It rained most of the day Tuesday in the mountains of NH.
On Wednesday, I went to see if the rain had improved things.
It has, a little. Rain from thunderstorms runs off fast. All the streams I visited were up over a few days before, but not hugely up.
Temps were good. I fished three streams. All were in the 61° to 63° range.
The first place was a stocked stream. All stocked browns like this.
About a 1/2 hour after I started fishing some others showed up just as I hooked a couple fish. That convinced them to stay, I think. The car had FL plates. Two fly guys and a kid with a spinning rod. I wasn't intending to spend much time there anyway, so on to the next place.
The second place I went isn't stocked, has never been stocked, and is higher up. There's a trail to get to it, but that trail took a beating last October. In some places the trail is just gone, like here:
In others there's a 3-foot-deep channel down the center of the trail for 100 feet or more.
This is one of the undamaged parts of the trail. It's not a great trail.
I walked in 3/4 mile to where the trail meets the river here:
This is a river with a big riverbed and not much water at this time of year.
The river runs in a canyon with unclimbable walls for over a mile upstream from where I entered it. You can see the walls in the pictures. In some places they're 70-80 feet tall. So, either you have to backtrack to the entry point to get out or fish the whole river to where the canyon ends. I fished the whole way.
I am curious about tracking how far you go while fishing. In this case, by the time I got back to my car my tracking app said I'd walked 4.1 miles, climbing (and descending) 540 feet.
The fish are the ones I expect here, 5-10 inch brookies, almost all looking well-fed. Good numbers. Not 'fish on every cast', but still good fishing.
Finally, a third place. Another never-been-stocked stream.
More brookies, but a little smaller overall than the stream above. The tails on some of these wild fish are almost transparent. You can see most of my shirt through this one's tail.
Then this, a fish that shouldn't be here.
This river flows into another river where these are stocked. That's surely where it came from. But, there are more barriers between here and there than I'd think they could get past. Not huge barriers, but waterfalls 5-6 feet high. The stocking season for these browns was only in June. Unless this is a holdover from last year, it hasn't had any high water to help it get upstream. It's here. It got here on its own most likely. Nice surprise.
On Wednesday, I went to see if the rain had improved things.
It has, a little. Rain from thunderstorms runs off fast. All the streams I visited were up over a few days before, but not hugely up.
Temps were good. I fished three streams. All were in the 61° to 63° range.
The first place was a stocked stream. All stocked browns like this.
About a 1/2 hour after I started fishing some others showed up just as I hooked a couple fish. That convinced them to stay, I think. The car had FL plates. Two fly guys and a kid with a spinning rod. I wasn't intending to spend much time there anyway, so on to the next place.
The second place I went isn't stocked, has never been stocked, and is higher up. There's a trail to get to it, but that trail took a beating last October. In some places the trail is just gone, like here:
In others there's a 3-foot-deep channel down the center of the trail for 100 feet or more.
This is one of the undamaged parts of the trail. It's not a great trail.
I walked in 3/4 mile to where the trail meets the river here:
This is a river with a big riverbed and not much water at this time of year.
The river runs in a canyon with unclimbable walls for over a mile upstream from where I entered it. You can see the walls in the pictures. In some places they're 70-80 feet tall. So, either you have to backtrack to the entry point to get out or fish the whole river to where the canyon ends. I fished the whole way.
I am curious about tracking how far you go while fishing. In this case, by the time I got back to my car my tracking app said I'd walked 4.1 miles, climbing (and descending) 540 feet.
The fish are the ones I expect here, 5-10 inch brookies, almost all looking well-fed. Good numbers. Not 'fish on every cast', but still good fishing.
Finally, a third place. Another never-been-stocked stream.
More brookies, but a little smaller overall than the stream above. The tails on some of these wild fish are almost transparent. You can see most of my shirt through this one's tail.
Then this, a fish that shouldn't be here.
This river flows into another river where these are stocked. That's surely where it came from. But, there are more barriers between here and there than I'd think they could get past. Not huge barriers, but waterfalls 5-6 feet high. The stocking season for these browns was only in June. Unless this is a holdover from last year, it hasn't had any high water to help it get upstream. It's here. It got here on its own most likely. Nice surprise.