First Roach Pond

First Roach Pond stretches across 3,320 acres of working forest in Frenchtown Township, its eastern end lapping against the tiny settlement of Kokadjo at the head of the Roach River. Kokadjo — population, as the famous sign says, "not many" — sits about eighteen miles up the Lily Bay Road from Greenville, and the drive in past Lily Bay State Park sets the tone: this is big-woods Maine, moose country, where the pavement gives way and the cell signal fades. Despite the name, First Roach is no pond in the southern sense. It is a substantial coldwater lake, dropping to 126 feet with a mean depth of 54 feet, and it fishes like one.

The fishery is a classic Maine three-species mix: brook trout, landlocked salmon, and lake trout, the togue of local speech. The brook trout program here is among the most generous in the region — MDIFW planted 3,630 catchable ten-inch brookies in two spring 2026 stockings, plus 1,800 young landlocked salmon, layered over the wild fish the drainage produces on its own. The result is a pond where a fly angler has a realistic shot at a heavy dark-backed brook trout, a leaping salmon, and a deep-bodied togue in the same season, all in water with a genuine wilderness feel.

What elevates First Roach beyond its own shorelines is its outlet. The dam at Kokadjo releases the Roach River, six and a half miles of fly-fishing-only water that carries some of Moosehead Lake's most storied runs of spawning landlocked salmon and brook trout every September. The pond and the river are two halves of one system: fish that ascend the Roach in fall drop back through the drainage, and the pond's own salmon and trout stack near the inlet deltas and the outlet when water temperatures move them.

The fly angler's year opens at ice-out, usually early May this far north, when smelt push toward the inlets at the west end and the salmon and brookies follow. Streamer fishing over the deltas and along the drop-offs is the prime game for several weeks. As the water warms, evening dry-fly fishing takes over — caddis through June and July, and the event of the summer, the Hexagenia hatch, which brings the pond's biggest trout up at dusk over the soft-bottomed coves.

With a launch at Kokadjo, classic sporting camps and rental cabins on the shore, and cove after float-tube-friendly cove, First Roach is one of the most accessible ways to fish genuinely remote-feeling Maine trout water without a float plane. Pair it with a September trip to the Roach River below the dam and you have covered one of the state's great coldwater systems end to end.

First Roach Pond is a large, cold, clear northern lake with a two-story character. The basin reaches 126 feet at its deepest, and a mean depth of 54 feet means much of the pond is true coldwater habitat — enough deep, well-oxygenated water to carry lake trout through the summer while brook trout and salmon work the upper layers. A thermocline sets up in midsummer, pushing the togue deep and concentrating salmon and trout near the cooler inlets, spring holes, and the band of water just above the temperature break.

The modern MDIFW depth chart (MIDAS 0436) shows the structure a fly angler needs: shoreline shelves stepping down in ten-foot contours, defined drop-offs off the points, and shallower coves and inlet deltas at the ends. Those softer-bottomed coves and flats grow the burrowing Hexagenia mayflies that drive the marquee summer hatch, while the rocky shelves and deltas hold the smelt that anchor the forage base. Water clarity is good, the shorelines are almost entirely forested, and a dam at the Kokadjo outlet controls the level where the pond spills into the Roach River.