Fall Fishing On The Upper Connecticut

Although I’ve only been back to school for thee days up here in VT/NH (I am now living in VT, and still schooling in NH), when friday came around I knew that I needed to get out of the Upper Valley for the weekend.  Crashing down into reality after a glorious, if hot, summer takes it toll, ya know?  We had our first of the fortnightly CS friday beer events on friday, so I was staying put for that night.  When saturday came around, I slowly decided that I wanted to spend another weekend fishing on the Upper Connecticut River, up near Pittsburg, NH.

I left town entirely too late, but ready for an adventure and some supposedly tough fishing conditions.  The drive up was great, with the autumnal colors really starting to show their best in the NEK.  Any pictures that I may have taken while driving turned out terribly, so I’ll spare you that.

When I got into Pittsburg, I quickly set up my tent in the campground at Lake Francis State Park and then hurried to get out on the water.  It was late in the day, but I had a few hours of fishing left.

There was some great foliage along the river.

Upon getting set up where I wanted to be on the river, I noticed the distinct lack of any bug/fish activity on the surface of the water.  With this fact in mind, I decided to fish a double dropper nymph rig – by no means elegant to cast, but hopefully something that would work.  Initially I started with a SJ worm and a pheasant tail, based on previous successes in this stretch with the pheasant tail nymph.  That didn’t turn any heads, so I switched out the SJ worm for a garish looking stonefly nymph.

I fished these two flies for a bit, making my way towards the top of the pool I was at, but again with no success.  Right as I was going to pull my line out of the water, I saw a flash and all of a sudden I had this nice brookie on.

I went back to the top of the pool where I caught the previous fish, with high hopes of hooking into another brookie.

What I ended up hooking into was beyond my wildest expectations.  Look at those colors!

This fish was so fat that it didn’t fit in my outstretched palm.  (I’m guessing she is full of fish eggs).

With that, my first day of fishing was effectively over.  I had maybe another 10-15 minutes, but the light was quickly waning and I still had to cross the river to get back to my car – a somewhat intimidating task, even when it’s light out.

When I awoke in the morning on sunday, I found incredibly drab and overcast skies.  When I got out on the river, I again saw absolutely no rising fish.  I decided to continue swinging nymphs, but that didn’t seem to be working out this morning.  This is where I started out on saturday.

Eventually I managed to do something right and caught this nice rainbow.

After that one rainbow, I wasn’t able to catch anything else in that lower stretch of river.  I decided to head upstream, to where I had been fishing the day before.  However, on my way up I saw a nice spot of water that just had to hold at least a few fish.

Within a few minutes I managed to catch this beautiful brown beast.

Anywhere you looked, the foliage was great.

I also managed to catch this nice little rainbow in the same spot.

As my time was limited (I still needed to drive back to Norwich tonight), I left that pool soon after having caught the last rainbow and drove upstream to another access point.

There were a few more deciduous trees up there, so the autumnal colors were even better.

I spent some good time fishing the pool above the falls.

I didn’t manage to catch anything in this last stretch of river, but it was (sadly) time to leave.

Lake Franics as I was driving out.  Although It’s not terribly obvious in this photo, the colors were really awesome along the lake.

And finally a nice panoramic of the lake, which if you enlarge (click it!) will give you a much better idea of the foliage that was going on there.

After the brookies of the previous night and the brown trout from today, I’m quite pleased with how this little trip went.  The fishing was definitely tough, but it was fun nonetheless, and the colors were great – 2-3 days from peaking, I would imagine.  A great weekend, all in all.