Lake Francis

Lake Francis lies at the bottom of the Connecticut Lakes chain in Pittsburg, deep in New Hampshire's Great North Woods, where the upper Connecticut River is held back by Murphy Dam. Completed in 1940, the dam backed the river into a 1,934-acre reservoir at 1,379 feet of elevation, a long coldwater basin ringed by spruce and hardwood in the emptiest corner of the state. It is classified as oligotrophic and as a coldwater fishery by New Hampshire Fish and Game, and its water stays cold and clear deep into the summer.

What makes Francis different from its upstream neighbors is the breadth of the fishery. First and Second Connecticut Lakes are essentially salmon-and-laker water; Francis is the only big water in the Pittsburg chain that adds stocked rainbow trout and brown trout to landlocked Atlantic salmon and lake trout. Rainbow smelt supply the forage, burbot and chain pickerel round out the fish community, and the reservoir's mix means a fly angler working a shoreline in May might touch three different salmonids in an afternoon without changing patterns.

The fly calendar here is bracketed by cold weather. At nearly 1,400 feet in the far north of the state, Francis clears of ice late, and the weeks immediately after that are the best of the season. Smelt move toward gravel and toward moving water to spawn, and salmon, rainbows, browns, and cruising lake trout follow them into the top of the water column. The two highest-percentage areas are the Connecticut River inflow at Green Point, where the river from First Connecticut Lake enters the reservoir, and the deeper water near Murphy Dam itself. This is streamer fishing in the honest New England tradition: a sinking line, a long smelt pattern, and a fast strip pulled through forty-degree water.

Once the reservoir stratifies in midsummer, the lake trout and most of the salmon drop below practical fly range and the fishing shifts to margins and edges. Chironomid emergences over the shallower shelves at dawn, damselfly migrations along weedy shoreline in June and early July, Callibaetis in the sheltered coves, and leech and bugger work on sinking lines along the drop-offs carry an angler through the warm weeks. Rainbows and browns stay reachable near cold inflowing water and shaded shoreline longer than the salmon do.

Autumn is the second season. As surface temperatures fall through September and October, fish come back up and push toward the inflow and shoreline structure, and the streamer fishing rebuilds toward ice-out quality with far fewer boats on the water. It is worth saying plainly that in Pittsburg the connecting Connecticut River — the fly-fishing-only water running from the First Connecticut Lake dam down to the posted signs on Lake Francis — is the more famous fly destination, and many anglers treat the lake as the base rather than the objective. That is exactly why the lake rewards attention: Lake Francis State Park sits on the shore with camping and a good ramp, the reservoir fishes hard at ice-out and again in fall, and a fly rod on this water rarely has company.

Lake Francis is a deep, cold, oligotrophic impoundment: 1,934 surface acres with a maximum depth of 82 feet and an average depth of 40 feet. That ratio is the important number. A mean depth half the maximum means this is not a shallow flat with one deep hole but a broadly deep basin — the drowned valley of the upper Connecticut — with substantial water in the 30-to-60-foot range across much of its length. The bathymetric map published by New Hampshire Fish and Game shows the contours tracking the old river channel, deepening toward the Murphy Dam end and shoaling up toward the Connecticut River inflow at the head of the lake.

The reservoir stratifies through the summer, with a thermocline separating warm surface water from the cold, oxygenated depths where lake trout and salmon hold. Water clarity is good, typical of an oligotrophic northern basin, and that clarity rewards long leaders and low-light fishing on bright calm days. Weed growth is limited compared with a productive lowland pond, concentrated on the shallower shelves and in protected coves, and those pockets hold the damselflies, dragonflies, and the bulk of the chironomid activity.

As on any impoundment, water levels move with dam operation, and the shoreline you fished in May may sit several feet differently in September; read the bank each trip rather than trusting last year's memory. The NHFG depth chart also plots access symbols and carries the reservoir's stat block, and it is the single most useful piece of pre-trip homework for locating the drop-offs where the old channel edges rise into the shallower shelves.

Lake Francis is a well-established winter fishery, with ice fishing generally running January through March. Anglers set traps and jig for lake trout, salmon, and stocked trout over the deeper water toward the dam end and along the old channel edges. The far-north location means ice usually forms early and lasts late compared with southern New Hampshire waters, but conditions still vary near the inflow and near the dam where current and water-level changes can thin the ice. Verify current winter season dates and limits in the New Hampshire Freshwater Fishing Digest and check ice conditions locally before going out.