Lake Sunapee

August 11 2011 launched the boat at the state park in Newbury NH. The day was a typical summer afternoon, pretty much glass calm water.That launch is pushing it for my boat. Its actually a brook launch and in August there is not much water to float a boat off the trailer. I was alone this day. Marked a good group of fish in 25 feet of water feeding on a school of bait fish. I was trolling with small Sutton spoons on both riggers. The Mt Sunapee tour boat was making its run north from Newbury and I was timing my turn to clear its path. One of the riggers tripped off with a nice 3.5 pound salmon. My boat is now heading north along the east bank with the tour boat coming up behind a little closer to the shore than I was. As I get the fish close enough to the boat to realize just how big it was, the other rigger tripped with another salmon. By now the tour boat is along side, I have a 9' trolling rod in each hand doing my best to get my boat out of the path of the tour boat. I'm sure the state tourism dept would have appreciated what the folks on the tour boat were seeing! I lost the first salmon at the boat as I tried to get it with a rod in each hand. I did boat the second fish which was a nice 4# summer salmon. Thats Dan holding his nice four pounder we picked up on the 19th at the same place.

Balch Pond, Wakefield NH

Jan 22, 2012 Dan, Paul and I spent our first day on the ice crappie fishing on Balch Pond in Wakefield NH. Paul had scoped out the pond the week before and found us a parking place, although it was under a no parking sign. Like most ponds in the state, you can fish all you want but finding a place to park is always a problem. I spent some time reading up on crappie the week before. We had a good map from the NH F&G web site and a GPS which took straight to a preselected spot in 30' of water, directly on the Maine/NH border. Dropped a small shiner down to about 20' and in no time had our first crappie. Hooking just behind the dorsal fin, causes the shiner to tip down slightly and it will constantly try to swim towards the bottom, crappie respond well to this movement. Jigged up a second small one on a small worm tipped jig from the same hole. Weather was great for fishing no wind, but not so good for catching. Bright sun in a blue sky all day. Temperatures ranged from zero to early 30's. Caught two white perch, three crappie and a pickerel. The crappie were suspended, the white perch were feeding directly off the bottom, which is normal behavior. Deep fried the crappie in a tempura batter...wonderful!