As my ocean kayaking season winds down with the shorter, cooler days and decreasing water temperatures, I recently embarked on what may have been my most enjoyable day of the entire summer in an area I’d thought about exploring for a long time but just never got around to it.

Bowhunting for deer has one mystique impossible to deny. Simplistically speaking, an archer needs one tree large enough for a stand in a 15-acre wood lot and patience to sit still for long vigils, until a whitetail wanders past in bow range. That’s it for diving into the sport.

Rainy, cold weather in June raised havoc with ruffed-grouse production in mid-coast and central Maine, so partridge hunting in these regions should prove fair to poor this fall, and I’m betting on the latter.

In my youth, old timers claimed that gardeners could expect frost in a specific area six weeks after goldenrods first blossomed there. For instance, an old friend swears that if goldenrods bloom in his fields on Aug. 17, frost will hit his garden by Sept. 28 exactly 42 days later.

As water temperatures drop below 70 degrees Fahrenheit this coming week, trout and landlock fishing picks up for fly rodders and spin casters. The closer the thermometer gets to 60 to 63 degrees, the faster the action gets, and often in central Maine, that golden time begins during the third week of September. And surely, waters have cooled up north.

The fall bicycling season begins in earnest now, a grand time of year for this crowd. Days often stay cool enough, so pedalers don’t sweat a gallon, but the September sun offers enough warmth to allow us to bicycle in shorts and a short-sleeve shirt — except at dawn and during cold snaps.

For much of my adult life, I had fished for Atlantic salmon in Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where guides told me long-lining was illegal for the king of freshwater game fish. That law struck me as odd, even though I seldom resorted to using the tactic in Maine, where it’s legal.