A New Hampshire Tale (1)

For the last couple weeks I had a three day vaca planned in the great state of New Hampshire. I was to take off Thursday from work ( I had Fri/Sat off this week). My plan was to leave Wednesday night, fish Profile Lake before camping. Then spend the next two days fishing before coming home Saturday afternoon.  Life has a way of messing things up...DJ was in a car accident ( passenger) Tuesday night. Luckily he is alright other than a broken finger. We spent most of Wednesday at the hospital  so loosing a day in New Hampshire was the least of my worries this week.

Wild Brookie from Profile Lake

Even though he was in the accident and his eye is all bruised he still went camping with his friend and family  to Vermont( same friend he was in accident with).  So there was no reason for me to be home after Thursday since he wasn't going to be there anyway. So I left Thursday for New Hampshire. I got to my campsite about 3 pm. Unfortunately, the wind was howling. I tried Saco Lake, Echo Lake and Profile Lake. For about 4 hours fishing I was rewarded with only 2 yellow perch, and two small brookies ( one wild). Not exactly what I was looking for. I went back to camp at dark. At camp a male woodcock was displaying. That was cool to see. It kept it up for 30 minutes. I also saw a  bull moose at Franconia Notch.

The next morning I woke about 7:30.  Much to my surprise the stars that I went to bed watching were replaced by ominous low clouds. My plan was to hike out to Ethan or Shoal Pond and fish for wild trout. With strong winds and a good chance of rain, I decided to get a weather forecast before I made a decision. I'm okay with rain, but 30 mph winds are tough to cast a fly rod in and Ethan is a 6 mile round trip. Shoal easier but much longer is over 11 miles round trip.  Bad news, Rain and strong winds. So I fished rivers and the same lakes as the day before. I also tried Ammonoosuc Lake. There I saw a big male turkey displaying. He was all puffed out and his head bright blue, but not a hen in sight. Again my only reward for the day were a couple small brookies.  The " highlight" of my day was; I was standing in knee deep water at Saco Lake casting with the wind at my back. While I was fishing, a snapping turtle only three feet in front of me came off the bottom. It caused a big cloud in the water, it looked like an eruption. He came off the bottom and swam away. He was only a step in front of my front foot for ten minutes yet never made an aggressive move. He was so still I never saw it until it swam away. Back at camp, I read about John Wesley Powell while listening to the woodcock again. Sometimes he'd fly down only feet in front of me.

One of the " bigger" trout from Saturday

Saturday- Things get much better.

I packed camp early, I was in the car by 6:50 I hoped the early start and improving weather would lead me to some calm water where I may actually get to take my kayak off the roof ( I had been fishing in waders this whole time). I drove towards home. Echo was a little breezy. Profile looked good but a couple guys were already there at 7 am, so I figured it might get busy. So I kept going south. I got off at the Waterville Valley exit and fished a pond I'd fished before. It was glass calm on one side and the windy side was only ripply, so FINALLY I took the kayak off. At first I was getting short strikes with a beadhead pheasant tail, but a lot of fish were surfacing. So I switched to a small hares ear and fished it just under the surface. That did the trick! In the next couple hours I caught 28 trout. That is a new record for me. However, the fish were still biting. Anyone that can throw a fly 30 feet could have caught 25 fish. I am sure if I had all day I could have ended up with over 50, I had a long ride home so I passed on the challenge.  One negative was most of the fish were small I only caught about 5 over 9 inches.

One of the many shiners that found my beadhead irrestitable

I tried one more pond on my way home before I got on the highway. It is stocked with trout and it is a beautiful mountain lake as far into the woods on the worst dirt road you can find. A father son team were coming in with float tubes,  they caught a nice stringer of trout including a 2 1/2 pounder. I did not have time to put in the kayak so I fished from shore. I saw a lot of rises right in front of me so I casted my fly rod. It turns out the rises were common shiners. If you don't believe that I will fish for anything, this is proof. For the next 30 minutes I caught a mess of small shiners and had a blast doing it.

I drove home after that resisting temptation to hit any more lakes

Animals I saw- moose, turkey, deer, frogs, snapping turtle, toads, woodcock


Fish 33 trout, 2 yellow perch, shiners