Shellcamp Pond, Gilmanton NH Fishing Report

Ice Fishing Class

About a month ago, I saw that the Laconia Recreation Department was hosting one of NH Fish and Game’s “Let’s Go Fishing” type ice fishing classes. I thought that sounded like fun, so I called my kid cousin (who lives up there) and asked if he wanted to go. He agreed. Last Friday, I loaded up the car and drove north. That Saturday, we went to the class which was at the Laconia recreation department. At the class, one of the instructors mentioned that later the class would be fishing on a local lake. When the instructor said “Shellcamp,” I almost fell out of my chair laughing. “That’s practically my home water” I said. At about 12:30, off to the lake we went.

When we got to the lake, the instructors handed out some tip-ups. After my cousin set up the first one, I set up one for myself about ten yards away. Not two minutes after I had set it, SPROING, up pops the flag. After letting the fish run with the bait and applying steady pressure on the line (don’t want to set the line with circle hook), I pulled up the first fish of the day, an okay sized chain pickerel.

After resetting the tip-up, I got to chatting with a guy from Alabama. After commenting that the instructors had drilled extra holes, I mentioned that I had several jigging rods in the car. I proceeded to give two of my rods to people I had never met before. While doing this, a kid still on the lake pulled up a beast of a pickerel! After a while, someone caught another okay sized pickerel on one of my jigging rods.

During this time, many people had been noticing that their bait kept oddly disappearing from their lines.

Towards the end of the day, we heard a shout coming from near shore. The aforementioned guy from Alabama had hooked into a fish on the tiny jigging rod I had lent to him, and whatever was on the end of the line was big, as evidenced by the torture being inflicted on the jigging rod. About a minute later, up comes this monster of a pickerel. It is probably one of the biggest I have ever seen out of that lake, at least 2.5 pounds. Upon further inspection (and dissection), we found that the pickerel had been having himself quite a day. We found No less than two golden shiners, and what appeared to be everyone’s missing bait, plus an old spoon lure. Just goes to show that greed truly is a deadly sin.

All in all, Saturday was a good day…

• Added By: nefisherman92 on 02/04/14 04:41 PM
• Location: Shellcamp Pond, Gilmanton NH
• Report Date: 2/1/2014
• # of Hotspots: 1
• # of Photos: 3
• # of Fish Caught: 1
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