New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

The frogs are calling, the frogs are calling!

Sunday 04/10/2005

At last, at last, I heard the first frogs of the spring from my deck last night. There was a chorus of wood frogs off in the distance. I really need my parabolic listening device to hear them and this year the constant beeping of the saw whet owl nearly overpowers their calls. Wood frogs are the first frogs to call each year. They make a sound like ducks quacking. I heard them all morning today at my daughter's house in Concord while I was watching my sick grand daughter. No peepers yet here, but lots of others have already heard them. The next cool days and really cool nights will likely put another damper on their calling.

Had a great day last Friday. I went steelhead trout fishing with my friend Jean Brochu. A trip I had dreamed of for years. Actually decades! I drove us over to Oswego NY Thursday afternoon. My odometer says it's almost 400 miles. But lots to see as I had never been there before. Lots of road killed critters from woodchucks, raccoons, deer, opossums, fox, coyote to three car killed geese. All the rivers were in full flood stage with chocolate brown water flooding the woods and fields as well as raging down the rivers.

Our guide from Catch-the-drift.com guide service of Oswego, Kevin Davis, informed us that the Salomon River in Pulaski would be lowered at midnight that night by the dams above. It had dropped a foot by the time we launched at first light on Friday at 6:10 am. Kevin rowed and maneuvered us down through some huge rapids by my experience for eight hours straight. He guides nearly every day all year and had fished the river on Wednesday when it was much higher.For some reason we had this stretch of river all to ourselves all day as the other drift boats had launched further up river. Via cell phone Kevin learned that the other six drift boats landed only one fish all day.

Thanks to his experience and stamina at the oars he maneuvered us into his favorite holes for steelheads. Jean got the first one, but I rallied catching two more steelheads and a nice brown trout. All of these fish were bigger than any trout I have ever caught in my life. It was a grand day on the Salmon River. I drove home that night arriving by 10:00 PM totally beat but with an ear to ear smile.