Fly-fishing is one of my favorite past times. I have a place up in west central NH in the Connecticut River valley, in the shadow of Mt. Sunapee. It is the old family place. A brook runs through the back yard and occasionally you can find a brookie or a rainbow in a hole. I enjoy just tramping around up and down the brooks of the area with my fly rod, sometimes never casting, just watching for a trout to snap at a bug. It all started when I was about 5 or 6. My Aunt Peggy, who lived at the place then, would always take me out fishing the first day of trout season. We would get up around 5 a.m. and take her 14 foot wooden boat with the 5 h.p. Johnson on the back, and jockey for position among all the other fools that were trying to get the first trout of the year. I recall one year jamming a powdered donut in one pocket "for later." Funny what sticks in your mind. That year,I got a 13 inch rainbow and think the picture was in the local paper?

The water levels in the brooks have been down for the last few years so you have to work a bit harder to find the fish. I am strictly "catch and release" so the trout go back into the brook for the next fisherman.