NH BASS Nation Open Team Trail Event #2

Connecticut River | July 10, 2022
Hinsdale, NH

“The River”, it’s been well established that a lot of us have a love hate relationship with this body of water which defines our state boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont. We often hear excuses and complaints about holding tournament here — whether it’s too far to travel, poor fishing, river fishing again, etc. The fact remains that this is one of our premier fisheries that tends to be overlooked. There is diversity with a very healthy largemouth population to the south and great smallmouth fishing up north, boat traffic is often minimal even on weekends, Norm’s Marina serves as the perfect tournament location with ample parking and space for weigh-in, and our event this past Sunday proved all of this to be true.

NH Last Cast Club was our partner for this double down tournament on the Hinsdale section of the Connecticut River. Twenty-five boats were greeted with beautiful weather, a slightly cool morning and bright sunshine throughout the day. At morning check-in, the winners of our raffle drawing held the day before received wonderful prizes provided by our sponsors. We then had a very smooth and timely send off at 7:00 AM with some boats making the right turn upriver for smallies while others went the opposite direction looking for largemouth. Everybody returned and checked in safely on time at 3:00 PM.

“The River” showed up today with some gorgeous bags of fish that came across the scale witnessed and weighed firsthand by yours truly.

Complete results can be found here.

Team Recaps

1st – Jim Sweeney/Brian Reynolds   28.85 lbs

First place, Jim Sweeney/Brian Reynolds, 28.85 just about all identical eight beautiful largemouth bass. “We started around West River area fishing deep wood with soft plastics, caught a few small ones to get started and then we came down the river fished shallower structures with some current over them, soft plastic kept working and also tried a few other things but mostly with soft plastic, drop shot”. 30 years of fishing here proved to be the key for their success.

2nd – Tanner Graves / Tanner Marshall   27.56 lbs

Second place, young angler team of Tanner Graves/Tanner Marshall, 27.56 another solid bag of largemouth. “So, we started off on a weed line this morning and it wasn’t producing very well for the first half hour, so we moved over to some main river wood that nobody was fishing yet, we saw them on our Garmin most of the morning and we flipped to them and catch them. Lots of brush piles and main river wood with flipping bites all day. We probably caught 40 fish all day, culling 2.5 and 3 pounders all day, we didn’t want to go up river so we fished south all day, never went past the bridge from Brattleboro”. Congratulations guys, coach Graves of Keene High School Fishing Team should be proud of you.

3rd – Eric Moulton / Cole Moulton   22.99 lbs

Third place, father and son team of Eric and Cole Moulton 22.99 of largemouth. Freshly back from St Lawrence River at the Bass Nation’s Regionals, Cole not only caught the largest smallmouth at that event on the co-angler side he also caught most of the fish they weighed in today said Eric (proud dad), way to go! “We started off in the morning catching them on some moving baits on the edge of grass stuff off the first drop, that bites sort of died out toward later of the day and started flipping around wood for the rest of the day till the last five minutes and made the big cull to help us out. We had about close to 20 bites but we lost a lot of fish. We covered three quarters of the river from north to south. This is only the third time we been on this section of the river, we mainly fished up north, Hanover section, but we fished the same type of deal up there”. According to Eric, he had back- to-back cast with two fish first thing in the morning and never put another fish in the boat after that, Cole did the rest.

4th – Jeff Perron / Peter Owen   22.64 lbs with lunker smallmouth 3.82 lbs

Fourth place, Jeff Perron/Peter Owen 22.64 solid bag of smallmouth with lunker smallmouth of 3.82. “This was Peter’s first trip to the river; myself I hadn’t been since the Northern Bass Supply days. Probably 15 years ago. Never had much success. We practiced Saturday and went up the river targeting smallmouth. We navigated a safe path of travel. Tournament morning, we stopped and spent 15 mins targeting some wood for a few largemouth before we went North. Peter caught one short fish. We made the run north, hit our main stretch that we had done well on in practice, couldn’t get a bite. By 9am we had zero fish. We went farther north to some spots we had seen some fish on the day before, no one was home. We started making our way back south, caught a few small one’s drifting. While working south we stumbled on a pattern. We dialed in that pattern and within an hour had a limit. First limit was around 14 lbs. At about 11AM hooked up with the big one, that one was just shy of 4lbs and we culled out a 1 pounder. Continued working the pattern south and culled 4 times on one spot, with two 3 pounders and a couple 2.5’s. By this time, it’s a little later afternoon and we wanted to get closer to Hinsdale and look for some largemouth, plus I may have whacked my skeg a few times on the way up and wanted to make sure we made it back. Fished some grass and caught a few largemouth. Peter caught one that culled us up slightly and got us to 22.64. All in all, was our best day ever on the river. Usually, I dread going there but I think I’ll look forward to it here on out”. Keep an eye out for this team! I believe they are leading the TOY.

5th – Garrett Seppala / Travis Salo   22.61 lbs with lunker largemouth 5.94 lbs

Fifth place, Garrett Seppala/Travis Salo 22.61 with the lunker largemouth 5.94. “We started down south throwing frogs and swim jigs, shallow water and back water, had five fish in the boat, went to the dam, caught a 6 pounder on a Ned rig, that was our lunker. From there, we ran a little bit farther up north to more back waters and caught a couple more on frogs, got our limit by 1PM, started culling around 2:30, all on frogs”.

THANK YOU!
As always, we want to thank all of our sponsors from the national, state, and local level for their support! Thank you Norm’s Marina for having us! We also want to thank the state team members for their help and all of the anglers for coming out to support NH Bass Nation. 20% of proceeds from this tournament will go to our youth program. Next Open is August 7th on Moore Reservoir, please join us for the chance to win some great prizes, Humminbird team of the year award and qualify for the Bassmaster Team Championship.