33 resided in Maine, 1 in Connecticut, 1 in New Hampshire, 1 in New York, and 7 from Massachusetts. The 7 of us from Massachusetts were all friends from the Worcester Area. The annual meetings, which were held during the 3rd week of June would normally have about 12 - 15 members in attendance and 7 of them became known as, “the Boys from Worcester.”

Back in the fifties when “the boys” first started going up to fish for Atlantics they stayed in the Lincoln House built in 1787 by Revolutionary War General Benjamin Lincoln (1733-1810), a native of Hingham, Massachusetts. Later they rented a number of cabins from Ray Robinson. Near the end of the more than 35 year run my parents ended up staying in what used to be the summer home of Ken Sears. It was one of Robbinson’s cottages but it was fortuitously built overlooking one of the best pools on the river – “Sear’s Pool. We took many fish from that pool through the years. And spent hours and hours watching the fish react to different flies and various presentations from the roof of the cabin. This is how we invented the Scott Drift presentation that works very well even on very stubborn fish. Here I am at Sear’s Pool as a teenager with a nice 10 - 12 lb bright fish taken on a big bomber. This fish is a great example of how sometimes a new technique is discovered accidentally. I will describe in detail exactly how this fish was enticed into smashing the fly after many casts were drifted over it.