In late June, I spent a couple days fishing the Upper Connecticut River in Pittsburg, New Hampshire—right near the Canadian Border—with my old friend and guide, Bill Bernhardt. After landing a bunch of trout and landlocked salmon in the trophy section, we went looking for a bigger browns downstream, on the tailwater stretch below Murphy Dam. The air temperature was in the low 50s, the water was 48 degrees, and a steady rain pummeled us all morning. After a thousand casts that produced just a few cookie-cutter rainbows, I finally hooked an 18-inch brown on a San Juan Worm. The fish made three impressive leaps right in front of us and spat the hook. Soaked, frozen, and tired, all I could do was laugh, and Bill joined in. It was the only brown we saw all day.
