Me and Mike did more scouting this weekend.
Our first stop was a bit of Rocky Shore at Odiorne Point Park in Rye. We explored the tide pools (this area was more like calm and rocky sea than actual tide pools). Here we seen a variety of sea life such as periwinkles, whelks, sea urchins, shrimp, lobsters, and several species of crab.
Our next stop was Great Bay Estuary Research Reserve. It wasn't too impressive. It had a few educational display, one tiny tank with mummies (who had brilliant blue speckles) and a larger round tank with a couple big flounders, big eels, and mummies,
We explored the mud flats and nature trails here. I saw a fellow fisherman, light colored in the distance. I thought it was an egret as it looked white, but it seems to be a Great Blue Heron now I look at the photo. Either an unusually pale one, or one that looked that way due to the lighting,
Next we tried a spot I found in a previous year at the Oyster River. It was much muckier and less accessable than I remembered. We had no luck on the freshwater side (where I saw an eel and a banded sunfish before) and the saltwater side revealed more fresh than I remember.
Sure the area did have a couple periwinkles, shrimp, and mummichog like I remember (no dead horseshoe crab this time though). The weird part was this, on seining mike found not just mummichog, some sort of shad/herring which kept escaping his net, and eels, but also a couple golden shiners and a baby largemouth bass in a riffle (that is the second time we found a baby largemouth in a riffle in our trips). This seems to be a spot where fresh and salt collide with fresh winning and only the amphidromous truely thriving.
A face only a mummie could love. At least he's smiling.
Our next stop was an impulse stop at an area we stumbled upon and forgot the name of. A couple test nettings revealed only mummichogs and lots of biting horseflies.
The horseflies ended up being "greenheads" a species evolved to deal with the challenge of salt marshes lack of mammals by being able to lay their first clutch of eggs without a blood meal. Thus ensuring many many biting flies out seeking blood for a second clutch,
We traveled to Plaice Cove where I heard their was good rocky shore and sandy areas for fish observation while snorkling but could not find any public parking access.
Thus our first day ended. The next day we were in the western part of the state seeking Northern Redbellies in the Cold River drainage. Alot of the spots we found were inaccessible or looked like poor habitat for them (explaining why they were said to not be doing well in some of them), We kept following cold river northward.
One riffle and pool stretch of the cold river had alot of blacknose dace on it, Further up we found a calmer grassy section which had common shiner, blacknose dace, and longnose dace in it, Still no northern redbellies though.
Perhaps our most amazing find was a glacial relict species, I had people tell me that NH's ecosystem never truely recovered from the ice age, but I never expected to find this,
NANFA Youtube Channel 
