Yesterday was horrible weather here in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire so instead of fishing I took the day to work and visited my dad at the nursing home. Mom and Granny went to North Conway to do what women do. The forecast for today however was superb so to make up for yesterday’s lost time Granny and I made an early jaunt to my smallmouth bass haunts near the family cottage.
The problem however was wind. All we have is my Oldtown canoe and I struggled to handle the boat. Unfortunately Granny’s shoulder is still messed up from Mexico and she can’t fish nor paddle so I was trying to do both. I caught a few rock bass and jumped one good smallmouth but soon gave up on the boat fishing. Here’s a nice little dock spider that helped me tie up the canoe when we got back!
We returned to camp for a relaxing breakfast then when it warmed up went fishing on foot down the old Wolfeboro railroad tracks. There’s some ponds and access points to Lake Wentworth and there’s always at least some sunfish to catch.
I fished with my sister Becky. Granny went for a hike with mom way down the tracks. My sister rarely hits the blog but she can fish. Becky is eight years younger and when I lived in Jackson Hole she spent summers living with Granny and I when she was in college. All she did was fish and dang near took the same path as me. But somehow she dove into the real world instead.
Becky started the morning with a surprise fish. She caught a black crappie. It was a number of years ago that I caught the only two crappie I’ve caught in New Hampshire and it was in the same exact spot. She got this one on a popper.
Crappie are fun to catch so I moved in next to her and we both tossed poppers to where she caught him. Twenty minutes went by with no luck so I went subsurface with a chartreuse Mop fly. Crappies love chartreuse, yellow and white flies similar to jigs.
I made a long cast and let my fly sink from sight. I’m using a floating line so I was counting on my 8 feet of 0X Flouro to get me down. Once my fly was out of sight I watched the tip of my fly line using it like an indicator. It jumped and I set. Sure enough I nailed a crappie of my own.
I caught several of the crappies before spotting a small chain pickerel peering from the lily pads. He was watching the commotion and looking for some action himself. I’d had my fill of crappies so cut off the Mop and tied my popper back on. One cast and I had the little chain pickerel.
We caught a lot of fish on the old railroad tracks. I love fishing for little sunfish and pond fish so much I lose track of time. Before we knew it Mom and Granny were hitting us with texts telling us they were overlooking the lake at Garwood’s drinking ice cold beers. We reeled it in and called it a day.
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