I spend the long July the 4th weekend camping with family members at the Glenn Ellis Family Campground located right off Route 302 in Glenn, NH (see the New Hampshire Atlas and Gazetteer map 45 G9). This well-maintained and well-organized campground sits on the beautiful Saco River. I brought my fishing equipment in order to catch some of the numerous trout that live in its waters. I fished this waterbody during our camping trip last year, and I’m ready to explore, and blog about, other sections.
The railroad bridge tells me that I’m getting close to my target pool. Note the pile of cobbles. Real ankle twisters!
The Saco River in this area of southern New Hampshire is free-flowing, undammed, and untamed. As a result, the volume of water flowing through this system depends entirely on the natural runoff coming off the regional watershed, including the western slopes of the nearby majestic White Mountains. It’s obvious from the numerous uprooted trees heaped in piles along both shorelines that conditions over here must be brutal during the spring snowmelt! The substrate in the section of the river flowing through Glen also reflects this high-energy environment: it consists entirely of piles of smooth cobbles which makes wading a slippery and ankle-busting affair. Do not get me wrong though: this stretch is made for wading because it is, for the most part, quite shallow and accessible. Finally, the state heavily stocks it every year with a combination of several thousand brook trout, brown trout, and rainbow trout. My goal this morning is to catch a few of those fish. Click here for the NH fishing rules.
The pool I’m fishing this morning: 2 to 4 ft deep, slow current, large boulders, gravelly bottom. Perfect!!
I do a bit of exploring “from up in the air” on my cell phone using Google Maps (what an amazing resource!!) in order to find promising fishing spots on the Saco River in the vicinity of the camp ground. My visual investigation shows that the waterway is all bouldery and shallow until just passed an old railroad bridge that crosses the river about three quarters of a mile upstream of our camp site, in the vicinity of where Rocky Branch Brook joins the river. That area contains a big ol’ pool which should support trout. Armed with that knowledge, I crawl out of bed at 4:30 am, put on my waders, grab my ultralight spinning rod and reel with a #2 Mepps spinner, and start working my way upstream. The stretch between the camp ground and the railroad bridge consists of an uninterrupted series of fishless shallow fast-flowing riffles. The water level is low this time of the year, exposing vast swaths of bouldery bars and shoals. The walking is laborious. The pool appears in my sights soon after I cross underneath the railroad bridge.
I like what I encounter. The pool is about 50 ft. wide by 250 ft. long and from 2 to 4 ft. deep. It has a sandy-gravelly bottom, and is interspersed by large boulders. The water current is nice and slow, and the water temperature feels in the cool mid-60’s. And I also see several rises! I make several casts before hooking and landing a 12” brown trout. Great, I’m on to something. I slowly make my way around the edges of the pool, constantly casting out my spinner but careful not to scare away the fish which continue to rise to the surface. I catch another brown trout and two rainbow trout, all measuring between 12″ and 13″, over the next 1.5 hours. And then, as expected, the sun rises over the tree line, the rises slow and then stop, and the trout stop biting. I’m good with that. I enjoyed my early-morning trout fishing fix and am ready to head back to camp for breakfast with the fam.
The results: I caught 4 small trout in 1.5 hours of fun early-morning spinner fishing.
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