While our most anticipated guest (Mr. Hex) on the lake has not yet made an appearance, we are currently in the midst of two major insect hatches on Back Lake: Black Caddis and Brown Drakes. The picture of the brown drake above was taken this morning on our boat house.
It looks like northern New Hampshire has been spared the really heavy rainfall that some other areas in New England received yesterday and last night. We did get a bit over an inch of rain yesterday, but that’s not as bad as what was predicted. There’s a chance of showers today, but the wet weather has passed for the most part.
We’re entering the sweet spot of our fishing season, if you speak to most seasoned north country anglers. The river flows are dropping, the water temperature is warming, the insect hatches are coming, and our fish are becoming much more active. The switch has been flipped, and we are near the best month of our fishing season: June.
What a difference a day makes! It went from midsummer temperatures over the last few days back to cold and blustery today. That didn’t stop our guests from getting out on Back Lake, but they really earned their trout today.
After an excruciatingly long wait, spring has finally arrived in northern New Hampshire. We’ve had two weeks of mostly spring-like temperatures and even some sun too, and the seemingly impregnable sheet of ice that had a hold of Back Lake has bid us “Adieu” for six or seven months.
How’s the fishing? The Connecticut River has been a bit of an enigma lately for some of our guests – water flows are stable (85 CFS at Second Lake Dam, 154 CFS at First Lake Dam, and 300 CFS at Murphy Dam), but there’s been a lot of anglers on the river (all sections, but especially the Trophy Stretch), so our belief is that the fish are hunkered down, biding their time.