Alfie Rylander Fly Fishing New Hampshire

Last Monday of Senior Project. It has gone by so quick. I made my way to Warner NH to fish a small stream that we use to fish during a fishing derby every spring. The derby was last weekend but I hoped that there would still be some fish hiding in there. But to my disappointment signs line the roadway, " reserved for kids 16 and under. Please corporate". Not exactly the start to my morning that I had hoped for. I called an audible and went to Stevens Brook, one that I fished last week with no success. I picked through my fly box looking for something different, a fly that might bring some new luck. I picked a size 14 green emerger with a white poly yarn wing. In English that's a little green thing that floats just below the surface. On my second cast I hook into a nice 10 inch brook trout. After an hour or so I headed to New London Hospital to say hi to my dad, and talked to his coworker that talked me into taking him turkey hunting on Thursday. Not like it took much conv

Week three was another exciting week for my Senior Project. Like the past weeks I tried to balance my time between hunting and fishing evenly as best I could, but this week seemed to be more fishing than hunting. This week I learned that a loss can't keep you down. A quick ten hours after the final horn sounded on my lacrosse career, I called in a strutting turkey to 20 yards. The loss sucked, I was really disappointed. But nothing improves my mood like hearing a turkey gobble at 4:50 in the morning. I learned to keep my head up, to focus on the future because that is the direction that I'm heading. I did not enjoy the fact that I only got to hunt Thursday morning. Granted I had a blast fishing, but I can only chase turkeys one month out of the year so I like to spend as much time as possible hunting. Nonetheless hunting for only 45 minutes and killing a bird does make a great story. I think that mentally I shifted gears from my lacrosse game to hunting very quickly because as

Started out my Friday with setting up my Dad's turkey for its mount. I trim the excess meat off the bottom of the tail fan before coating it in borax and pinning it to a large piece of cardboard. I make sure that the feathers are all evenly spaced so the mount will look the best it can, had to look good as it is his first turkey. Also it has to look good for my display at express fest because my dog Jake destroyed the fan from my bird. I was using it as a decoy, which helped lure in my Dad's bird, then left it in the breezeway while went to get it registered. Jake had a field day and ripped the thing to shreds. So much for that display. The weather was gorgeous out so my girlfriend and I thought it would be fun to hike Mount Kearsarge. We could see all the way to campus from the top since there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Beautiful day to spend outside, I felt bad thinking of the kids stuck in classrooms. I ended my evening with a little fly tying, trying some new streamers

Losing sucks. Losing in the playoffs, in my last high school lacrosse game really sucks. There are numerous quotes that I could write here about how you can't let a loss keep you down, never quit and all of that jazz. Instead I made my own. Walking off the lighted turf field I looked at my dad and simply said, "time to go kill one." Regardless of how the game went, my dad and I were hunting Thursday morning. Thinking of the game kept me up until the wee hours of the night, but I was able to catch a quick 4 hours of sleep before the alarm went off. Still groggy we made our way down the skidder trail. We joked how it would be nice to be home before the coffee stops brewing, a quick hunt so we could go back to bed. Before we got to where we figured the birds would be, a lone bird gobbled on the ridge above us. I knew from previous hunts that there was a clearing in top of the ridge, our first plan was to set up in the opposite end and hope the bird would work his way to us.

Woke up today with an hour and a half before my woodshop block. I headed to a new spot on the Blackwater River about 400 yards up stream of where I fished early last week. The river dumped into a small widened section that looks alot like a small pond. Greg told me that he has caught fish here before. I figured that with an hour to fish it would be a good place to try. In 15 minutes I had landed 3 fall fish. Not a bad start. I went up stream 30 yards or so to a decent sized pool. I stayed with the same wooly bugger that already caught me the three fish. Casting across the current pulled my line through the current, I know this as swinging a streamer but could be called dragging or something similar, to the fish waiting down stream. In another 20 minutes I had caught fish on every other or every third cast. Incredible action, the fall fish fight extremely hard. The only trouble was the bugs. The black flies swarmed my head to the point it was almost suffocating. You know the bugs are te

I pulled into Rulon at 9:00 sharp to pick up AJ. We loaded his his gear in the truck and headed to Profile Falls on the Smith River in Bristol NH. He and Finn had fished this spot last week and said they saw a ton of fish. We parked at the parking lot just below the falls and before we could step out of the truck Finn whipped the minivan into the adjacent parking spot. Finn had trouble waking up so we told him to meet us there. The falls were much bigger than I was expecting. The water crashed from 40 feet above the pool, we got fishing right away. I started with a wooly bugger that I tied the day before. I was hoping that it would sink into the depths of the deep pool hopefully to fish that were held up along the bottom. AJ struck first, landing his first fish of senior project. I missed a fish while I was spacing off looking at little song birds. I decided to work down stream, trying to find smaller pools. With no luck I went back to AJ and Finn. That's when I saw it. From the de