Northern NH (Pic Heavy)

[jskowron]

Just got back from the annual trip to the In-Laws cabin in Northern NH (South Pond in Stark). It rain, and rained hard, almost every day. There was no river fishing to be had, as the Androscoggin and the Upper Ct. were dangerously high and muddied. Theres a rock I often stand on out in the middle of the Andro that is about 2 feet above the surface of the water. Last week the surface of the water was about 4 feet hight than the rock. I did manage to get out to the headwaters of a small stream for brookies one day, but otherwise hit the lake in between downpours. I'll now bore you with some pictures:

Here's the base of operations-


And here's the view out over the pond. I was hoping to get some pictures of a different type of rainbow! At least the rain was good for something.


Here's a typical small smallmouth. Note the rod in the picture. It is a fiberglass Berkley Spartan that was my wife's when she was a kid. There's also a blue one and a gray one at the camp that belonged to her sisters. It casts surprisingly well, despite its noodleness.


Early in the week I went pretty far up a favorite little brookie stream and finally got to try out the 6' 3wt lamiglas I built this winter. It is the perfect rod for this type of fishing. Here's a view downstream. the high water created some nice holding spots along the banks. I caught to little natives down along the bank to the left in this picture along the overhanging grass (all fish on an EHC).


Here's my first trout ever caught on the rod. It was a nice one for this stream. The picture is pretty lousy though.


Here's me tying on my secret pattern I like to call a "live worm under a bobber. "

You have to get them started when they're young. My son is a little too impatient for staring at a bobber and had a tendency to swing the line around like it was a fly rod. My daughter caught a bunch of perch and a smallmouth. She asked the same to questions after every catch- "Can I eat it?" and "Can I touch its eyeball?" (the answer to both was "no")



The sun finally shined on the last day there, and I was able to spend a few hours out in the rowboat fishing. Here's a picture of a few of my fishing buddies that morning. There were 5 loons on the pond this year, which those that know about such things were telling me is a very unusual number. They will surface within 10 feet of the boat. It's cool to see them up close, but it's not very good for the fishing.


After a week of clouds and rain, the bright sun triggered some bug activity, and what looked to be stoneflies started dropping from one tree onto the water. This pulled some of the big smallies (12 inches or so- big for this lake) up and they were hammering them on the surface. I caught a few on a bugmeister and some on a generic stonefly/caddis dry pattern. Man do they fight, with lots of jumping and acrobatics! Here's one of them-


Though not the best conditions to fish in, it was still nice to get out and get away from work.

Thanks for looking
Jeff

[bartman]

Not boring at all as I'll be in Pittsburg NH tomorrow for 4 days.

I hear you about the rain' I was hoping to get some river fishing in but I have the kayaks on the car as plan B.

Nice pics and thanks for posting.

Bart

[Uplander]

Nice!

[jskowron]

Dan- It is cool to have the kids along. This trip is actually a family get together, so there are 7 kids, two teenagers, and 7 adults staying in out two camps. Though it's not the 5 star accommodations that you had on your trip, my Italian mother-in-law makes sure we are all well fed (you know about those Italian mothers , don't you?)

Bartman- Hopefully you'll get to the river in Pittsburg. The Connecticut may be fishable up there, particularly between the lakes. I usually fish it south of there in the C&R section in North Stratford. The smaller streams in the area may be worth a drive, as the increased water level doesn't hurt them as much. I've been meaning to check out Indian Stream some year. Let us know how the trip went.

[bartman]

Aug 14, 2008 5:55:59 GMT -5 jskowron said:

Bartman- Hopefully you'll get to the river in Pittsburg. The Connecticut may be fishable up there, particularly between the lakes. I usually fish it south of there in the C&R section in North Stratford. The smaller streams in the area may be worth a drive, as the increased water level doesn't hurt them as much. I've been meaning to check out Indian Stream some year. Let us know how the trip went.

Trip went well. This was a family vacation and a first time to this area so it was a cross between site seeing and fishing.

I would have preferred to fish some of the area from Pittsburg to Colebrook but it was pretty darn high. We opted to explore some smaller streams, kayak some ponds and also fished the CT between 2nd and 1st lakes as they lowered the flow there on Saturday (although it still seemed pretty high to me). We were hoping to hit a few early salmon due to the high water but we didn't hit any. We did catch a lot of brookies in all of the above, primarily on streamers and roll casting was the order of the day on the CT and small streams. Didn't try Indian as time was limited but did make a beer run across the border. ;D

It's a beautiful area and plenty of fishy places to explore. They are not kidding about the moose up there. We encountered them every day.

I took about 200 pics. I'll post some soon.

Bart

[jskowron]

Bartman,

Sounds like a nice trip. It's beautiful up there, with lots of relatively peaceful places to fish, kayak, etc. The moose are everywhere. Interesting history too- that area was actually it's own nation for a brief period of time. It was a "breakaway" republic known as the "Indian Stream Republic". I look forward to some pics.

Jeff