Nulhegan River Fishing Report: 10/26

The New Hampshire fishing season is already closed but that doesn’t mean that fishing opportunities in the north country are all over. The Vermont fishing season is open until October 31, and with the great weather we had yesterday, my leaky waders and boots that need replacing were calling me again …

The Nulhegan River (the “dead fall trap” river in native American) is a major tributary joining the Connecticut River at Bloomfield, VT, right across the river from North Stratford, NH. While I have fished it’s upper reaches on the East Branch of the Nulhegan for wild brook trout, I had no experience fishing it near Bloomfield, so my expectations were tempered quite a bit. The Nulhegan has no dams on it, so the flow of the river is totally at the whim of mother nature, and while the river looked as though it had been pretty high earlier this week (when we had some rain), the levels had come down to a good flow due to the last few days of nice weather.

There’s plenty of structure to hold trout throughout this lower section, but the flow of the river has to be right for the trout to be there. It took a while to find suitable pools and runs where trout might lie, as the river in general is shallow and straight for a good part of it, but eventually I happened upon a big sweeping run and pool that turned out to be pretty good.  A selection of streamers to start produced only short strikes and misses, as if the fish were just nipping at my offerings, but as this was going on, there were a couple of larger fish rising consistently near the tail of the pool. The only insects I noticed were very small Blue Wings (24?) and sporadic caddis, so the floating line came out, and my new favorite fly – the Klinkhammer – made another appearance.

It didn’t take too long, as one of my first few drifts with the Klinkhammer (14)  must have been drag free – a beauty of a rainbow gulped it down, apparently thinking that he was tired of eating small BWOs, relishing the idea of a larger meal. It was a great fight – spirited and acrobatic, but I got him in – all of 17″ and colorful (I’ve caught wild rainbows in Montana that didn’t look as pretty as this fish did). That would be it for that pool, so I scouted for more suitable water a little further north.

Don’t let anyone tell you that flattery won’t get you anywhere – I used it to perfection on a landowner that gave me permission to park on his land and fish one of his favorite pools. He also gave me the skinny on how the fishing is on the Nulhegan – seems like it’s good early in the season and later in the season, as it warms up during the summer months.

Within a few minutes of fishing this pool, where a small stream enters the river and creates a back eddy with a nice foam line, I had landed two more rainbows and lost another on a White Wooly Bugger. None of them matched the size of the first, but their colors were also spectacular – the last rainbow was the darkest I have ever caught – deep blue (almost black) back and fins, with the “rainbow” the color of plum. This was a special trout that I should have taken a picture of, but I decided to keep casting instead.

Supposed to make a trip to the Clyde River in Newport on Tuesday, but with Hurricane Sandy coming, it might not work out, so if this was the final fishing excursion for the 2012 season, it was a great success.