Here is the story of my last fishing trip with Brian Duffill. We fished one river and it was the treasure of the White Mountains, it was the Rocky Branch in Bartlett New Hampshire. So follow along and see some wonderful pictures of wild Brook Trout.
Rocky Branch at it's best.
White Mountain Treasure
By: Lee Goldsmith
Lee's Fishing Page
The forecast for the day was not the best if you could believe the weather man. They called for thundershowers most of the day, but I had told Brian that we would go no matter what. I told Brian that I would pick him up around 6:30 to 7:00 am on Friday Aug 19th. I arrived around 6:30 or so and Brian placed what gear he needed in the car and we were off. I told Brian that we needed to fish the Rocky Branch again. We fished Rocky Branch together last year and had a good fishing trip so I wanted to try an area of the river that we had not fished last year. The drive up was uneventful and we made two stops, one early for me to get coffee and the next at Dunkin's for a pit stop and a donut. We arrived at the river around 8:15 am and we got ready for the day. Wading shoes and shorts are the order of the day in this weather. We would be sharing a flyrod, my 6'6" 4 wt glass rod that Bill Franke made for me about two years ago.
Rocky Branch with early morning Haze.
It was the perfect rod for this trip. After making sure all was set we locked the car and we were off for a short hike down river from where we parked. We must have hiked about a little more then a half mile down river and started to fish our way back to the car. I was hoping to get a little further down river but we had plenty of river to fish before lunch. We started fishing what looked like very good water, but it was slow to start, then we started to get into fish. I missed a couple and then landed a very nice first fish of the day.
First Fish of the Day.
We worked our way up river taking turns with the rod and fishing all the good pockets we came to. Most of the water was very productive, but now and then a pocket that just screamed of having a fish did not, or we spooked it first. We finally came to a run of water we had fished together last year and it was my turn to fish so I gave it a try, Second cast and I had a good fish on, landed the fish and got a picture and released the fish to fight another day. For kicks I tried the run again and to my surprise I hooked another Brook trout that was easily the best fish of the day.
Best Fish of the Day
I would say he was around 10 inches or more in length and was extremely beautiful. The picture did not do him justice. We fished this section of river until around 11:30 and decided we needed to take a break for lunch. We came back out on the trail we went in on about a tenth of mile from the car. A good three hours of fishing.
Brian with a very nice Wild Brook Trout
We got back to the car and drove up the road to the turn around at the end and had lunch, ham salad sandwich and water along with a peach each. From here we walked back down the river about 4 tenths of a mile and fished back to the car. This again took about 3 hours and the day was done. We must have encountered at least 40 fish between the two of us, it was a good day of fishing together.
Here is a slide show of all the photo's from this trip.
