New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Sweet summer smells, sounds and solstice.
Tuesday 06/21/2005
Had a great day fishing with friends last Saturday in a striped bass tournament in Boston Harbor. I went down Friday afternoon with fishing buddy Jean for a nice dinner at the Admiral Hill Yacht Club for their seventh annual striper shoot out. I have never been in any fishing tournament. It just is not me as a rule. We had a nice dinner with over a hundred other hopefull fishermen. The whole event is sponsored by friend Pete Santini from his shop Fishing Finatics in Everett Mass. It was great to catch a couple of moments chatting with him as well.
We hooked up with Joe Brown on his boat and with his friend Dwayne at 05:15 Saturday morning. It was a nice ride out to the far reaches of Boston Harbor under calm seas and a cloudy sky. Perfect for striper fishing. Dwayne and Joe had a barrel full of live mackerel and herring. It promised to be a fish filled day. Except I couldn't buy a striper bite all day. The others landed stripers and a blue as well as several bites. My live bait drifted in between theirs all day and in fact tangled with theirs, but not a hit on mine all day. It was a dues paying day for me. But I had fun all the while fishing with these great friends. I caught the bad luck and they caught the fish!
We dropped anchor on the way in to fish flounder a while. My luck held as I didn't have a bite for over an hour while Jean and Dwayne pulled in skates one after another and a few flounders from each side of me. I think I landed a total of 1 flounder and 3 or 4 skates, plus a nice cod at the very end. We did not get back to the slip until 7:30 PM. I was beat.
I have taken a walk the last couple of evenings just before sunset. I had to get back last night to take a picture of the sun setting directly in line with the Suncook River from my deck. This only happens a few nights a year as the sun will soon be moving south again. I did notice in my walk down back that numbers of tree frogs were back into the trees beyond the beaver pond. So, some have begun their retreat to the forests, although some number continues to call in the meadow down back. One lone toad gave a couple of parting calls as well.
I took a great picture of a fat garter snake at the Fish and Game Head Quarters building yesterday. There was a sizable bulge in the middle of the snake. I guessed mouse sized. I did notice that the wood frog tadpoles that were in the little Fish and Game demo pond hadn't even started to grow legs. By this time most years you would think the tadpoles would be nearly ready to climb on to land. Wood frogs are the first to lay eggs in the spring and grow rapidly soon turning into frogs. This cold spring seems to have put a real dampener on their growth. The cold water temperatures has kept the frogs from growing! Everything thing was put on hold for much of May and part of June. This is a real weird year.
On my walk this evening I stopped to get Rick as I planned to hike an hour just before sunset in Bear Brook State Park. I wanted to check the snake ledges. I did find a beautiful ring necked snake under the same rock where I found one two years ago. It was about 14 inches long. A pretty good sized one. I am awed by this little snake. It was getting pretty dark by then, so even if I had remembered my camera it wouldn't have done this snake justice. That little snake was definitely the highlight of my day.