A lazy canoe or kayak float on an August river or large stream has everything to recommend it to average canoeists — sense of adventure, exercise, scenery, fishing, wildlife sightings and far more. River trips often inconvenience paddlers, though, because paddling from a put-in to take-out spot may require putting one vehicle at the beginning of the river stretch and another at the end — the old two-vehicle shuffle.

Recently, Bill Woodward, a bass fisherman and retired fisheries biologist from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W), told me that central Maine produces the state’s best bass fishing. This man worked for DIF&W in Franklin County and Down East, too, the latter a bassing Mecca, before settling into Region B in central Maine.