356 Trout-Fishing in the Rangeley Lakes. 



CAMP KENNEBAGO. 



Before describing- Camp Kennebago in detail, it may be as well 

 to give in brief a sketch of the history of the Oquossoc Angling 

 Association, of which organization this camp is the head-quarters. 

 So long as thirty years ago, a sportsman now and then worked 

 his way through the wilderness to these lakes, but it is only within 

 the last twenty years that the Rangeley, Kennebago, and Cupsup- 

 tuc Lakes, with the upper end of Mooselucmaguntic, have become at 

 all well known to anglers. The Richardson Lakes — Welokeneba- 

 cook and Molechunkemunk, with Umbagog, forming the lower lakes 

 in the great chain whence the Androscoggin River derives its 

 mighty power — have for the last thirty or forty years been fre- 

 quented by a score or more of Boston and New York gentlemen. 

 These sportsmen were invariably found at " Rich's," " Middle Dam," 

 Mosquito Brook, or the " Upper Dam." Hundreds of spotted 

 beauties, weighing from two to eight pounds, were captured by 

 these anglers year after year, but they wisely kept their own coun- 

 sel, and if an item occasionally found its way into the New York or 

 Boston papers chronicling the arrival of a six or eight pound speckled 

 trout, those who claimed to be best informed dismissed the paragraph 

 with a sneer at the ignorance of editors who did not know the differ- 

 ence between brook-trout and "lakers." In i860, Henry O. Stanley, 



