Weather: Partly cloudy. 75 degrees.

Methodology: We fished the docks inside a small marina.

King of the Boat: John.

Mike’s Thoughts on the Day: There was just no way around it. Fishing Massachusetts was going to be a kamikaze attack. We didn’t have the time to fish The Cape and we just don’t have enough experience to try to fly fish on our own. This was going to be the first state that we fished for the sake of checking it off our list. No guides. No boats. We just wanted to find a decent body of water as close to the highway as we could.

Webster Lake fit the bill.

We figured that if we didn’t have much to say about the experience, that the least we could do is pick a lake with an interesting story. While the lake goes by the name Webster Lake in most of the search engines and maps, the alternative name is Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. The 45 letter name turns out to be the longest place name in the United States and one of the longer place names in the world.

The lake's name comes from Nipmuc, an Algonquian language, and is said to mean, "Fishing Place at the Boundaries -- Neutral Meeting Grounds". This is different from the humorous translation, "You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle", thought to have been invented by the late Laurence J. Daly, editor of The Webster Times.

Most of the background information comes from Wikipedia, so who knows if it is accurate?? The site also suggests that long time residents take pride in rattling off the 45 letter name to visitors. All of our research on the place said that nice fish could be had here. But without a boat or enough time to fish it properly, it didn’t seem likely.

We rolled up on the lake after a 6 hour drive from Maine. We found a small marina, asked if there was public fishing anywhere close. One of the marina workers gave us the ok to fish the nearby docks. Even though it was late day Sunday, the lake was packed with weekend pleasure seekers and jet skiers. We seriously doubted we would catch anything. Luckily John was able to pull a decent 2 pound bass just beyond a channel buoy.. Of course, I failed in my duty to obtain photographic evidence, so you will have to trust us on this one. A couple of minutes later, we packed up the rods, snapped a few quick photos and were on our way.

We spent 10 minutes or so trying to find a public park in hopes of photographing the sign with the full name of the lake. I mean you can’t have a name like that without a sign. We never did find it. The sign you see above was grabbed from a Google search.

If Massachusetts had been the primary fishing target on this trip, we would have to consider this experience a bust. But as it was smack in the middle of The New England Blitzkrieg Tour (7 states in 4 days) the fact that we caught a fish and checked off a state on our way to our next guided trip in Connecticut / Rhode Island, we were quite happy with the results.