Lamprey River April 26th 2008

Ethan had some success today. He caught a 12 inch brookie and a 16 inch rainbow using a double nymph rig (copper john and prince) with a strike indicator. I broke my personal skunking record after missing a number of decent hits.

Lamprey sucker action!

Ethan caught this hefy sucker on woolly bugger. If you ever hook a sucker it will put up a heck of a fight. It took 20 minutes to land this bruiser after it dragged him all over the river.
If you would like to read an article about the gentle art of spearing suckers you can click on this link. The article is from the New York Times in 1890.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9904EED71539E033A25750C2A9629C94619ED7CF&oref=slogin

Something fishy about the Nissitissit.

The lad convinced me to schlepp to the Nissitissit River in Pepperell, Mass for the second time in three days. On the first trip we visited the "Evening Sun Fly Shop" which is an excellent place. The proprietor, Charles (Charlie) Shadan set us up with some fine new wading boots, pointed us in the right direction and gave us some solid advice on how and where to catch some of the recently stocked trout. The weather was perfect, the river was extremely pleasant and loaded with insect activity. We chatted with a number of friendly and informative local fishermen who all raved about the river, the Evening Sun, Charlie, and the joys of catching the trout that were plain to see in certain spots.
The only problem was that we could not figure out how to catch a fish and we didn't meet or see anyone else catch anything. We tried almost every trick in the book (we held off on dynamite) and got skunked twice in a row. It seems like the river has taken a bit of an early season pounding and the fish have decided to go on hunger strike. I am pretty sure that this river will produce when the hoards have left. The Nissitissit is a very nice river, we'll be back and we will figure out how to pronounce the name and how to pry a trout from it.