Fishing the Mascoma River

I had never caught anything on the Mascoma River before, and I didn’t expect to have that streak broken tonight.  But on the second cast with a bead-head nymph on the end of the line, a small rainbow struck.  What was going to be a two hour casting practice jaunt on the Mascoma River turned into a rather productive evening of fishing, with one rainbow and three browns by the end.  Perhaps I’ll start fishing the Mascoma more instead of the Sugar.  Save on gas money.

My first fish – a small rainbow trout

My first brown. Different coloring than the third.

The Mascoma River, in all of its evening glory

The third brown of the night – this guy was the largest

Fishing the Sugar

I’ve never had much luck fishing out east.  I should qualify that.  I’ve never had uch luck fishing in rivers out east.  Thankfully, as tends to happen from time to time, that bout of bad luck ended yesterday evening on the Sugar River.  I’ve fished the Sugar River a few times before – it’s an absolutely beautiful river with a gorgeous stretch of fly-fishing only waters around Newport, NH.  After getting fed up with being in the library all day, yesterday I headed out at 3pm to see if I could finally catch something.  With a bead-head Prince and strike indicator on the end of the line, I set out, and caught fish I did.  I didn’t fish for too long – maybe just a couple hours – and didn’t catch tons of fish – only four – but what a joyous four those fish were.  All rainbows, between 10 and 14 inches.  Let them all go to be caught another day.  (Hopefully that day will be sometime soon)

Picture taken from an old railroad bridge that crosses the river.

The main access to the river is an old railroad track that has been converted to a recreational-use trail.

This was the biggest one I caught – put up quite a fight for a guy his size

Spring Break in New Mexico

A little over a month ago now I was on a spring break adventure in southern New Mexico.  Needless to say there were many adventures, including some of the most horribly maintained trails I’ve ever hiked on, many trout for dinner, snow, sun, swimming, getting lost, finding cool rocks, fording streams, climbing to the top of cliffs, etc etc.  I’m too lazy now to write up a full account, but hopefully some pictures will suffice.

Some amazing clouds presented themselves just after sunset on the first night out in the woods

Looking back down the canyon that we had come up on day one

The group hiking up a ridge from trail creek

Somewhere up on the ridge of trail creek

I love big trees, especially if they are ponderosas. This was at about 7000ft, descending down to the West Fork of the Gila

Still in the trees, just after a boggy marsh

Carrie striking an endearing pose at a trailsign

Our campsite at White Creek flats

It was just about full moon – everything was visible in the middle of the night

Oh really? That was where we ended up going.

We went swimming here. It was amazing. I like gorges.

Tree 1; Sign 0.

I found this one amusing as well

The campfire at Hell’s Hole. Driftwood abounded and made for a great fire

Wendell crossing the river about 10 miles from the end of the journey

Some amazing cliffs presented themselves in the vicinity of our last campsite near Grave Canyon

Me, on a cliff, overlooking camp. One of the few pictures of me on the trip

The last day we hiked by a big cliff dwelling, which was about 800 years old

Slacklining

I live at a house called Grandma’s House.  It is a house usually occupied by climbers, and as such they like to play with ropes and webbing.  A certain concoction of such is the slackline.  A slackline is basically a piece if webbing tied quite tightly between two trees.  The objective of the slackline is to walk on it, kinda like a balance beam.  I was skeptical at the beginning of this past fall, but now I am a convert.  A few pictures are below.

A Bike Ride to Flooded Country

New Hampshire has a tendency to flood now and then.  It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, it is quite spectacular.  I went up on a bike ride up to the Ompompanoosuc River – a river that is usually nice and low and time.  The flood-control dam provides a nice place to bike to, and usually from the top of the earthen dam you can see the river meandering below.  Well, right now it is a lake.

My bike on the road, with the river just about a foot away from cresting over and flooding the road-way

This usually is a small little river. Now it is a giant lake, with the water level about 20 feet above where it usually is

A good five feet of this white pine is underwater