I always wanted to explore the northern streams more, and sampling riffley steams in the Appalachians is a no fail way to get interesting species right? After all everyone on NANFA forum know the Appalachians have more and better fish.
You may ask, "was I in the Appalachians before?" After all, the land gets continuously more rugged as you head west until you reach the green mountains in vermont. A NH birding book I have called my area the southwest highlands, and one hill in my county is even big enough to be a mountain. (though a few are called mountains). The answer to that is unclear as half the maps seem to say yes, and half say no.
My first stop was the Ammonoosuc off bast station road.
Odd how much wider it was than it was a few miles up the road when it tumbled off the mountain.
Wading in the wide and very very cold waters of the ammonoosuc I kick netted and caught nothing. But I did see the brownish and black speckled back of a typical stocked size trout. I was debating getting my camera when the trout answered my question and swam off.
I did get a few salamanders here. (sadly the pic is blurry, usually I take several and choose a good one, but I was too focused on fish).
Further down the road I saw a slow stream. It was surrounded by high grass and semi steep banks, Looking in it I did see a fish swim by. I didn't jump in here. (earlier this week a short walk through the trail in the powerlines got me a dozen ticks on me, no the number is NOT exaggerated, so I was hesitant to head through the long grass to get to a stream). I tried netting from the bridge and only got a tadpole.
My next stop was a pond further down base station road.
At first I was only catching tadpoles, then i noticed the cement outlet area. Outlets mean current and current in ponds means fish!
In the water here were a few fish, thin and fat bodied ones. Dipping my net I got my only fish of the trip, a white sucker.
it almost looks like a dace in this pic
but it is more clear in the water
I saw a roiling school of fish with orange and black sides in a ball by the outlet, i went to net themm and the ball moved deeper. On the second attempt the ball vanished. It's odd that cyprinids were breeding this late in the season, but the streams were very cold here so they likely sought the pond for breeding temperature.
Fish and game stopped to check what I was doing. First time ever when netting fish in NH. I explained, told them about the orange fish which they suggested may be dace saying they had a couple in the area. (I was thinking small suckers). Seeing it was a pond I said "red bellied". They said "we have red bellied and longnose in the area." I told them that longnose prefer current and they suggested an area below the dam is good for them. However it was being late so I didn't seek out the dam and started sampling/nature watching/ photographing my way towards home.
I saw alot of cars and a crowd gathered on the road side. I went to check out what they were watching. It was a moose drinking from a pond. The third time I ever saw a moose and the fourth moose I saw. (the second sighting was two moose).
I didn't sample that pond, the creatures their were too big for my dip net.
One last sampling spot was in a small riffled brook through the scene ledge lined valley of Franconia Notch. (later on I looked at a map and found the brook was the Pemmigewasset River, the headwater river of the Merrimack, the same river (only much smaller up here) that I saw a big fish in in Plymouth when my brother graduated. (sadly I wasn't allowed to catch the fish and couldn't ID it from the bridge). Here I sampled and got nothing.
The photo is blurry due to low light conditions.
Between high waters in the south of the state and being skunked or almost so on trips this has been a bad summer fish wise. But I had a fun trip to a new and very scenic area anyways.
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