Epoxy
Lake Sunapee
Sunapee, New Hampshire, USA
Also known as Sunapee Harbor, New London, Newbury
For most of the year the Sunapee trout was a plain silver fish. In the fall the males turned gold, which is how it got its name.
It lived in four lakes, all of them in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, and nowhere else. Biologists took it for a glacial relict, an Arctic char left behind in deep cold water when the ice went north.
Whether it was really its own thing was argued over. A US Bureau of Fisheries ichthyologist described it as distinct in 1914 on the strength of its size and its autumn color. Others said it was simply the blueback char the state had stocked here in 1878, grown large.
The argument stopped mattering. Lake trout were put into Sunapee, by most accounts in error, and the golden trout bred with them until there was nothing left to argue about. It was gone by the 1950s.
Details
- Feature
- Lake
- Build
- Epoxy
- Material
- Solid Cherry
- Colour
- Ocean Blue
- Size
- 10-1/2" x 16"
- Completed
- March 2025
How this one was made
Not wall to wall, so the dam follows the waterline about half an inch out and the flood runs along the shore, which keeps the pour contained and the staining risk inside a narrow band. That matters here because the board is cherry, and cherry is open grained enough that blue will find its way in if the seal misses anywhere. Sunapee is intricate through its top half, all points and coves and small islands, and simpler down the tail. The compass and the type sit well clear of the water in bare cherry, each with a dam of its own.
Waypoints close by
Beach PondConnecticut, USA
Groton Long PointNew London County, Connecticut, USA
Bailey IslandMaine, USA
Cobbosseecontee LakeWinthrop, Maine, USAAlso from our workshop
Moose Tracks
From 
Howl
From 
Kodiak
From 
Nomad
From Where this is
43.3879816, -72.0564743