beautiful

Fishing hard until the end of the season.

/ Tim Burns / 1 Comment

The end of trout fishing season is fast approaching here in New Hampshire. The brookies are moving upstream to spawn and my old fishing haunts almost appear to be fishless. I have found a new tiny stream to fish it’s very much off the beaten path. Every time I go I feel like I spent the day rock scrambling which I have. This stream comes down off the side of a mountain it truly is a headwater stream. This is a waterfall plunge pool, waterfall plunge pool type of fishery. To move from pool to pool you have to climb up a rock jumble waterfall. I am amazed at the little pools that I’m catching brookies in. At the end of the day I’m quite tired. However like I’ve said hundreds of times the reason I love trout fishing is because of the beautiful places that you do it in.

New water

/ Tim Burns / Leave a comment

So I got out today on the Saco River in between rainy days. I wanted to check out the area where the proposed new fly fishing stretch would be. This is a beautiful area and a little bit difficult to get to. So the hope is that the fly fisherman won’t have to deal with the tourists and their float tubes all summer long.

I’m told there are some large brown trout and rainbows here. I hooked into one large fish from underneath the dead fall tree however by the count of 5 the fight was over and he was off. A long distance release.

I had one other small fish rise to a dry fly but that was it. It got very hot and all fish activity stopped. It was about 11:30 anyhow so I moved on to a wild trout stream where it stays cool and shady all the time. Where I know I would catch some fish.

The Saco River looking north towards the presidential range

Headed over to the Ellis River. This is become my go-to stream. I love to fish right at the base of Mount Washington. Almost always get a handful of wild brookies.

Small wild brookies are always abundant in our Headwater streams.