New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

You gotta know when you got it good! And Restless frogs and dragon flies

Monday 09/13/2004

I had a great day fishing for stripers and it turned out, blue fish, on Great Bay last Friday with Rick Hamlett. He and I have long said "you gotta know when you got it good" when chance, luck or just life gives you an extra good day. Last Friday was like that. As we approached the bay to launch my boat at Hilton Park we could see some rather nasty seas due to a building west wind. We both kind of looked at each other and thought better of launching my little 15 foot boat to spend a day getting pounded by the wind and waves.

But just as we made the turn under the General Sullivan Bridge to go past the launch area Rick exclaimed "There's a bunch of stripers breaking right at the boat launch!" We leaped out of my truck and tied on a couple lures in time to catch some of the action before it moved on. Now that's good to catch fish BEFORE you even get the boat in the water. So we launched and pretty much stayed in the Salmon Falls River section out of the worst of the weather and did manage to catch some more schoolie stripers in the 20 something inch range. We trolled a bit to look for bass and kept getting little hits here and there and lucked into a couple more small schools of stripers. Then Rick's reel really peeled out some line and he managed to land a nice blue fish without a steel leader. Not a banner day of fishing but a lucky one.

Closer to home I have noticed this last week or so more wandering frogs than usual. I've had a couple of big bull frogs wander up some distance from water to my lawn even though the humidity has been low. I haven't figured out why yet. I did drop one of the bull frogs into my rain barrel for a day until Katie came by Sunday afternoon. I just had to introduce her to a big fat old bull frog to watch her react to one.

I've had squadrons of huge dragon flies for over two weeks now buzzing high over my house at dusk. Seems like I have seen more the last few weeks than usual. I did find two newly born garter snakes on New Rye Hill in Epsom yesterday as I gathered rocks for constructing a retaining wall. They were under rocks and were worm-like at only 5 or 6 inches long. I'd have to say newly born as garter snakes give live berth to their young in late summer.

We've had plenty more rain and showers to keep every brook running all summer long and it looks like the remnants of Ivan are due in here in a few days. The bay was pretty dark from all the runoff the other day. We are due for a real cooling off pretty soon. A frost can't be too far off.