A Late August Evening On The Millers

Finally, the Millers has come down to seasonable levels and I have the time to fish it. I made my way down to the Kempfield Pool around 5pm on Friday, the 29th. Things looked promising - clouds were coming in from the west which would take the sun off the water and speed up any surface activity for the evening. One has to remember that it gets dark by 8pm now instead of 9-9:30pm as it did just two months ago. I was ready.

The first rises were random with no real feeding pattern. They were also pretty showy which is usually a sign of caddis activity but soon the sulphurs stole the show and the browns really made their appearance. I took seven browns - all good sized fish with great color. All of these browns were fooled by a size 16 sulphur comparadun. It's the second year in a row that we have had good sulphur hatches this late in the season.

The best dry fly fishing on the Millers starts now and lasts through mid October. Experience it NOW!!

Ken

Back To Normal

In over 20 years of fly fishing the Millers I can say that I have never seen a summer as wet and wild as 2008!! This river has not been "normal" with all of this rain since late June. July had 6 inches of parcipitation as recorded at the Birch Hill station. The first two weeks of August were also very wet. Mid summer on this river means dry fly action but all of that got blown away with all the high water. This condition found me fishing the Swift which has been awesome. But things are now coming back to normal on the Millers. I guided two gents on the evening of August 21. The water was still high but very fishable with a few trout working the surface. The rains helped the rainbows which are still in the river! The sulphurs are there in the evening as they were late last summer and that's a very good thing.

Now is the time to work this river. The Millers will become an afternoon/evening river in September so barring more heavy rains we should have long hours casting to rising trout.

See you there.

Ken

More On the Swift River

Well, It's been four trips to the Swift in the last eight days and all of them have been very interesting. First, I haven't used anything larger than a size 18 and that was just for a very short time. Second, serendipities in hot red have produced very well as has tiny scud patterns. There's been some decent dry fly fishing using black emergers in sizes 20 and 22. All of this takes some of the sting out of not being on the Millers which has been very high for the last two weeks. The Millers should be fishable this weekend but the little Swift has been so good as of late that I might give the Millers another week. We'll see.

One more thing. It seems that most of the fishing on the Swift is centered around the "Y" Pool and the Hatchery Pipe. I'm guilty of that too but I've been exploring a bit. The above photo is the beautiful stretch above the old crib dam. Check it out.

Ken