Beta

GuidedFloats is in beta. The full site launches March 1, 2027. The mobile app follows.

Guides: claim before March 1, 2027 and your first full season of Premium is free. Claim your founding spot →

Log in List your guide serviceFor guides
Home › Waters › New Hampshire › Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam
Tailwater · Merrimack County, the Contoocook River below the Hopkinton Dam flood-control structure west of Concord · New Hampshire

Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam Fishing Guides

A New Hampshire flood-control tailwater west of Concord, with a gauge below Hopkinton Dam that reads the releases governing a stocked trout and smallmouth reach.

A broad river under fall colour with mountains beyond in New England
Gauge location. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Guides on the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam

Claimed profiles take booking requests. Unclaimed profiles are built from public records so the river is never empty; the guide can claim or remove one any time.

No guides listed yet

Guide or outfit this water? Create your profile. Listing is free, the commission is 10% or 7% with a premium profile, and premium profiles list first on this water.

About the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam

The Contoocook River below the Hopkinton Dam runs through Merrimack County west of Concord, in the gently rolling country of southern New Hampshire. The dam is part of the Corps of Engineers Hopkinton-Everett flood-control project, built after the destructive New England floods of the mid-twentieth century, and it holds back a large area of floodplain that sits empty most of the year and fills only when the catchment is loaded.

That design gives the reach below the dam its particular character. Most of the time the river runs at a modest, stable flow and fishes like a pleasant medium-sized New England river. After heavy rain or a rapid snowmelt, the Corps holds water behind the dam and then releases it in a controlled way, and the river below can run high and hard for days. The gauge immediately below the structure is the only reliable way to know which of those two rivers you will find, and it is worth checking the trend rather than just the current reading, since a falling limb after a hold fishes very differently from a rising one.

Trout are stocked through the reach and provide the spring and autumn fishing, with browns and rainbows the main species and some holdover fish in the deeper pools. As the water warms into the summer the fishery shifts toward smallmouth bass, which do well in the rocky runs and are the more dependable summer target. Largemouth, pickerel and perch are available in the slower, weedier sections, and fallfish are abundant enough to keep a beginner entertained.

Access is reasonable, with road crossings, state land around the flood-control project and several informal parking areas. The Contoocook is a popular paddling river, so expect canoe traffic on summer weekends. New Hampshire regulations apply, with trout season dates and some special rules, so check the current book.

This water needs a real photo

The photo at the top of this page is not Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam.

It is a regional stand-in, honestly captioned but generic — we will not put a name to a river we cannot prove. Send us a photograph you took here and it replaces the stand-in, with your credit on it.

Add a photo of this water See the badges

Pioneer badgeUnclaimed

Add a photo of this water

Landscape, not fish — the water itself. Reviewed by hand before it appears. The first one published here earns the Pioneer badge.

Never published. It is how the badge is held for you until member accounts open.

Posting to Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam.

JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB. Landscape orientation looks best at the top of the page. We resize it and strip the location data out of the file.

The name printed under the photo and on your badge. Leave blank to stay anonymous.

Reader photo license v1.0 — the short version:

  • You grant Guided Floats, LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish, resize and crop your photo on guidedfloats.com and in GuidedFloats’ own social posts and apps. You keep the copyright and can use the photo anywhere else.
  • You confirm that you took the photo yourself, that publishing it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that anyone recognisable in it (or a parent or guardian, if they are under 18) is happy for it to appear here.
  • Credit is printed beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, using the credit name you give us. Leave it blank and we use your name; write “Anonymous” for no name. Your email address is never published.
  • Withdrawing is one email to hello@guidedfloats.com naming the photo. It comes off the site within 7 days.
Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

Fished this water? Add a photo

Reviewed by hand before it appears. Pick the water, not the spot — we never publish exact locations.

Never published. We use it only if we need to ask about the photo.

Posting to Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam.

JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB. We resize it and strip the location data out of the file.

The name shown under the photo. Leave blank to stay anonymous.

Reader photo license v1.0 — the short version:

  • You grant Guided Floats, LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish, resize and crop your photo on guidedfloats.com and in GuidedFloats’ own social posts and apps. You keep the copyright and can use the photo anywhere else.
  • You confirm that you took the photo yourself, that publishing it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that anyone recognisable in it (or a parent or guardian, if they are under 18) is happy for it to appear here.
  • Credit is printed beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, using the credit name you give us. Leave it blank and we use your name; write “Anonymous” for no name. Your email address is never published.
  • Withdrawing is one email to hello@guidedfloats.com naming the photo. It comes off the site within 7 days.
Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

Flow alert

Tell me when the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam cfs

Now: 485 cfs, read 6:00 pm CDT, Sun Oct 18, 2026 (USGS 01085500, CONTOOCOOK R BL HOPKINTON DAM AT W HOPKINTON, NH).

We never use this address for anything else and never share it. See the privacy policy.

Access

Hopkinton Dam - the flood-control structure governing the reach, with the gauge immediately below it.
West Hopkinton - the village at the gauge, the nearest and most convenient access to the tailwater.
Hopkinton-Everett Flood Control Area - Corps land around the project, with public access and parking.
Contoocook village - downstream, where the river passes through a settled reach with easy bank access.
Merrimack River - the river the Contoocook joins at Penacook, a larger alternative for smallmouth.
Concord - about ten miles east, the nearest city for tackle, guides, lodging and services.
Elm Brook Park - a recreation area on the flood-control land with river access and facilities.

Seasons

Spring: stocking and high flows, with trout fishing at its best once the river drops off the snowmelt peak.
Summer: lower and warmer, with smallmouth bass the main target and paddling traffic heavy on weekends.
Fall: flows settle and cool, trout fishing improves again, and the river is at its quietest and most pleasant.
Winter: cold and largely inactive, with the tailwater staying open below the dam but the fishing very slow.

From the water

No logged trips yet. Be the first to put this water on your map.

Log this water

Fished it or cleaned it? Log in or create a free account to log a trip with photos and earn the waterway badge.

Questions

What is the current flow on the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam?

As of Oct 18, 6:00 pm, the USGS gauge CONTOOCOOK R BL HOPKINTON DAM AT W HOPKINTON, NH reads 485 cfs. Conditions update every 15 minutes.

What species can you catch on the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam?

Anglers target Brook Trout, Brown Trout, Chain Pickerel, Channel Catfish, Fallfish, Largemouth Bass, Rainbow Trout, Rock Bass, Smallmouth Bass, White Perch, Yellow Perch on the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam in New Hampshire.

Where can you access the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam?

Hopkinton Dam - the flood-control structure governing the reach, with the gauge immediately below it. West Hopkinton - the village at the gauge, the nearest and most convenient access to the tailwater. Hopkinton-Everett Flood Control Area - Corps land around the project, with public access and parking. Contoocook village - downstream, where the river passes through a settled reach with easy bank access. Merrimack River - the river the Contoocook joins at Penacook, a larger alternative for smallmouth. Concord - about ten miles east, the nearest city for tackle, guides, lodging and services. Elm...

When is the best time to fish the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam?

Spring: stocking and high flows, with trout fishing at its best once the river drops off the snowmelt peak. Summer: lower and warmer, with smallmouth bass the main target and paddling traffic heavy on weekends. Fall: flows settle and cool, trout fishing improves again, and the river is at its quietest and most pleasant. Winter: cold and largely inactive, with the tailwater staying open below the dam but the fishing very slow.

Where are the fishing regulations for the Contoocook River below Hopkinton Dam?

Regulations change by season and section. Read the current rules on the New Hampshire agency site: https://www.wildlife.nh.gov/fishing-new-hampshire/fishing-rules-and-regulations