Decided to head up to New Hampshire and try a lake that I have only been on a few times and never have much luck catching numbers of fish there. This lake has numbers of big largemouth and smallmouth bass swimming in its waters and wanted to give it another try.
Arrived at the landing and a cool 46 degree morning greeted me with steam rising off of the water. Launched the boat and noticed the water temps were around 63 degrees which is very cool for this time of the year. Air temps were forecasted for mid 70’s with little to light winds which were perfect for exploring the lakes depths.
After the long idle trip through the river and channel, finally made it out to the main lake and seen a boat on the area that I wanted to try first. So found a flat coming off of the shoreline and grabbed the rattle trap and also a crank bait to start covering water in search of fish.
I fished this flat without any fish showing themselves until I got to the end of the flat where a small underwater point went out into the lake. The point tip was covered with rock and dropped off into 15 feet of water and casted the deep diving crank out and slam a smallmouth was on and didn’t want to come to the boat.
Just as I was about to lip the fish it jumped and freed itself from the hooks and now I was excited to start catching some fish. Worked this area more with the crank and some plastics but couldn’t find anymore fish. I followed the adjoining shoreline and this shoreline dropped right off into the main lake. Casting the crank to shore and bringing it back to the boat, another fish hit the crank and felt like a very nice one until it freed itself without getting a glimpse at it.
Continued to the next point with a smaller largemouth getting caught and then it was time to move. I worked a number of similar looking shorelines without any strikes. Decided to make the run to the other end of the lake and see if I could find some fish down there. I worked a number of islands and also the front face of the dam without any strikes as well.
Was about to leave the area and noticed a shoreline there that was steep and figured try that with the crank bait. After a few casts to the shoreline, wham, big fish hit and the battle was on. Was waiting for the fish to jump as I thought it was probably a smallmouth but it kept digging down. After winning the battle a nice 3 pound largemouth came up and really made my day.
Worked a few other areas as well as previous areas and wasn’t able to find anymore fish. As my trip back to the landing is a long idling one, this whole back area is a swampy shallow bay and decided to give the shallow water a try.
Fishing with a wacky rigged BearPaws Hippie Stick, a small smallmouth grabbed the bait from a fallen tree. Continued down the shoreline and also working some boggy areas, there wasn’t anything wanting to bite. As I left the boggy area and headed back over to the shoreline, a scrappy 12 inch largemouth grabbed the bait.
All in all it wasn’t a bad day with 5 bass into the boat as this was probably the most that I have caught in this lake on a fishing trip. There were two patterns that had formed, first were finding steep dropping shorelines that continued into the water. Positioning the boat 20 yards off shore and casting deep diving cranks to the shore and reeling them back was very productive.
The other pattern was fishing shallow waters with a wacky rigged plastic with fallen timber and rocks along the shoreline. The waters were warming compared to the morning temps and made for a great day to be on the water. New Hampshire has so many good waters to fish that make it tough to decide where you want to fish.
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