Beautiful out today I think I'm going to head to the Merrimack or piscataquog today anybody have advice on where to look in a river system and also baits?

Aim for back water areas with shallow, slow moving water right now. If you can find any in the sun, they should be noticeably warmer than the main river. I know the Merrimack around NHTI in Concord has some good backwaters that I would target right now if all of the ice is off of them.

Within the next week or two I would like to hit the Merrimack as well. Never been and was wondering about current etc. Is it easy to navigate in a boat?

Tom

Current is moderate in most stretches. What kind of boat are you looking to navigate? I would choose wisely on what stretch you want to boat on hooksett has some pools for Boating as well as merrimack Nashua and there's a shorter one in Bedford below the falls tht has good bass aswell as walleye. Hooksett had a pool with power plant warm water discharge that is great this time of year because of the water temp. Let me know what stretch ou were thinking and ill tell u where there's a launch near by and a guage station t find flow info

Current is moderate in most stretches. What kind of boat are you looking to navigate? I would choose wisely on what stretch you want to boat on hooksett has some pools for Boating as well as merrimack Nashua and there's a shorter one in Bedford below the falls tht has good bass aswell as walleye. Hooksett had a pool with power plant warm water discharge that is great this time of year because of the water temp. Let me know what stretch ou were thinking and ill tell u where there's a launch near by and a guage station t find flow info

Awesome, thanks. Ive got a 16-1/2 ft Bass Tracker with a 50HP. Im not familiar with any part of the river so whatever would be easiest and holds fish is where I want to go. I have no preference but Hookset souds good. I wanna try for next weekend. Never knew Walleye were around here. Ive never seen or caught one. But Im after the smallies. 

 

Thanks for the advice.

 

Tom

Where are you from Tom? The hooksett pool has a ramp at the southern end. Another great river for smallies with some deeper water too is the piscataquog. It's a tributary of the Merrimack that dumps in to miss Mack in down town manch south of the amoskeag dam. Most water on Merrimack is 6-10 ft. There a strip of piscataquog above Kelly falls dam that's 20 fow and above the Gregg dam is 50fow. At this point in prespawn the deep water is playing a big role in location of bass it might be easier to locate them especially too sice both those deeper pools I mentioned are technically reservoirs w contour maps accessible online that way u can do some pre fishing planning

Oh, and your best bet in the future, is to post up stuff in the NH thread, where we all go, just to keep it simple.