Sunday, October 31, 2010

More salmon!

My last post said I was going with Stan to fish the Swift River - wrong!  Thursday night a new client called about going salmon fishing.  George is an experience salt water angler, and does some freshwater fly fishing, but very little in New England.  He saw my broodstock Atlantic salmon video on my guiding website and thought that it would be fun. I recommended against it, since the water was a little high from the rain we had last Tuesday/Wednesday.  But George really wanted to try it, so I agreed to take him to the Pemi, and depending on the water level, possibly go to the Lamprey or Cocheco Rivers in the afternoon.  We started out below the Ayers Island dam in Bristol.  It was a little high (about 2300CFS, while I prefer 2,000 or less.)  We got one salmon there on a hair-wing Black Ghost streamer.  It was his first salmon, and we were both glad not to be skunked.  After a little while we moved down river to the Coolidge Woods Road section.  The wading was a bit tough and we weren't able to get to some of my favorite spots, but after many casts and many fly changes, we saw a small salmon jump.  George cast his fly in that direction and almost immediately he hooked a good fish.

It turned out to be the biggest salmon I have seen in at least 3 years.  I estimate 25+ inches and 6 pounds or so. Welcome to fly fishing in NH!  (Just don't expect this result every time!) We fished a little longer and then at lunch we discussed options.  Since the water was too high to enable us to fish some of my best spots and it was totally unfishable in Franklin (they were releasing about 5,500CFS) we decided to hit one of the rivers in SE NH that have been stocked since the first of October.  We only had time to fish one river, so we went to the Lamprey River.  We proceeded to hook into about a dozen trout on a variety of nymph patterns - caddis larva, small Zug bugs, copper john, soft hackles, etc.  It turned out to be a great day with both quantity and quality of fish exceeding expectations. A day to remember when the snow is flying and our thoughts turn to the fly tying table and fishing next season.
This week I might try the Swift, the SE NH rivers or maybe somewhere else. Stay tuned !
 

5 comments:

  1. Gerry,
    Nice fish...

    And damn that water is high. Those sandblasted rocks are slick without the high water. That must have been some tough wading.

    That is awesome to see the salmon are still in there.

    -Eric

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  2. Tell George if he liked that to head to the Magolloway Rd bridge in Pitt for the spring salmon run. Those things were a fight and a half.

    -Eric

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  3. Gerry,

    Nice post, but did you ever land this fish and take some pictures for the client (and us to see)?

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  4. Yes, we landed it and the still pictures were taken with the client's camera and I will post after he sends them to me.
    thanks for your interest.
    Also, sorry the video is not so great, but I started the video after it looked like it was a good fish and didn't want to risk losing it by paying too much attention to the video.-Gerry

    Also, Eric, good thought about the CT River in springtime. See the April post with a video at the inlet to 1st CT. http://flyfishnewengland.blogspot.com/2010/04/springtime-landlocks.html#comments
    GC

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  5. Gerry,

    Glad you landed that fish. I was curious as we never did see pics and was a bit concerned with your use of using the camera to video over trying to land it! Can't wait to see them!!!

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