On Saturday morning, Nick and I met up with our friends Aaron and Ethan to head north to White Mountains of New Hampshire. On the way up, it was obvious that the rivers were swollen from all of the rain we had through July. I have never seen them this high, this late in the summer. We stopped at our favorite pancake house for breakfast before hitting the trail.

It was a short drive to the Lincoln Woods parking area and trailhead from there. We had a lot of camping and fishing equipment to pack. Nick and I were both bringing conventional fly fishing gear and our tenkara rods. Several of the small tributary streams are perfect places for the tenkara style of fishing and I was looking froward to that. After assembling our gear and doing last minute checks, we hiked the 3 miles up to our campsite.

The trip up went really fast! We scouted the camping area and found a site with a picnic table! A luxury in the woods.

We set up camp and then suited up for a hike up-river to find some wily trout. This section of the Pemigewasset is mostly Brook Trout. The river was flowing fast with extremely high water. I caught 1 smallish 9″ brookie on a rod with one of those reel things attached (a little tenkara joke). It took a cast across the raging current to get to where the fish was in the calmer water on the other side. It was a tough day of fishing, with that being the only trout caught. My son caught something about 2″ long that we did not get a close look at. I suspect it was a fingerling Brookie.

I was looking forward to Sunday when were planning to fish one of the tributaries that I knew was ideal for tenkara. Unfortunately, my son had tucked his Iwana into his wading belt and lost it. We looked everywhere so he must have lost it in the stream when we aborted a crossing – the water was too deep and swift.

(sorry, the lens was a bit steamed up!)

Here’s Aaron in his natural habitat:

After a few hours of fishing and exploring the river and a tributary, it was time to head back to camp and make dinner. (note to self; ALWAYS bring water where ever I go!)

Aaron and Ethan made some fantastic pasta and tomato sauce. I made a peach/berry cobbler in a boiling bag! It was pretty good.

We lounged around camp, talked and prepared for the next day’s fishing. The weather held out and it was a nice, cool and dry evening – perfect sleeping weather. After hanging our food in a bear bag, we hit the sack.

The plan was to walk back to the van (3 miles) and leave the packs there. Then, hike up the other side of the Pemi since we could not cross. At 3 miles, the Franconia Brook runs in to the Pemi via a series of plunge pools carved into the granite. This is perfect tenkara water.

The next day, we packed quickly and headed down. The hike went quickly. We packed lightly – no waders or boots – for the 3 miles up to Franconia Brook. I only brought my tenkara rod.

At about 1 mile in, I stopped at a small stream to try my fly at a brookie I saw luring. No luck, so we headed up-stream. Somewhere along the way, I broke the tip on my Yamame – about 1/2″ below the metal tip. I had only brought my Yamame so I needed to figure out a fix while we continued the hike up.

When we got to the trailhead to the tributary, we stopped for lunch and I pondered my rod tip. Being a rod builder, I analyzed the damage and had an idea. I grabbed the stub of graphite sticking out of the metal tip with my hemostats and pulled it out. I then reinserted the rod tip in to the metal tip. The fit was a bit loose but workable. Now I just needed some way to keep it on. Some hikers walked by so I asked if they had a bandaid for my fly rod. They did! Here is the result, you can see the short broken tip stub to the right of the repair. The bandaid seemed to do the trick. 

We continued the short hike up to the plunge pools to do some fishing.

Aaron and I had success catching the small brookies living in a deep pool. There were some larger fish deep down – I’m guessing 20′ or so – but we couldn’t get anything down that deep. The brookies were fun and really beautiful. Ethan caught a nicely colored brookie too. Nick was not having good luck. He had a fish strike his fly at least 20 times – different flies and 3 different rods too – take the fly below the surface, and then not hook up. It wasn’t the fly or hook, it wasn’t the technique, it was the fish. It was one of those days.

Ethan had a little boo-boo on the rocks and used the little piece of left-over bandaid to stop the bleeding.

At the end of the day, I caught 6 brookies in the big yellow-green pool. Aaron got a good photo of me, the fish and my Yamame. I’ll add it once he sends it to me. EDIT: and here it is:

It was a great weekend of backpacking, fly fishing and friendship!

I looked around and noticed little black stoneflies laying eggs on the water. The female hits the water with a splat and skitters across the surface – upstream, downstream, with the wind, against the wind – what ever direction they want. One even landed on my thumb, so I took these photos of her:

I also noticed a trout on the opposite bank rising to these stoneflies – coming out from under a log. I slowly waded out being as quiet as I could. Once in my spot, I selected a little black stonefly pattern that I had tied earlier this week – size 16. I tied it on and readied to cast. I like tying flies on while I’m in the stream, the extra couple of minutes it takes lets any fish spooked by my wading to settle down.

On my 3rd cast, I hooked and landed the Rainbow Trout that was eating the stoneflies! The bait fishermen watched incredulously. I slowly backed out of “my” spot and hiked further upstream to fish a more out of the way area!

It was an extremely cold weekend, it was down to below 0 on Friday night. On Saturday morning a group of boys wanted to get going so we headed on to the ice. I drilled the first hole to show the boys how to use the auger. The ice was a good 15″ thick. As I rigged the tip-up, the Scouts moved to the next location and drilled the hole. It was ready when I arrived with the rest of the gear. We put in 3 tip-ups. The boys also wanted to do some jigging so we made jigging rods out of some sticks, ice line, a tippet, hook and shiner. We ended up with 7 holes, 3 with tip-ups and 4 for hand jigging.

First catch was a 12″ cat fish caught on the stick. Then FLAG and we had a fish on one of the tip-ups. Unfortunately, it got away as the Scout hand-over-handed him in. That’s part of the learning! Then a few minutes later, another FLAG on the same tip-up. This time, they landed him – an 18″ Chain Pickerel.

We left the tip-ups and “rods” set while we went in for lunch and when we came out, another 18″ Chain Pickerel was on one of the rods. That was the end of the action for a few hours as Scouts drifted in and out of ice fishing and other activities.

Secret Ice Fishing Dance

After dinner, my son and his friend went to check the traps and as he was pulling up one of the “rods” he felt a tug, so he set the hook and carefully brought in a 24″ Chain Pickerel. Not a bad day all in all and a new group of boys experienced some fun ice fishing!

Once we retrieved the N and W minutes, plugging them in to our Garmin 60CS was easy enough. Unfortunately, the day was very overcast and the Garmin had trouble keeping a good lock on the satellites. We were able to get within 100′ of the location and I used “dead reckoning” based on the mapped coordinates and lay of the land to find it. We spent about 15 minutes before finding the well hidden cache!

Here is a photo of the original contents of the cache:

And here is what we took (the GeoCaching US Postage Stamp) and left (the red ladybug):

Here’s me heading out:

And a quick shot of Nick checking something out on shore:

Last week when we kayaked on the Squannacook River, we saw lots of beavers. Last night we saw (and heard) quite a few Great Blue Herons. Since the W60 also takes video, I recorded this clip of Nick trying to sneak up on a resting heron. You can hear him squawk as he flies away.

I know the canoe/kayak launch for this part of the Squannacook can be difficult to find, so here is a map to help out. The biggest soure of confusion is that there are 2 Townsend Roads – one on the east (or Groton) side of the river and the other on the West (or Shirley) side. You want the one on the east (Groton) side of the Squannacook. If you are coming off of Rt 225 and heading North from West Groton, look for the Groton Water Department building on your left – it will be past the Vose complex (on your left) and shortly afer the Vose Field (on your right). Turn left on to the dirt driveway and continue across the abandoned railroad tracks. You’ll see the river ahead as you follow the left bend in the driveway.

(click for larger map)

The launch is upstream of a dam and is a large flat body of water. Once rounding the bend to the main river , paddling upstream became more strenuous in some places, but as long as we kept momentum it wasn’t too bad. I paddle the Squannacook a few times (6ish) a year and this was the fastest flow I’ve paddled. There were also lots of newly downed trees which made progress difficult in 5 spots.

We paddled up to the rapids at the Bertozzi Wildlife Management Area and took a short break. For a little fun, we paddle up the rapids as far as possible,and made a 180^o paddle turn to coast down the rapids. It was fun!

The paddle back to the launch was fast – going with the current was a lot easier. Just round a bend, we heard a huge splash as we saw first one and then a second beaver slapping their tails when they saw us. We paddled over them and turned the next bend. There they were again, just sliding down the bank back in to the stream! They slapped again and disappeared. We continued on around the next bend and there they were again! More slaps and splashes. 

The river straightened out a bit as we closed in on the launch. We surprised 4 more individual beavers out on the water. I think this was the most beavers I have seen in one time!

See all of the photos here.