Squam Lake

Squam Lake sprawls across 6,791 acres of the central New Hampshire Lakes Region, its irregular shoreline reaching into three counties and its surface broken by wooded islands, granite points, and submerged rock shoals. It is one of the largest lakes in the state, but it does not feel like it. Where neighboring Winnipesaukee hums with development and horsepower, Squam's shores stay quiet and lightly built, and boat and speed restrictions keep the pace slow. Most people know it as the lake that stood in for the fictional Golden Pond in the 1981 film; anglers know it as one of the most inviting big waters in New England to fish with a fly rod from a canoe or small skiff.

The fishery has two distinct personalities. Squam is one of fourteen waters in New Hampshire Fish and Game's Large-Lake Fisheries Program, managed for landlocked Atlantic salmon and lake trout, with salmon and rainbow trout stocked annually while the lake trout and lake whitefish populations sustain themselves through natural reproduction. That is the coldwater half. The warmwater half is the smallmouth bass fishery, and it is exceptional: mile after mile of boulder-studded shoal, island drop-off, and gravel point, exactly the structure smallmouth are built for. Largemouth bass, chain pickerel, white perch, and black crappie fill out the list, and burbot and American eel round out a genuinely diverse fish community.

For fly anglers the year opens at ice-out, typically in April. Salmon and rainbows push onto shoreline shelves and stack near inlet mouths, and streamers fished on intermediate and sinking lines are the way to reach them. Classic New England smelt-style patterns — Grey Ghosts and similar slim baitfish flies — have been fished on this lake for a century, and they still work, cast from a drifting boat along a shoreline or slow-trolled down a drop-off. The window is short but dependable, and it closes as the surface warms through May.

June is when Squam becomes a fly fisher's lake rather than a troller's lake. Smallmouth move onto the shoals to spawn and then stay to feed, and a 6- or 7-weight with poppers, crayfish patterns, and baitfish streamers around the islands can produce numbers of hard-fighting fish. At the same time the quiet coves come alive with Callibaetis mayflies and damselfly migrations, giving anglers a legitimate dry-fly and sight-fishing game in water that never sees an indicator rig. Because Squam averages only 24 feet deep, with its 99-foot maximum confined to a few defined basins, the amount of fishable edge habitat is enormous compared with the state's deeper large lakes.

By midsummer the salmonids have dropped to the cool basins and the fly rod belongs to the bass, the early mornings, and the evenings. September and October reverse the pattern: cooling water pulls salmon and lakers back within reach, smallmouth feed hard along the shoals before shutting down, and the recreational traffic that defines a Lakes Region summer simply disappears. Squam in October, with the islands turning color and the water finally to yourself, is one of the great underrated fly fishing experiences in New Hampshire.

Squam is a large, clear, oligotrophic natural lake with a mean depth of only 24 feet and a maximum of 99 feet. That combination — big surface area, modest average depth, a few deep basins — defines everything about how it fishes. The great majority of the lake is shallow enough to hold weed growth, rock structure, and insect life, while a limited amount of genuinely deep, cold water holds lake trout and lake whitefish through the summer.

The NHFG depth chart is worth studying before a first trip. The contours show a bottom that is anything but uniform: islands rise abruptly from deeper channels, long shoals extend far off points, and narrow troughs cut between land masses. The mid-depth shelf that wraps most of the shoreline is where salmon and rainbows cruise at ice-out and where smallmouth stage all summer; the deeper holes scattered through the main basin are where the lakers go once a thermocline sets up in late June. Rock and gravel dominate the shoreline, with softer bottom and weed growth confined to the protected coves and back bays.

Water clarity is excellent, typical of an oligotrophic Lakes Region basin, and it cuts both ways: sight-fishing over the shoals and in the coves is real, but fish are wary in flat calm and a chop or low light noticeably improves the streamer fishing. The productive shallows support strong chironomid populations, Callibaetis mayflies in the sheltered coves, damselflies and dragonflies along the weed edges, leeches, and abundant small baitfish and crayfish that feed everything from salmon to smallmouth. Squam's convoluted shape gives the wind plenty of places to funnel, and the island clusters mean a small-boat angler can almost always find a lee shore.

New Hampshire's winter ice fishing seasons and large-lake trout and salmon rules apply to Squam, and the lake draws local hardwater anglers for lake trout, salmon, and panfish. It is not a fly fishing pursuit, and conditions vary widely across a lake this large and irregular — narrows and channels can stay thin long after the broad bays set up. Confirm current season dates and species limits in the New Hampshire Freshwater Fishing Digest and check ice conditions locally before going out.