Recovering from a broken ankle, iconoclastic big city drop out, self-proclaimed fly fishing bum and Whitefork Lodge bachelor owner Max Addams hires old friend, Wabnaki "Chief" Danny Shortsleeves to help him as a fishing guide until the cumbersome, "pain-in-the-ass" cast comes off. The season's first guests are Max's 28 year old daughter and two beautiful, flirtatious female friends from New York City. The three young women settle comfortably into the idyllic mountain setting until, while fishing out on the lake in front of the lodge, one of them hooks and lands a human skull. In this rural community near the Canadian border, the find is big news. Do the blue bloods at the local historical society have rights to it? Is the skull an ancient Wabnaki warrior who, centuries before, camped on this very spot? Or is it as Sheriff Simon Perkins believes; proof of a more recent murder? Max's housekeeper Stormy thinks it's nonsense and demands he toss the thing back. Max, citing an old landowner's law, stubbornly refuses everyone until the skull's age can be verified. Threats are made. The Wabnakis demand the skull be given to them. Tension escalates as the sheriff's investigation digs deeper than Max would like. Danny is torn between loyalties to his friend and his people. Then violence erupts and one of the young women is gruesomely murdered. Finally, high on a lightning-scarred mountain, Max finds himself alone ... battling for the lives of those he loves most against a kind of insane savagery he's never before experienced.