FINS & FEATHERS - FlyFishing New England

Lou Zambello was guest speaker at a recent Pemigewasset Chapter of Trout Unlimited meeting and spoke about fishing New England’s waters and discussed his new book; "Flyfisher's Guide to New England".  The guidebook covers 500 lakes and ponds plus 650 rivers and streams, along with full-color maps, GPS coordinates, access points, public land, access roads, boat ramps parking areas, named holes and pools and more. It would take years to accumulate that amount of data.

            If I were a beginner flyfisher the book would be an invaluable source of information. In today's fast-pace world guidebooks, and especially flyfishing-guides, can be a real timesaver on getting you over fish. 

            Back in my day, there were no guidebooks, guides or GPS coordinates. Luckily - my Dad had a sense of adventure and liked to find new places to fish. We often took weekend or even weeklong fishing trips to exotic waters in New England. We searched road-maps and topo-maps in order to find these new waters. Sometimes, if we were lucky, we got word-of-mouth tips from other fishermen about some hot spot.

            Later in my fishing career, I explored New England's water with a few fishing buddies. Being located in the White Mountains a good many waters were within reach of a day trip. Other times my fishing companions and I would set off for several days to explore more distant waters in different states.

            I always considered, both as a young boy and as an adult, the search effort was a large part of the adventures. The research built up the anticipation and excitement of each trip. Sometime I think new anglers don't realize that memories are built around more things than just catching fish.

            But now I'm on the backcast of my flyfishing career and my reading of the book took on a different aspect. About halfway thru the book I realized I was not really looking for new places to fish but found myself drifting back in time remembering my Dad (or the other flyfishing companion(s) that accompanied me) and the experiences we had on the stream or pond I was reading about.

Raymond Kucharski

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