NOT YET

 

 

Still on Ice Out Watch....just for fun.  Told you the blog would be like watching ice melt, grass grow, yada yada yada!

 

Here's a live cam of Mt. Washington, just to peak your interest.  Actually a pretty clear image of the top of the mountain which is rare.

 

 

I think that I prefer right her, South of the Sun, where it's going to push 75 today.

 

Yesterday we went to a Scottish festival here in town.  A lot of cool stuff going on there and you will definitely see more about it on the blog and the website.  Just to mention a couple of the things which held our childish attention. 

 

First, since we own Missy our border collie mix dog, we watched the sheep dog herding ..... twice!

 

 

Of course had that dog been ours...those sheep would by now be approaching Jacksonville.  Missy has no discipline. 

 

 They also had a fellow who was showing raptors and flying some of them.  The highlight of that show was a Harris Hawk which just couldn't figure out all those nice high things to land on.  The top of the bordering pine trees, the carnival rides, and finally the top of pole in the Caber Toss.  Drove the handler nuts.  This image borrowed from the Internet.

 

We weren't close enough to that event to get a photo, but the above image shows a guy with a what I can only explain is a telephone pole in his hands which he hopes to toss some distance.  Well, as the man was preparing to throw the thing, the hawk decided to perch atop the pole for a look see around.  Put the brakes on the ole Caber Toss for a bit.  There was also an antique auto show going on and you will definitely see more about that is the days, weeks, months ahead.  See what you have to look forward to?

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 6 13

ICE OUT?  Not yet!

 

It's early for Ice Out on Lake Winnepasaukee in NH, but it looks like it's coming.  In the forties and fifties the next few days and it's early for such a thing to happen.  More normal is latter part of April, so we might be just about on time or a week early.  The blog will be like watching paint dry in the next few days as I will post the progress.  God, I need life!  This live cam image is from Rattlesnake Island directly across from Wolfeboro bay and looking north east.  The fishing really doesn't start till all the ice sinks.  Yep, it sinks.  Melting ice forms a lot of little holes, which then fill with water making the ice heavier than the water and thus it sinks.  Pushes the warm water from down deep up to the surface along with the bait fish (smelt) and predator fish such as trout and salmon.  That's when one wants to fish for them.  Right on the surface of the water....great sport!

Rattlesnake Island

Isectacio Salmo Salar Sabago

The real adventure began after we were all out of college and working at our chosen professions.  The period between High School and the first salmon trip to New Hampshire was a busy time.  College was begun and finished, marriages happened, careers were launched, children were born, and new groups of friends established.  Fishing more than an hour away from home was moved down the bucket list of important things to do  It took eleven years, but that itch to roam is sort of like a bad rash the keeps coming and going.  Something in later years we would call Shingles!  It’s always there, just takes a trigger to get it going.

It was somewhere around late April 1969 when America's host Abe, his father, and I went to the lake to fish for salmon for the first time.  As I recall, it was cold.  I hooked one fish in five days, watched him jump once and lost him.

That is Isectacio Salmo Salar Sabago, or in search of landlocked salmon.  Prior to this we had only heard about salmon in the big lake.

Landlocks are the same fish as the Atlantic salmon; however they live in a closed environments like a lake. They also do not run to the sea and then return to the rivers of their birth to spawn as do their Atlantic brethren. As a consequence most all of the fish in Lake Winnipesauke are annually stocked by the state.  The mature fish are netted in the fall, the normal breeding time for these critters.  They are stripped of their eggs and milt which are then taken to hatcheries to grow and thrive in order to provide for future generations.

The first salmon taken at the Bell Camp was not by one of our merry band of expert anglers, but the wife of our America's host.  Both Abe and I married girls named Sue.  And it was always told to me that his wife, Sue, caught the first salmon at the camp in bright sunshine off the dock on a spoon called a “Daredevil”.  However, the log for that day, also reports Abe as having caught a Salmon off the summer house that day as well.  The summer house is actually a gazebo perched on the rocky shore line on a small point of land about 40 feet from the main house.  The dock is directly behind and to the right of the summer house as we look from the water.  When we fish, the boats all leave the dock and we race to see who can get a line in the water first.  Many is the trip that the first fish caught was only fifty yards away from the dock and this gazebo.

 

 

 

For years neighborly fisherman say that they would laugh at us as we leave the dock on our daily forays.  Many would wait until we have left and then fish just about where this photo was taken.   It is a favored spot amongst the local anglers who know the water.  However, I contend that after forty years there is know one who knows these immediate waters better than we “The Expert Anglers”.

More pages from the log will show up here as I progress, but this is the one for June 21 and 22 of 1964. The fishing logs are incomplete, and our neglect at keeping an accurate record has plagued us over the years. I will endeavor to reconstruct as best as aging memory can serve.

 

 

The best time for fly fishermen, in our opinion, is immediately after the winter ice has finally melted for the season.  This usually happens in late April or early May, but can be as early as March such as this year of 2010.  The theory, and we have proven this to be an angler’s fact, is that the salmon (preferring mid fifty degrees) and lake trout (preferring fifty degrees) stay within the layer of water that offers the most optimum temperature for their species.  It is sort of like we old folks moving to Florida when our blood circulation gets so bad that we need warm weather all year round.  I never could understand my mother wearing sweaters in 80 degree weather.  Now I do!

 

The fish follow the temperature of the water up and down depending upon the season, sunlight, ambient temperature, and general weather conditions.  Believe me; we have argued these factors like old dogs chewing on a bone that no longer gives sustenance or

taste.

 

  At any rate when the water warms up in the late spring and summer, the fish will go deeper seeking that temperature they prefer.  There is a brief time in the fall and early winter when the water temperature at the surface cools sufficiently. Then they will feed on the surface again, but generally only in the early mornings or late afternoons.  Once the water freezes the upper layers of course cool, and the fish will sink again following the preferred levels.  Finally, in the spring lake ice begins to melt and form a honey comb. Those small open areas within the honey comb fill with water, thus making it heavier than the supporting water and it sinks.  All at once.  The sinking ice forces the warmer waters at lower levels to rise and the fish follow to the surface once again.  That is the time we want to be on the lake, early spring right after ice out.  Dragging (called trolling by we experts) long fly lines with long leaders of wispy mono filament, and flies designed to represent the smaller forage fish.

Therefore, the time they caught these fish and reported to the log is all wrong.  It was June (too late according to we experts), the wrong time of day (you play cards and nap in the middle of the day), and a bright sunny day to boot.

 

  We want overcast, fog, rain, freezing rain, or snow to complete the ideal situation.  And maybe a slight breeze so that the fish don’t clearly see that which is just below the surface.  Furthermore, the lure was made of metal and not feathers and shinny beads and therefore did not count in the daily pool. 

 

 

Goat of the day has to kiss the large fish of the day!

 

These were the seeds of a forty plus year odyssey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 5 13

We got a bunch of rain here yesterday and it was a chilly rain.  You know the kind that makes you want to do nothing but chill with a good book and a fire in the place.  Heard from our New Hampshire host of those 40+ years and even in Savannah he's bored.  Hey Jack everbody needs a down day once in a while. 

Thirty two degrees on the big lake this morning and it looks like the opening day of fishing season was pretty much of a bust as the fishermen haven't been back since.  They need the ice to melt and get a temperature inversion in the water bringing all the fish up from the deep water to the surface.  Maybe three weeks.

THE BIG LAKE AND CAMP 1958

Lake Winnipesauskee is in the center of the state of New Hampshire and is a glacial lake that is 182 miles around , 72 square miles in area, and with  253 islands.  It is just the type of place for two budding anglers to explore.  And explore we did!

There was and still is a 14 foot tin boat which was our craft of choice, not because there was a choice at that time, but because in 1958 it was our only boat.  It might have had a small outboard motor, but I know it did have two oars.  Over the years, this boat has been affectionately named “Putt” for the sound it makes when running.  Or, perhaps  suggesting that it is the little boat that could!  And it did/does.  I believe more fish have been caught from this little vessel than the totality of the tuna boats in all of the Atlantic and a good number in the Pacific.  Well, that is probably a fisherman's exaggeration.  But I have consistently out fished everyone in the group in this old boat.

 

 

The Bell Camp consists of a main cottage, a maid’s cottage, and a guest cottage all on about 100 acres of big woods.  There is also enough waterfront to make most Realtors salivate. The main cottage consists of a kitchen, one bath, a screened in porch, living room, and three bedrooms all with no insulation.  The fireplace is a primary source of heat with some small electric baseboard heaters for really cold nights.

 

 

There is of course the obligatory boat dock and a small rocky beach.  The rest is pine woods, owls, deer, red squirrels, chipmunks, ducks, and loons.  I suppose there have also been the occasional bear and moose wander by.  The road into the camp is of course dirt, and needs to be managed every year as runoff turns it into a roaring stream as soon as snow is out.  The “Drive” in is about a mile from a main road.

 

 

Ice out on the lake is an entirely different matter.  Guesses and pools amongst the locals all around the lake are taken, and the winner actually guesses ice out not within days, but hours and minutes.

Over the years, there have been subsequent trips where chain saws, hammers and saws, and paint brushes were amongst the fishing gear.  At times even golf clubs were thrown into the back of a Suburban, pick up, or SUV.  The fishing gear itself reduced itself in volume as the years progressed.  After all when you are young, there’s no telling just what lure, line, or fishing rod you might need.  We have had to refill the wood shed on a number of trips and felled dead pines to replenish it.  Yes, we burnt white pine exclusively and almost steadily for the usual five days we were present.  And yes, it became a problem one year but I get ahead of myself.

I recall that first year of introduction.  Small mouth bass, perch, and a few pickerel were the staple of the finny creatures to fall to our offerings.  There was a place called by the family as “The Spot” which was about 150 yards off shore of the property.  None of the locals knew where it was, but some could be found watching Abe’s grandmother with binoculars, row out in “Putt”, and then catch bass one after another.  The spot today is marked by GPS, but still produces good catches. 

On our excursion, we fished the spot a number of times with success using night crawlers and helgrimites.  I lost a “Large” fish at the black buoy across from the house and to this day I am sure it was a salmon, although the time of year was way wrong.  And we had no idea they even existed in the lake.  It struck, ran out about seventy yards of line and broke the lure off, all in the wink of an eye.  We found a small cove that had a few pickerel, and spent hours catching and re-catching them.  They were not kept because of their bony nature on the dinner plate.  And this was my introduction to the big lake in 1958.

Kinda a cold 51 degrees this morning in here Shangra La South.  But it's 29 on the big lake and that reminds me why I am in South Carolina and not New Hampshire.  Or for that matter Maryland.

                                                  THE OUTFITTERS

My introduction to what is called, by natives of New Hampshire, as the “Big Lake” began with a requisite stop in Wolfeboro, NH. There was any number of reasons to stop in this beautiful lakeside town. The first and foremost was to find out if the fish were biting. The rest of the reasons then developed from there. We had to obtain fishing licenses and buy bait. All of these “Reasons” were fulfilled at a place along the side of the lake called the “Lake Regions Sports Shop”. A stop there was not necessary, it was mandatory! As the years moved on this sporting good store was the place where one bought a license to fish, flies to tie on the long leaders also purchased, sinking or lead core lines, and any type of fascinating flies that the owner himself tied. The other reasons of supplies developed over the years as the necessity of purchasing food and adult beverages became important.

 

 

The Lake Regions Sport Shop is no longer in Wolfeboro, having been push out by a growing wine sipping, arts, and crafts crowd that have made the rents impossible. But the place in it’s time was as classic as a Norman Rockwell cover. It was owned by one Jim Warner who kept up on what the fish were doing. He would tell us who was catching what on what, he ran the shop, tied the flies, and was an all around nice guy.

Jim created a great number of the flies still used today as the lure of choice for old Salmo Salar. He is credited with inventing more than one of the flies which are supposed to imitate the smelt. Smelts are the small bait fish in the lake which provide most of the forage for the larger finny predators such as the bass, lake trout, large perch, and land lock salmon. In fact, the famed fly “Winnipesauke Smelt”, tied with tandem hooks is one of his inventions.

The latest part of April and first days of May are generally the time one wants to be on the lake to fish for salmon, and as the years past I think the arrival of the guys from New Jersey was always fun for Jim. When one asked for a license, he would say something like “Two of the other guys had already arrived”.

This was a pop shop of “Mom and Pop” fame, and Jim ran it as though you were his long lost brother. If you had gained a few pounds since the previous year, he would always say…..”Been eating well I see.” He must have remembered every one of his customers and was loved by most of the serious sport fishermen in the region. In April of 2002, Jim tied a memorial fly for his friend and fishing companion Vincent David Rodgers, Jr. This was the kind of guy he was, and so created the”Ghost Smelt” in Rodgers’ honor.

Jim was probably the last of the proprietors at the shop who would know first hand the straight story about the current fishing conditions. When it was salmon time in the spring, Jim would be out on the lake before the shop opened trying his luck. He often could be found on spots considered a favorite by local fishing guide and friend Glenn Morrill, who he called the “Dean of Winnipesauke”. They fished such spots as Moose and Ship Islands, Rattlesnake, and of course Wolfeboro Harbor where the store could be found.

Sadly in recent years the shop in Wolfeboro was sold, resold, and moved out of town. After Jim retired, the old shop had just lost a lot of charm. Yes, the equipment, flies, live smelt, night crawlers, and hellgrammites could still be purchased. But it just wasn’t the same. And the town was changing. No longer was it the lazy old town of the lake front home of the private school up the hill. But rather it is a tourist town which had been “Found”.

Jim still ties some flies to sell there and they are still as good as forty years ago, but you cannot find one with the old double trailer hooks. However, I do in fact, still have a couple of those old “Grey and Red Grey Ghosts” I bought on the first trip in
1958, and they still work!  His flies were then intended to lure the small mouth bass out of the depths, because on this trip north, salmon were not on our plate.



 
  

 

 

4 3 13

In Search of Salmo Salar Sebago

More Nostalgia!

 



It was “All in the game” and we were ready to “Catch a falling star” in the spring of ’58. Songs of the year on Billboard, school was over, loves loved, and new ones anticipated. Graduation from

Westfield Senior High School in New Jersey an era ended.

Elvis was inducted into the Army. Gigi, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Defiant Ones were hot movies of the year. Khrushchev became the premier of the Soviet Union and De Gaulle the Premier in France

. But who knew. Laurie London told us we “Had the Whole World in our Hands” and the Everly Brothers said “All we had to do was Dream”.

To write about ones high school class is a chore not taken lightly and one repeated over the years by many authors with varying degrees of success. This however, is not a story about a high school senior class. This is about two high school seniors embarking upon a life long adventure neither expected, but by which both have been amazed. Let it be said that I was and am not an “A” student as the song goes, nor a student of the English language. But I was a kid who was capable of transcending the cliques within the student body with a reasonable degree of aplomb.

Our class, not unlike most, was defined by the “Jocks” and what we now call the “Geeks”. The “In Crowd” and the “Out Crowd” were other significant descriptions. It is truly amazing to find these designations were virtually gone as early as the thirtieth year reunion. I guess because I played varsity baseball that I was in the “Jock Crowd”, but also a bit of the “In Crowd” because I dressed preppy cool. I think that I was also a member of the “Out crowd” too because I didn’t drink, never went all the way, or owned a motorcycle. I did own a ’51 Ford coupe, metallic green, and that was “In crowd”.

The car was customized as was the style of the time and I can remember trying to put after burners on the twin exhausts with the help of my friend Abe. He held the spark plugs to the exhaust pipes and I thought he said to go ahead and try it by turning on the ignition. The resulting shock caused him to jerk his head up in a crashing collision with the bumper. He was under the vehicle at the time. Abe still remembers that for some strange reason.

Even though the graduating class was large, there were smaller cliques as defined by a number of different things. In my case our group was defined by the neighborhood in which we lived. Whychwood was a small area of Westfield, NJ which was a bedroom community serving the New York City market. Many of our fathers commuted to the City every day, mothers kept the home, and we went to school. We walked to high school until one of us was old enough to drive, seventeen at the time. It would have been so un-cool to ride our bikes.  As I recall the first to get his license to drive was Kenny, “The Worm”!

We played sports after school or worked at part time jobs or both. In my case I worked part time in a sporting goods store, The Sport Center, all four years of high school. I worked three to six every day and nine till six on Saturdays. During the Christmas holidays we were open each night of the week until nine o’clock. When I worked until 9:00 PM, I ate dinner across the street at Jarvis’s drug store which also had a pretty good restaurant. School was over at 2:30

in the afternoon each day, so there was not a lot of free time for things like studying, dating, hunting, fishing, and baseball. But we all seemed to get it done including the requisite hanging out with friends at places in town like “Shades”, a soda fountain type place.

Innocence was never lost back then but high school hopes were always high. If a girl were to get pregnant, a real scandal would result and one out of 250 or so was a rarity. Graduates were headed for new lives, but most were destined to drift apart from their buddies after graduation.

A summer of final togetherness was necessary before the ritual of college

began. In other instances, jobs began and the reality of life was an earlier intrusion.

The nucleus of my crowd included the likes of Tom, Rick, Kenny or “Worm”, Bob or “Bobby”, Jim, Frank or “Abe” and me “Skip”. Normally after graduation, a week at the Jersey shore was the norm. Seaside Heights, NJ was the spot. This trip was really like what the college crowd today calls Spring Break. It was a right of passage for most of our colleagues. However, the parents of my immediate friends were much more visionary than us. We were restricted to home base and not allowed to play with the rest of our class. No drinking and womanizing for us. This really confirmed our “Out crowd” status much to our parents delight and our disgust.

I had introduced my friends to bow hunting and fishing in school so a replacement trip to my parents place on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay was the second choice. There were fewer girls, and no drinking, with my mother as a chaperon. This fit the other parent’s idea of a week’s after graduation celibate celebration. We had a good time fishing, crabbing, water skiing, and chasing girls in places called Rock Hall and Piney Neck. We caught more fish than girls thankfully, so it was still a time of innocence.

The Maryland trip was the seed for a lifelong experience. This experience established a precedent for two of the graduates which carried them forward to a forty plus year tradition. A tradition not duplicated by many people within a lifetime of experiences.

 

 

4 2 13

DEJA VU ..... All over again Jack!

 

Yesterday was the first day of salmon fishing in New Hampshire, April one 2013 and the big lake was still frozen except around the stream and docks at Wolfeboro!

 

 

This, a live shot from the cam at the docks.  Yep, they were fishing....forty three degrees at that.  And watching....that's a sport too!  Brought back a lot of old memories.  An example being the first chapter of something I wrote a few years ago about a trip a group of us took every year for over forty years.

 

 

LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE, NEW HAMPSHIRE

It is late April or possibly very early may. In fact it is very early in the morning in the New Hampshire wilderness, probably 5:30 or 6:00 A.M. Well, as close to wilderness as one can get on a lake in a state so near to Boston, Mass. The sun has not completely risen over the Eastern tree line. A tree line comprised primarily of old forest fir and pine, each competing for every square millimeter of sparse rocky soil.

The sun is still filtering through all the air pollution from the major metropolitan areas to the south such as Boston, Connecticut, and New York. The rising light is playing off the different chemicals deposited in the air, creating all the different colors one sees during the "Golden" hours.

Here the air is clear, clean, fresh and still, and Likely cold at that time of the morning. It smells of the pines where we spent the previous night, tightly rolled in sleeping bags, in a cabin like this built during the depression of the 30's.

There are five, sometimes seven, men who have spent forty years waking to this scene or a hundred variations thereof. For forty years these same five have endured each other's company for a week of landlocked salmon fishing on Lake Winnipesaukee. It is probably one of the only chances these men have to be together each year and the friendships can best be described as closer to that of brotherhood. There are times, of course, when the brotherhood is tested, but then that is more like sibling rivalry. Each is now approaching or passing the seventy year mark, but when the card games heat up and adult beverages flow, one would think they were still in college.  

 

Or at least think they are of college age.

Or simply behave as if they were college age.

In the first years we would play cards till midnight and fish at five. The measure of the adult beverages consumed was in the gallons. Today, bedtime arrives around nine pm and only an occasional bottle of wine or vodka is seen. Amazing what maturity can do, or undo!

Two boats, sometimes three, set forth into the image accompanying this piece. Each man is filled with anticipation of the first fish of the day (first is a winner in the daily pool) and even perhaps the largest of the day (another winner).  If taken early it thus reduces the competition, and creates a good natured ragging. Ragging is defined as railing, tormenting, or teasing.  In our case tormenting is the appropriate term.

Coffee cups rest on the gunnels or seats of the boats. Fishing rods are held with anticipation, and another adventure begins. "Just look at that water", says one. "Today has to be a great day to fish". "There I saw a salmon rising to the surface". You can see such things on mornings like this. That vision was seen during the dreams of the previous three hundred sixty days.

It is really a great day to be alive pursuing and the noble object of Sir Isaac Walton's prose.  Walton’s treatise is a difficult piece to read.  It is however, the bible for the angler and not to be taken lightly.

 

Perhaps more to follow.  Depends upon how nostalgic I get in the next few days.  I wish you smooth waters and tight lines this week my friends.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 1 13

Hey Fool! Err sorry April Fool!  Hope you all have an unfoolish day today.  Easter was great and the weekend was nice with the weather in agreement with everyone down here south of the Sun.  I think we made the mid seventies before it started to rain Sunday afternoon late.  We need the rain because everything is dry, but mostly because it is pollen season.

Clouds of the yellow stuff.  Pine and Oak pollen.  If you have never experienced it, well good for you.  We need a hard couple of days of rain to get it behind us.  Everything including the inside of my nose is turning yellow green.  Gross huh?  We'll see!

Friday was the annual fishing tournament and I guess we had about forty boats.  Big fish was (2 of them) six pounds of largemouth bass.  Big catch was somewhere over 21 pounds for five fish.  Weather was wonderful for a change.  No big winds, rain nor a heavy bite.  But all had fun.  Some of the best anglers caught zip and others had the limit, so it was a strange year. 

The other week end event was..........wait for it .........THE FENCE IS HUNG!  Well, it still needs to be painted, or rather stained.  But that's coming.

Now the nude sunbathing can commence!  Somehow, I figure that is a figment of this writer's artistic license...........in other words...........Ain't gonna happen Jack!

 

You can see how enjoyable it was on the lake Friday even if they didn't catch a bunch of fish!