Fly Fishing the Androscoggin River for Bass. Bob Dionne

      11 . Androscoggin River, Maine (bass)

       Location: Southwestern Maine, about a 2-hour ride from Portland, a 1-hour ride from Augusta; a 3-hour ride from Boston, Massachusetts; and a 3-hour ride from Manchester, New Hampshire. Full-service airports are available in all four cities.

      The Androscoggin River is named after an Abenaki tribe who depended on the river for food and transportation for thousands of years. This 178-mile-long superhighway provided access from the Atlantic

      Ocean to the heavily forested and game-rich regions of Maine, New Hamshire, and Canada. The Andro, as it is called, was navigable by ocean-going boats upriver to Brunswick, Maine. The 1,500-foot drop from source to sea is the steepest of the major rivers in Maine, and provided water power during the Industrial Revolution, allowing timber, paper, shoe, and textile manufacturing industries to flourish.

      Due to escalating water pollution, the Andro became ground zero for the Clean Water Act of 1972. Championed by United States Senator and Rumford, Maine native Edmund Muskie, this

      legislation reversed national water degradation trends by requiring water quality standards that met fishable and swimmable objectives. Today, the entire length of the Andro in Maine supports smallmouth bass, and in many sections they truly thrive.

      The Androscoggin is the third-largest river in Maine, where it runs approximately 125 miles and drains roughly 2,730 square miles. The Androscoggin enters western Maine from New Hampshire at the Shelburne, NH–Gilead, Maine border. The river flows east from Gilead to Jay, then south toward Brunswick before emptying into Merrymeeting Bay.

      Fly fishers seeking smallmouth bass target the section between Rumford and Jay due to the water quality, aesthetics, topography, fishing consistency, and