It was a long trip across country yesterday. Granny and I arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire at 11:45 PM. By the time we got our luggage and hopped in the car with my brother it was 12:15 AM and we didn’t get to Wolfeboro, New Hampshire until 2 AM. I threw down my insulate pad and my sleeping bag on the screen porch of the family camp and slept where I slept every night as a kid during summers.
Despite not getting my head down till 2 AM I heard the birds going off early at daylight and soon the church bell rang five times across the Wolfeboro Bay from camp. I wanted to get up then but was too tired. An hour later when the sun was up and six church bells went off I sat up to give waking up another try. This time there was no way out of it. Young Montana, my eleven year old niece, was patiently waiting, staring at me with her pink Ross Rod combo I got her for Christmas several years back in hand.
Montana asked my permission to head down to the dock to do some fishing. Before I could answer she graciously ran to the kitchen and made me a coffee and soon I was watching her tie on a bass popper I gave her a few years back. Montana landed a rock bass on her first cast.
I relaxed while Montana terrorized the fish around the dock. She landed a heap of the nonnative rock bass, a few pumpkinseeds and a smallmouth. As you can see the smallie was exceptional and the biggest fish of her life. I was probably the most surprised!
Later in the day Granny and I got our licenses and I paddled Montana down to my old favorite haunt, Back Bay. I had her casting Chernobyl ants to the weeds and she landed a bunch more bluegills, pumpkinseeds, rock bass and her first yellow perch. We literally spent the entire day back there. Montana seems to have taken to fly fishing the way I did when I was her age. Needless to say I’m super stoked and tomorrow we’ll get at it again bright and early.
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