A Birthday present of wild brook trout

Beautiful fish
Beautiful setting

I was up in New Hampshire from Wednesday afternoon until Friday afternoon. I had to be home about 4 pm on Friday. so I had to leave NH by 1 pm. On Thursday I hiked 17.5 miles and scaled five different peaks ( more on the hikes in upcoming posts).

 I was surprised to wake up stiff but not sore. I knew I wanted to get in another hike in the morning. My goal was to hike a little summit on Sandwich Mountain named Jennings Peak. I got to the trailhead at 7:30 and knew I had plenty of time to do the 5.4 mile round trip. I put on my backpack and headed out. Not a hundred yards from the car the trail crosses a river. Unfortunately, the river was cray from all the rain on Wednesday. I looked both up and down river but I could not cross it. I could have bushwacked up the river from a road crossing, but that would have chewed up a half hour and truthfully, I didn't have the energy to play games.

So I came up with a plan B. There is a small mountain pond in Waterville Valley I hiked twice before. I hadn't been there in over a decade. I thought it would be nice to visit it again. The hike in is about a mile and a half with 700 feet of vertical. It's short but uphill the while way. A hiker would consider it moderate, while a non hiker would consider it hard.

 The pond used to get stocked aerially by helicopter with fingerling trout. Apparently the fingerlings did not do so well so the pond was cut from the program. It wasn't been stocked in ten years. I brought my fly rod,,,just in case.

Once I got to the pond, I ate a quick snack of two granola bars and a banana. While I was eating I saw fish rising. I was pretty happy I brought my rod. I started fishing. Within minutes I caught my first brookie. In the next hour and a half I landed eight more along with just as many hits. They were all on a hares ear size 14. The fish were not big, the largest two were about 8 inches. Unless the state restarted aerially stocking fish and did not put it on their website, these fish are wild. I absolutely love catching wild trout. Size does not matter with these little treasures.

After ninety minutes it was time to leave. Catching those fish was a nice exclamation point on a great

This little guy is important for a successful fishery in the future

trip to the Granite state. And its my birthday!

p.s. You may have noticed I did not name the mountain pond. If you find it on your own by the hints I gave, great. Please do not keep any wild trout. If you want to eat some trout, catch them from stocked ponds where it doesn't hurt the population. Wild trout are hard to come by these days. Also if you do hike up, please clean up after yourself. I can say that almost 100% of hikers pack out what the pack in. Sadly, we all know just by looking at shorelines, not all fishermen do.