Newt Gingrich tried to take a page out of Sarah Palin's playbook and took to the waters for a photo-op.

However, a fisherman ripped him.

The House speaker went down to a New Hampshire river yesterday with a horde of reporters in tow some say to test the waters for a possible presidential bid to chat up some anglers.

But Gingrich had hardly waved hello when a feisty fisherman named Tim Kipp ruined the Republican's photo opportunity.

"Your politics are some of the meanest politics I have ever heard," Kipp shouted as he stood waist-deep in the Androscoggin River. "You make Calvin Coolidge look like a liberal."

Gingrich appeared stunned, but recovered slightly and told Kipp: "Despite our political differences, good luck today."

But Kipp was just warming up.

"This guy is the most meanspirited, vicious politician we have seen in a long, long time," Kipp told the reporters.

"The water we are fishing in right now will be destroyed by his policies."

Gingrich later tried to shrug off the encounter with Kipp, a high school teacher from Brattleboro, Vt.

Yet the outing wasn't a total bust. Gingrich realized his dream of seeing a few moose.