Zzzzzzzzz…….zzzzzzz…swat. Zzzzzzz…swat. Zzzzzzz…swat. That is not the sound of music. It is the sound often heard when a trout fisherman is trying to catch brook trout on an alder-choked stream or a big deadwater.

You know the drill. Brookies and bugs. Salvelinus fontinalis and the order Diptera. They seem to be inseparable. You can’t have one without the other. It’s the downside of good trout fishing.

Trouters all have their bug stories, too.

“Why, the black flies were so thick they tried to carry off Uncle Herbie, and you know how big he is!” “You talk about bugs, man, they were so thick they blocked the sun and cast a shadow as big as a buffalo.” “I’m telling you, they were so thick we were breathing them and gagging with the dry heaves. We got some fir boughs and started a smudge fire right there in the cedar strip canoe. I swear.”

You haven’t really experienced the bug terror unless you’ve fished Labrador in early July. One early evening on the Atikonak River, Diane and I were mesmerized by lunker brookies sipping surface bugs so close that they were slapping our waders. So concentrative was I, in trying to seduce one of those slab-sided beauties, that I actually forgot about the annoying cloud of black flies feeding on my flesh. My fishing trance was broken only twice: once when a Stout (an 8oz Labrador horse fly) took a chunk out of my neck, and, again, when the stub of my smouldering cigar burned my lower lip. Back at camp, under the gas light, Diane looked at me aghast. “Check your face out in the mirror,” she said.

My face was peppered with blotches of dried blood. I looked like an upland gunner who had spent a day hunting quail in the Texas sage with Dick Cheney.

Another time in late May during a particularly brutal bug season, Diane and I had an encounter of the bug kind on Little Huston Pond. It was a warm, windless morning. The trout were hitting good and the black flies were as thick as I have ever known. As I chain-smoked cigars, Diane donned her bug jacket. Though the bugs could not reach her flesh, they began to work on her psyche.

“I can’t take much more of this,” she said with a wifely urgency.

“Golly, Hon,” I said, “the fishing is just getting good. You’ll get used to the buggers. It’s mind over matter.”

As I recall, she was a good sport and finally resorted to a cigar.

Speaking of bug repellents, have you found one that really works? When I was a kid, my Dad used to slather me with an utterly foul-smelling bug dope. It was, I believe, called Old Woodsman and it was ranker than its namesake could ever have been under the worst conditions. It helped.

As far as I can tell the modern bug repellents stopped working when the manufacturers watered down the ratio of DEET. The so-called homemade remedies don’t work any better than the store-bought fly dopes, either. Writer Henry Beard has a very good definition of insect repellent in his book Fishing: “One of a number of gag items available in the novelty sections of tackle shops, along with waterproof clothing, damp-proof matches and long-life batteries.”

Look, let’s face it. You can’t battle the bugs without using something that works. And for it to work, it’s probably going to have to be nearly as bad for you as it is for the bugs. DEET works, but as far as I know the commercial repellent makers are, for health reasons, not allowed to spike their bug potion with a big enough percentage to do much good. During my bug-battling trouting career, I have found only two ways to keep these nattering nasty nits at a tolerable distance.

1. Cigars

2. ThermaCELL

My doctor tells me that cigars are bad for me and to avoid them at all costs. (He is probably not a trout man.) As for the ThermaCELL device, it also comes with a precautionary statement: “Harmful if inhaled. Avoid breathing vapors.” No wonder the bugs don’t like it!

Of course, in a desperate buggy situation, in which your very sanity may be on the line, there is always the primitive bug repellent recommended by Maine survival writer Charlie Reitze. He simply finds a good low place in the woods and slathers his face, neck and ears with black muck from the aboreal forest.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal and has written his first book, A Maine Deer Hunter’s Logbook. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].