Starting The New Year Off The Right Way

I hope no one has been getting cabin fever lately.  I sure as heck have not!  Amazingly, the fish have survived  and continued to actively feed into the new year.  I had been eagerly anticipating opening day of NH's rivers since the day they closed on October 15th.  There was a certain tail water that had been popping into my mind for months so I decided to spend my opening day there.  Despite brutal winds I manged to make a few casts and kick off the new year with a feisty, beautiful, crimson, thrashing, 6 inch native... fallfish.

Yeeep, there it is folks!  She's a real beauty!  It may not have been the fat prestigious brown trout that I was looking for, but I think it's exciting to catch any fish species this time of year.  The wind on new years day was making it nearly impossible to cast but I managed to stay for about an hour.  I caught another silver beauty and then out of no where hooked and landed a fine brownie!  

Both of these were caught on a tungsten bead olive woolly bugger tied with grizzly hackle.  I hooked the brown by swinging it all the way to the tail of the pool and then slowly stripping it up through the seam.

Today was another great day for fishing!  I hit the same river and caught a diesel fallfish in the same pool as the previous fish.  The wind was ripping through again making casting a major issue so I decided to test my luck on some water downstream that was new to me and out of the wind.  It was like a whole new world downstream!  Almost no wind what so ever and the sun was shining.  My first cast into a fairly shallow pool I hooked and landed one of the prettiest and healthiest looking browns I've ever caught.  I love when they are so golden-yellow.  I made my way to the next pool down which was a bit bigger than the first.  A few casts in I hooked and landed another brownie.  This one wasn't quite as pretty as the first but it made up for it in size.  It was probably about 14 inches.  When I picked up the fish, an orange liquid came out of its "vent".  I'm guessing maybe it was left over egg residue from spawning?  It would be pretty awesome if there was some successful or even attempted brown trout spawning in there.

Both of these guys were caught on a cone head olive woolly bugger with light brown hackle.  I feel like a broken record because pretty much every fish that I've caught in the last few months has been on one of my olive woolly buggers.  I'm heading back out tomorrow so I will try really hard to catch a fish on something new!  Can't say that I won't throw around an olive woolly bugger though, they are truly a deadly pattern!

There's one thing that I would really like to mention before I wrap this post up.  When winter fishing, please handle fish carefully!  When the thermometer is below 32 degrees, it can be very harmful to hold fish out of the water even if its just for a few moments so try to keep them in the water if you are planning on releasing them.  It's something that I have to work on myself as well.  Luckily today it was well above freezing so it was not a problem.  The brown that I caught on new years day inhaled my fly and by the time I was done trying to remove it, all hopes of a quick release were lost.  It's a good thing that I enjoy eating trout every now and then so keeping it was not a problem with me.

Tight lines nation! Get out there and take advantage of this warm fish feeding weather!

Some Chilly Browns

Howdy Nation!  It has been quite some time!  I haven't been able to fish as much as I would like lately due to all the school work that comes with the end of the semester and annual snowboard instructor training.  But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!  In less than a week I will be on Christmas break and hopefully spitting out fishing reports like it's my job.

I've managed to sneak in a few hours on the water here and there over the past few weekends since Thanksgiving.  I had quite the streak going of catching one trout every time that I went out over the past few weeks... until today.  I hit The Contoocook at around 9:00 this morning and fished for about two and a half hours.  You know that it's going to be an interesting day when your guides start to ice up on your second cast.  My first stop was at one of my favorite pools that's been producing really well lately.  Only this time I fished it from the opposite side of the river that I always have.  Despite needing to scale a vertical granite ledge covered in ice, I really liked the approach from that side.  After observing no fish activity in that pool, I made my way onto some other ones that have been fishing well lately.  Between the next two pools I had three definite hits and a possible fourth one.  This morning was my only chance to fish today, I think it probably would have been better in the middle of the day once things "warm up" slightly.

Here's a few brownies from the past couple weekends.  Both caught on... you guessed it, woolly buggers!

The first one really had some great looking bright red spots that unfortunately didn't show up on my phone's camera.  The second one is probably one of my better browns this year.  I didn't measure it but was probably over 14 inches.  My dad really wanted to eat a trout for dinner so I decided to give this one to him.    I'm a strong believer in catch and release fishing but I do enjoy eating a nice trout dinner every once in a while.

One tip that I would really like to give for using streamers and woolly buggers (which can really fall under any of the "wet fly" families) is to use mending to your advantage to control depth.  Many of the fish that I've caught lately were when I mended my line so that my fly would swing deep through the bottom of pools.  Especially this time of year, the fish are going to be down on the bottom and don't want to move very far.  For example, lets say your fishing the main run of a pool and there's slack water in between you and the faster water where you think the fish are sitting.  You cast at about a 45 degree angle upstream and then mend your line downstream so that it creates a 90 degree angle in your line.  By the time your line straightens out in front of you, your fly will be dredging the bottom and ready for a nice slow retrieve or you can mend downstream even more for a deep swing.