Saturday April 27th 2011. We fished a body of water under the broken nose of an old man and we caught an awful lot of very large brookies. It was our first trip since Oscar died. Oscar was our dog of 12 years. We think he had a word with the fish gods because they threw us a really big bone this time. Everything was down deep on bead head nymphs and streamers. It was cold and at times it was wet but it was great early season fishing. A couple of these fish looked to be around 5 pounds.

Ice out was about a week ago so we froze our ... it was jolly cold in the water.


This is one of the 5 pounders I caught. One was a big male with a deep belly and the other was a longer female.

You can just about see the fly ... a smallish bead head nymph with a little red on it. Ethan tied it the night before. The fish were all stockers probably put in right after ice out.

One of the smaller males.

I (Ethan) spent the fall of 2010 as a conservation intern out west ... and I don't mean around Worcester. Of course, when I was not working like a slave I did a little fishing. Here is a sampling. The first picture is a Saturday morning on the San Juan river near Navajo Dam in New Mexico ... a magnificent and world famous tail water that is choc full of trout that get carpet bombed on the weekends.

Here is a picture of Profile Lake in Franconia, NH ... I'm kidding, this is Colorado.

Here is a clip of me catching a 15 inch brown on the San Juan. I caught this fish on a double nymph rig. The fish went for a small zebra nymph on the bottom. Next time I go I plan to take a camera crew with me because I nearly released the camera instead of the fish.

It is January of 2011 and the lakes of New Hampshire are frozen over and ice out isn't for months. I took the dog hiking along the Pemi and found some really nice looking water. A couple of years ago I pulled a sleepy brookie out of the river in February who took my woolly bugger on the first look.

Upper Connecticut Trophy Section October 11th and 12th 2008

We made it to the Upper Connecticut for the last weekend of the 2008 season. We drove up from our place in Lincoln, stopped in Colebrook for breakfast and then continued north until the cell phones could not pick up a signal. We drove northwards in our quest for trout and eventually sound ourselves at River Road. We admired the Lopstick sign and the 4 legged butcher shop sign. The weekend was dry which was a pleasant surprise for us because every other trip was a soaker. The water level was a little lower than our last trip but the fishing was good nonetheless. The mornings were cold so we got a late start on both days. On Sunday morning we ate breakfast at Tall Timbers and the pancakes and french toast were delicious. Back Lake was as flat as a mill pond and the tourists were having a great time strolling around the shore.

After a wild ride Ethan landed this nice salmon on the Sunday. He caught two on the day. This one was around 18 inches long.

Ethan out-fished me on both days and completed the Trophy section grand slam (rainbow, brookie, brown and salmon) on the Sunday when he landed this brown trout. This was the first brown we ever caught up here. The lad is a master with a double nymph below a strike indicator. I am far from a master of this technique.

Here is one of three nice Rainbows that I caught on Saturday. I caught all of them on dry flies. I had a lot of hits on a hares ear nymph and have to admit that I missed way more than I should have. The fishing at the Upper Connecticut is great but the best thing is that you really can get away from it all.



Here is a clip of Ethan fighting a salmon. Oscar our crazy hound, decided to swim over and check out the action. I had to cut the action short because I had to scamper down stream and net the bugger.


The banks of the Upper Ct are pretty steep and you have to be prepared to bushwhack your way to the good spots.

We finally made it to the trophy section of the Upper Connecticut over the weekend of August 2nd. It rained most of the time and the with the river at flood stage on the Monday it was essentially unfishable. This picture shows the pool right below the Carr Ridge Road bridge. This has to be the most over fished stretch of the river. We had a great weekend and caught rainbows, brookies and some salmon. Ethan did much better than me and battled a big landlocked salmon for twenty minutes. After fighting the monster all over the river it bore down and glued itself to the bottom where it eventually worked it's way loose.

Oscar at Pearl Lake

Oscar decided to take a break from swimming in favor of a boat ride. I fished Pearl Lake for hours with some results. I lost two big trout to a deep trolled wooly bugger. I took a couple of perch on a gray ghost and a nice rainbow to a mayfly. As you can see from this video the trout were rising all over. I couldn't figure it out what they were rising for but I'm not complaining.

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We fished Archery Pond in Hookset and caught some smallish brookies and some hefty rainbows ... I caught the smallish brookies and Ethan got the hefty rainbows. The fishing really heated up when the sun started to fade and the mayflies drifted down from the trees and flitted across the surface to lay their eggs. The trout were going wild and we simply cast mayfly patterns toward the real flies.

We had no luck in the rivers. We tried the Swift, Saco and the Pemi without any success. We caught a few brookies at Sky pond. A sink tip line was essential although I bet you could catch them on the surface in the evening. The trout hit a chartreuse wooly bugger and an olive hares tail nymph. We saw some surface activity but nothing to write home about.

Sky Pond is close to a perfect spot to fish. The pond is isolated, lined with trees with no roads within earshot. There are herons and hawks overhead and the loudest noise comes from the resident beaver.

We had some luck at Profile. The best fish was this 14" brookie caught on a woolly bugger. We did see an 18 incher come out of the lake.


People who don't go fishing are missing out on some pretty impressive scenery. Eventually the clouds rolled through the notch and we fished until dusk in the mist under a thick blanket of low cloud.