I'm primarily a saltwater fisherman, but I thought I would put up a short freshwater trip report from last week.

I had a spur of the moment opportunity to do some camping with my wife and youngest daughter last week.  Long story short we did some camping on a friend's property that lies along the Nezinscot River in Maine, downriver from Turner.  I wasn't too excited about it at first, but after some quick googling I discovered that there might be some trout to be caught.

I brought all manner of fishing gear as I didn't know what to expect and what the water conditions would be like.  After talking to some of our friends and their kids I had heard that there weren't many trout around as the water had warmed up and the river levels had dropped.

On the first afternoon after we had set up camp, I decided to do some prospecting with the 6 weight and found plenty of willing smallmouth (6-8" long, with the occasional 10" bruiser) and chub.  The water felt comfortably warm and I was content to be having some success on a new piece of water with nobody else around.

The next morning I thought I would try my Tenkara rod.  I typically use it to nymph / indicator fish some streams in SE NH that get stocked in the fall, but haven't really used it in the 'traditional' way of fishing un-weighted wet flies and pulsing them along under the surface.  With nothing to lose I dedicated myself to Tenkara for the day and after some experimentation was able to figure out some techniques that worked in a few different types of water, picking up smallmouth in just about all the spots you'd expect them to be.

As the rain clouds started to roll in I decided to head back towards camp and decided to try dry fly fishing my way back upstream.  As silly as it may sound, I have very little experience with dry flies, other than one other trip to a brook trout stream in NH several years ago.

You can imagine my surprise when after a couple of quick casts a nice brown came up and inhaled my fly almost the instant it hit the water.  This was in a spot that I had fished hard and from several different angles with the wet fly just minutes before.  The fish was only 10-11" long, but the coloring was amazing compared to some of the washed out stocked fish that I have caught in the past.  

I was able to repeat my succes a few more times on similarly sized and amazingly colored browns before the rain came and forced me off the water.  I found the Tenkara rod a great tool for this type of fishing, lots of short precision casts to likely holding water, and excellent drifts due to the lack of fly line.  I found the fixed length of line made me really concentrate on fishing each spot thoroughly before moving on, rather than always trying to cast further and further.

Now, even though I fish the salt almost every morning, all I can think about is getting back up to NH/ME to try and repeat my success on other waters, possibly combined with a camping or backpacking trip.

Thanks for reading..

-- Tom

Nice report and great creative adaptation.   One of the things I like best about fly fishing is the adaptability of the style (wet, dry, nymph, streamer...).  It forces you to figure out what the fish are eating and where then doing your best to mimic that pattern with the tools on hand. 

For me there is no better feeling than moving into a patch of water someone has just fished hard, evaluating the situation, then landing that nice fish on a fly I tied.

Keep up the good work and next time we need picutures!

 Great report TomS.  I understand the camera issue I have left my camera home or had it with me with dead batteries.   Congrats on your success on the stream.  Dave V

 Excellent read TomS! That's trout for ya. They want what they want, and it's our job to figure out what that is  And, it sounds like you did just that