Spring is Here!

As most of you know, today was opening day of salmon season in NH.  I was only able to fish today from sunrise until about 8:30am because I had to go to class.  I hit a section of The Winnipesaukee that opened today.  It was pretty crowded and the river was extremely low for this time of year.  The only person that I saw catch anything was right where the river enters another lake.  I think many of the fish probably dropped out of the river when the water dropped a few weeks ago.  Who knows though, I didn't fish the entire river and I was only there for a few hours.  I'm sure the fish will come back into the river when the water comes up again and especially when the suckers are in.  Stay tuned for a report of the salmon action this week!  Definitely a slow start this year but hopefully that means we will just have a longer spring season.

I had my spring break two weeks ago and I managed to fish The Salmon River in Pulaski, NY for the second half of the week.  The temperature was low and the lake affect snow was falling everyday but it was still a great trip.  The upper end of the river was full of spawning steelhead.  I was getting pretty frustrated at first because I have to admit, before this trip I had no successful experiences with nymphing.  Nymphing is pretty much the name of the game out there in less you are set up with a good swinging outfit (which I was not).  On the first day, the water was running just under 1000cfs which is normal for this time of year but pretty swift in comparison to most NH rivers.  I was having a really hard time getting a good drift and making casts due to the amount of weight that I needed to bounce bottom.  That night, they dropped the river to about 600cfs which made it so much easier for me.  I didn't hook anything that day but my buddy had one on up in the LFZ for a few minutes.  The bite was slow for everyone while we were there so one hookup was great news for us.  We secured that same spot in the LFZ first thing in the morning on the third day.  A few hours after arriving, my indicator stopped and I felt slight head shakes that felt like a 6 inch brook trout nibbling on a worm.  It wasn't huge but I landed my first steelhead on a fly rod and also my first ever fish caught by dead drifting under an indicator!  I had one more hookup that night but when the fish darted straight at me, I couldn't keep up with it and it shook off.  On the last morning we headed back to the same spot for a few hours.  The bite definitely turned on a little bit, at least for us.  I landed two and missed five.  My buddy also had two or three hookups.  All of them were caught on dark green estaz eggs.  I gotta run to class now Nation.  Here's some pictures of the trip in the mean time.

Get out there and catch some salmon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The New Spring

It's been almost a month since my last post and I've got some serious catching up to do.  I've been so busy since I've been back at school.  I've barely had a few minutes to go out and fish never mind write a blog post.  No matter how much home work I have, I always find a chunk of time to go throw a fly around.  I've been focusing on two rivers lately.  One of these rivers is known for holding big rainbows, but the other is completely top secret and I've never heard anyone talk about it.  If I was able to figure out that there would be big fish in a certain river, than anyone can.  Finding them is half the fun anyways!  This post is going to be picture heavy so brace yourselves.  Going through all these pictures has made it even more clear to me how awesome winter fly fishing can be.  This is the time of year that you can really get a chance at some big trout.  To start off here's a few that my buddies Alex and Ross and I caught while I was still on winter break at home.

My mind was completely blown when both Alex and Ross caught a wild brook trout that day.  One, because it was the middle of January and I've never seen anyone catch a winter brookie.  Two, because I couldn't believe that we found some in this particular river.  It flows out of a small lake from a top release dam, so the water gets very warm in the summer.  I'm not sure how the brook trout could have a sustaining population in a river like this but apparently it's occurring.  It's also possible that the brookies migrated into the main stem river from smaller tributaries to winter over.  Most of these fish were caught on woolly buggers.

No it's time for the big boys.  Here's a few bows caught by myself and Alex since we've been back at school.  We've both beaten our old personal bests multiple times for rainbow trout this winter.

The culprit of these big rainbows has been the slumpbuster.  I've been tying them from strips of an old gray rabbit pelt that I had laying around for some reason.  They're really not a hard pattern to tie if you've got some cone heads, rabbit or squirrel pelt, and some tinsel lying around.  I think I'm going to attempt at an articulated slumpbuster this week.  

Alex kept the fish in the bottom picture and when we gutted it, a three inch helgramite literally crawled out of its stomach!  Keep that in mind folks.  If these fish are going to move out of their way to eat something in such cold water, it's got to be worth it for them.  I've been using size 6 and 8 streamers all winter and they've been extremely successful.  I've watched a few fish this winter charge up from the depths to crush a big streamer right at my feet.

Winter is the new spring guys.  Get out there and enjoy one of these not so cold days!  I am excited for spring though!

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!