Last Thursday 11/15, a few friends and I fished the Pemi down in Bristol with ambitious hopes of tangling with a broodstock salmon. We tried swinging and stripping streamers in spots that produced very well back in October with no results. I feel that most of the salmon drop down from Bristol by this point in the year, especially after the high waters that Sandy brought. We then switched over to target trout with just about every technique, also showing no results.
Last Friday, I went out to Mirror Lake up in Woodstock. I don't have my kayak up at school as of now but Mirror Lake is an easy wade for most of the shore line. I started with woolly buggers and streamers and just started blind casting and stripping. For the first half of an hour that I was there, I kept seeing surface activity around a down tree off shore. I crept over withing casting range of the tree and realized that there was a significant change in depth just on the other side of the tree where I saw the rises. I was running low on woolly buggers so I threw on a black and orange egg sucking leech and attached a tungsten split shot just above the hook eye. I threw it out just over the side of the drop off and instead of stripping it immediately, I let it sink for quite some time. On the first strip the line was tight and my rod was bent in half! I had the fish on for quite a while but it was staying deep. It ran to the surface and did that all too familiar splashy hook shake move that gets all of us from time to time.
Sunday, I went to Robartwood Pond in Campton. I totally was not expecting to find a completely frozen over pond when I got there but there was about an inch of ice covering the whole pond except for the area right next to the dam. It was like fishing in a swimming pool with the amount of open water but I managed a scrappy little brookie on a white woolly bugger. For the most part I was just throwing streamers and woolly buggers and stripping them back in. I decided to switch up my tactics and try a very slow retrieve because I imagined the water was quite cold already and the fish may be slowing down. I stripped in my olive woolly bugger veeeeerrrryyyy slooooowwwlly and hooked a small rainbow on the first cast of this method. It shook not long after it was hooked. That fish was hooked in only about 6 inches of water. A few casts later, I was targeting the deepest part of the water that was open and retrieving right along the edge of the ice. I let my bugger sink down to the bottom and started my extremely slow retrieve and then my indicator went under. This fish had some real muscle to it unlike the last two. It was a great fight and pretty unique to have it run under the ice. I pulled it up on top of the skim ice that was directly in front of where I was standing and all of a sudden it shook free. I immediately jumped down there breaking through the ice in just six inches of water. And of course the beautiful dark red rainbow flopped right into the hole in the ice created by my feet. I started moving the thick weeds around below my feet and saw a great spotted tail and lunged for it. The fish escaped my grasps and freely swam back into deeper water. All I wanted was a picture! -__-
Here's the brookie that I caught there.
Yesterday I got to reunite with my home water again, The Contoocook! I was eager to head back to the area where I caught trout last week. Me and my good friend Lucas started at the pool where I caught those two browns with no results. We decided to head to the next pool down which I haven't fished for years. The last time I went there I was probably about 14 and for some reason decided I didn't like it so I never really returned. When I got to the pool yesterday, I couldn't believe my eyes. It is probably one of the most beautiful looking pools on the Contoocook. There were steep rock ledges on the other side of the river with a small stream cascading down the rocks. I started throwing an olive woolly bugger that I tied myself into the head of the pool right in the top of the seam. A few casts later I hooked and landed a beauty of a brown, it was about 12 inches and appeared to be very healthy and thick. We didn't have much luck after that but I'm heading back to The Contoocook today!
Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!!
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