The Upper Connecticut

Up in Pittsburg — New Hampshire's northernmost town, hard against the Quebec line — the Connecticut River is born as a chain of cold tailwaters dropping out of the Connecticut Lakes. Water is drawn from the cold depths of each lake and released below its dam, so the river runs cold and fishes well through August while the freestones to the south are too warm to touch. This is remote, high, north-country water, and its two marquee fish are wild brook trout and landlocked salmon, with browns and rainbows in the mix.

Working downstream, the fishery is really three reaches. The connecting river between Second and First Connecticut Lakes is dark, intimate pocket water full of wild brookies and salmon. Below First Connecticut Lake lies the Trophy Stretch — a little over two miles of pools and pocket water, cold off the bottom release, holding brook, brown, and rainbow trout and salmon. Below Murphy Dam (Lake Francis) runs the coldest, most consistent water of all — rarely much above the mid-50s even in a July heat wave — down toward Stewartstown and Colebrook. Route 3 follows the whole thing.

The season up here is short and it is glorious. Ice-out comes late — often not until late April — and the river closes in mid-October, so the whole show happens in about six months. It opens with the smelt run and the first push of landlocked salmon, builds through a big-water hatch season, holds cold and fishable all summer, and finishes with the fall spawning run. Streamers spring and fall, dries and terrestrials in between. Bring warm layers even in July; the nights are cold this far north.