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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!