Three Outing Weekend, February 3-5

Early Saturday morning on February 3, I drove out to Melville Ponds in Portsmouth to look for fish. I found none, only green frog tadpoles.

                       

                          I did take pictures of this male Northern pintail. I don’t see them very often.

At noon I crossed over the bridges to the mainland and aimed for the Lafayette Fish Hatchery in North Kingstown.  Technically it wasn’t open, so I was only able to look around briefly.  I saw these brown trout inside the fenced -in pens and caught only a brief glance of a fish outside the pens.

Then I drove to the Nature Conservancy’s Queen River refuge in Exeter. After many hours of traipsing up and down the banks of the river, in one backwater, I saw some small fish dart under a fallen log. Once I netted them they proved to be redfin pickerels (Fish #7).

                                     There were also lots of trees that beaver were working on.

Predawn the following morning I drove to Galilee to be a rider on the “Seven B’s” party fishing boat. Sadly, not enough passengers, so the trip was cancelled. I drove home, napped, and then then struck out for the mainland again, this time to the Arcadia Fish Hatchery.

                  Here, in the water, I saw bluegill (Fish #8) and one large-mouthed bass (Fish #9.)

In the adjacent Roaring Brook, I saw what I believe was a fallfish (Fish #10) lurking very quietly in the shadows of the brook. It quietly slipped away offering no opportunity for photography. Although I didn’t get a great look at it, I think I saw enough of it potentially of confuse it only with a white sucker. I will have to ask around about this sighting.

With the sun going down on the final day of this nice weekend, I walked around Browning Mill Pond.

At the end of the hike, I saw more green frog tadpoles, and thought that it was fitting that the weekend started with green frog tadpoles and now was going to end with them too, when I saw this; an expired white catfish.