By Wayne Hooper
Fishing in Maine and New Hampshire versus fishing in Florida isn’t really that much different. Aside from watching out for alligators, snakes and spiders we fishermen in the North aren’t any different from our Southern counterparts.
Comparing the fish, bass are definitely bigger in the South as the year-round feeding/growing season trumps New England’s due to warmer weather and no ice.
However, that doesn’t mean we don’t have big bass up here because we do albeit ten-pound largemouth is usually the maximum you will find. But they fight harder and don’t give up as easily as they do in Florida.
Take away the big fish and the northern tournament angler can come to the scales with a five fish limit weighing 20-pounds. The average of five fish in the north would be 15 to 16-pounds. From watching the televised tournaments on various Florida lakes, that is not far off from their weights.
Yes, Florida fishermen are lucky to have the Chain Of Lakes, Okeechobee Lake, Rodman Reservoir and many other beautiful bodies of water.
We here in New England have pristine gin-clear, cold glacial lakes that are full of huge rocks. Rocks bigger than the economy cars we drive on our highways. We have lakes that are 800 feet deep; lakes that are so clear you could read the date on a dime if you have good eyesight. We have changing seasons that are majestic in their red, yellow and orange colors. We can spend a day fishing on a lake all by ourselves with nary another boat or fisherman. We have a few lakes that have over a hundred coves on them and we have Lake Winnipesaukee that is approximately 21 miles long and 6 miles wide, 212 feet deep and has 253 islands on it. New England’s largest lake is Lake Champlain in Vermont which is 125 miles long by 14 miles wide with a maximum depth of 400 feet and a shoreline of 587 miles long, followed by Moosehead Lake in Maine that is approximately 40 miles long by 10 miles wide, 246 feet deep with a Mount Kineo rising 700 feet up out of it and a shoreline that is 400 miles long.
Most of the lakes and ponds in New England run 70 to 200 feet deep so they remain cold in the winter and that slows down the metabolism of our fish.
All this means very little to the bass boys as we search the shorelines the same way that the fishermen in Florida do. We use the same baits, the same rods and reels. We pitch, flip and cast like everyone else in the fishing fraternity. We catch, release, break-off and re-spool like our southern cousins and we whoop and holler when we catch a bass of five or more pounds just as all bass fishermen do.
The major differences are that the northern fishermen don’t have that opportunity to catch a fish of 12 or more pounds. Not yet anyway but as long as we release all those 8,9 and 10-pound largemouth we will eventually set a new state record to beat the current record in Maine of 11-pounds, 10-ounces and New Hampshire record largemouth of 10-pounds, 8-ounces. Yes, the growing season is shortened by the weather but with over 5,000 ponds and 32,000 miles of rivers and streams in Maine it is only a matter of time before the record is smashed.
Wayne Hooper is a life-long resident of the New Hampshire and Maine seacoast and a longtime member of the New England Outdoor Writers Association.