Moosehead Lake covers 75,095 acres. A crossing in the afternoon is a long stretch of open water with room for a chop to build, and the far shore is something you plan for rather than glance at. Sebago is a little under half the size at 30,344 acres and still big enough to do the same thing to a small boat. Below those two come Chesuncook, Spednic, Big Lake, Flagstaff and Grand Lake, and below those a few thousand smaller waters where the ramp is a gravel slope and nobody is standing there to tell you about the rock off the point.
The pack carries 3,916 charted water bodies. Of those, 3,115 have a name, which is close to four in five, and 504 of the named lakes run over a square kilometer. Helm builds 48 of these state lake packs, and against the other 47 this one comes seventh for named water and third for lakes above a square kilometer. The water bodies themselves come from the National Hydrography Dataset. The depth under them is built from state elevation surveys, which is what puts contours and a number on the water instead of a flat blue shape.
A square kilometer is about 247 acres. So the 504 figure counts lakes with a far end, water where the wind has room to work and where the run from the ramp is a run rather than a paddle. Only two of the 48 state lake packs carry more of them.
The total of 3,916 water bodies puts this pack around the middle, twenty first of the 48. Read the two numbers together and they say something about the water here. This is not a long tail of farm ponds with three big lakes sitting on top of it. One named lake in six is over a square kilometer, and 3,115 named out of 3,916 is the seventh highest named share of any pack.
| Lake | Charted surface area |
|---|---|
| Moosehead Lake | 304 km² (75,095 acres) |
| Sebago Lake | 123 km² (30,344 acres) |
| Chesuncook Lake | 76 km² (18,780 acres) |
| Spednic Lake | 72 km² (17,792 acres) |
| Big Lake | 71 km² (17,619 acres) |
| Flagstaff Lake | 70 km² (17,273 acres) |
| Grand Lake | 64 km² (15,691 acres) |
| West Grand Lake | 58 km² (14,382 acres) |
| Mooselookmeguntic Lake | 55 km² (13,566 acres) |
| Grand lac Saint-Fran\u00e7ois | 50 km² (12,405 acres) |
| Chamberlain Lake | 44 km² (10,873 acres) |
| Pemadumcook Lake | 39 km² (9,711 acres) |
The twelve largest named lakes the Maine pack carries, by charted surface area, measured from the chart polygon itself. The pack carries 3,916 charted water bodies in all, 3,115 of them named, and 504 named lakes larger than one square kilometer.
NOAA charts the coast, the intracoastal and the navigable rivers. It has no reason to survey an inland impoundment, and it does not. Inland depth in Helm comes from somewhere else: state elevation surveys of the lake bed, with the water body outlines from the National Hydrography Dataset. That is the reason a lake in this pack arrives as water you can plan a route across against your draft instead of a named blue shape.
The other thing to keep in mind on an impoundment is that the level is being held wherever somebody decided to hold it this month. A contour is a measurement of the basin, and the basin does not move. What moves is how much water is standing in it. On a lake drawn down through late summer the shape you are reading is still the right shape, and the surface is simply sitting further down inside it. The shoulders on either side of an old creek channel are the first ground to come up, which is also the first ground a lower unit finds. Look up what the lake is being held at before you back down the ramp, and the contours do the rest.
Moosehead at 303.9 square kilometers is larger than the next three in the pack put together. Sebago, Chesuncook and Spednic come to 270.8 square kilometers between them. Every area here is measured off the chart polygon itself rather than copied from a list, so the number and the shape on your screen are the same thing.
Three of the larger waters carry versions of the same name. Big Lake is 17,619 acres, Grand Lake is 15,691 and West Grand Lake is 14,382, which is worth sorting out before somebody tells you the fish are on the north end. Further down the list the word on the sign stops tracking the size. Great Pond runs 8,476 acres, more than Umbagog at 7,586 and more than Schoodic Lake at 6,968.
Grand lac Saint-François and its 12,405 acres are carried here too. The packs are cut to a box rather than to a state line, so water near a border sits in more than one of them. That is a practical detail rather than a claim about who owns what. If you launch near a border, the far shore is already on the chart you downloaded.
Plenty of this water sits at the end of a dirt road. The pack is one download, and once it is on the phone the chart, the depth shading, the routing and the measure tool keep working with no signal at all. The planning happens at the kitchen table the night before, and you get to the ramp already knowing where to slow down.
Your draft goes in once and stays on the chart, so the water your boat cannot cross shades itself while you are still looking at a cove from the middle of it. Across 75,095 acres of Moosehead that mostly bites at the edges, around the points and in the backs of the coves. On a narrow pond it is the whole trip. Mark the spot where you found fish and it is still sitting there next season, on whichever device you brought.
Inland lake depth comes from state elevation surveys rather than from nautical charts, and a reservoir sits at whatever level it is being held at that week. Treat the shape and the depth as a guide, keep a lookout, and verify locally.
75,095 acres, or 303.9 square kilometers, measured from the chart polygon in the Maine lake pack. That is larger than the next three lakes in the pack added together: Sebago at 30,344 acres, Chesuncook at 18,780 and Spednic at 17,792.
It carries 3,916 water bodies in total and 3,115 of them are named, with inland depth built from state elevation surveys rather than from nautical charts. 504 of the named lakes are over a square kilometer, which is about 247 acres, and the rest of the count is water below that. Great Pond at 8,476 acres and Schoodic Lake at 6,968 are both in there, and so is a great deal that is smaller again.
Yes. The packs are cut to a box rather than to the state line, so a lake near a border can sit in two packs at once. Grand lac Saint-François and its 12,405 acres are one of the waters this box takes in, which means the shoreline on the far side of a border lake is on the same download as the ramp you launched from.
Helm Boating