Some "Almost Forgotten" Brooks And A River Update.

Frankly, casting is all but irrelevant if a rod is to be used with a team of heavy bugs or Czech nymphs. Typically that means fishing a leader and maybe a yard of fly line, plunking the flies upstream and controlling the team as they fish downstream.  Review of an unnamed nymphing rod - Flyfishing & Flytying review

I was flipping through the stocking report this morning and noticed some old, familiar names in the form of Locke Brook and Willard Brook in Ashby. These are two headwater streams of the Squannacook River. Willard is well known because of the State Park that bears its name and the fact that it snakes along Rt 119. Locke Brook is different. It's tucked away and almost invisible as it drops quickly through a sharp little depression in those rolling hills. I remember it as totally shaded which kept its hold on winter as the rest of north central Massachusetts marched on into spring. I spent two opening days (3rd Saturday in April) there in the early 70's trudging through knee deep snow and saw ice still clinging to the sides of pools in late May. This shaded environment kept the ample brookie population very healthy and it was easy to take a dozen between 4 and 6 inches just stripping in a brookie fly like a Royal Coachman. It was also easy to catch a dozen rainbows that the DFW felt the beautiful place needed, which it didn't. It probably doesn't need the hatchery brookies that are still dumped in. But in any event if you have had it with crowded conditions elsewhere check out this "thin blue line"!!!!!!

River Update

Maybe, as I write, the hatchery gang will throw some trout into the Pipe Stretch and give some of these winter weary central Ma fly fishers a BREAK instead of giving ANOTHER helping of trout to Jamaica Pond, that nationally known, pristine trout lake in the wilds of Boston. How about helping the people who actually CARE about trout 24/7/365??

The Y Pool has fish as does Bondsville!

The Millers actually picked up flow and will be high for another 1-2 weeks at least. The safest places to fish after the flow drops down to the 700 range are at Orcutt and the Bridge St. Pool. It's too high now for regular wading.

The Ware is wadable once the river drops below 400 cfs IMHO. It's at 365 as I write. Rain today may push that up a bit.

Now's the time to find a a small forgotten stream and check it out!!!

Ken

A River Update And Guiding Dates

If you're looking for a 10 foot rod to CAST (read: not nymphing), you may want to look elsewhere" - An online review of a nymphing rod by Trident Fly Fishing

The Millers
The Marathon Day deluge has had a lasting effect on many rivers. As I write the Millers is creeping down and is at 1500 cfs. I had good fishing with the flow at around 700 at Bridge Street and you can expect the same at Orcutt. Barring rain we should hit 700 or below by Thursday (4/26). BTW, it appears that the Millers got it's annual stocking of browns EARLY this year. They appeared to be stocked last week instead of the first Friday in May as usual. Also you may have noticed that the stream gauge for Royalston (Bears Den) is off line. Actually it's been down since late last Summer. So the question is: What's the flow in the Bears Den?. Answer: historically it's about 80% of Ervings flow. Very simple math!!!

The Ware

This river is acting a bit screwy. All rivers began to go down by 4/20 but the Ware actually went up!!
This may have something to do with its relationship with Quabbin. In any event it's flowing at 385 as I write and is trending DOWN. I find that 400 cfs is too high to wade and that 200 is great. Last Sunday the river was loaded with caddis, dark stones and a few Quill Gordons. When the River drops below 300 cfs and the day is in the high 50's or better sleep in and hit the Ware around noon and stay to the evening!!!

The Swift
There's a lot of grumbling out there because of a lack of fish. First, the fish are there but not in the numbers of seasons past. The bait boys, along with many fly fishers, are almost nonexistent which is the other side of the coin. I did ok on a short 2 hour trip (pinheads rule!!! last Tuesday and this place will be stocked again. And at 53 cfs it's the safest river around.  At least it's not flooded like the Farmington!!!

The EB and WB of the Westfield

At 1160 cfs I will wait a bit on the EB. It appears that they are playing with the flows due to some canoe races. Things should get better by mid week. This river drops quickly!!!! The WB is perfect right NOW at about 330 cfs and you should fish it. The real sleeper out there is the Mill River in Northampton.

Well, it happens every year. Someone plans a weekend fishing trip, waits too long to contact me, and has to rearrange everything. I actually have some convenient times for trips - 3 hour trips can be mornings, afternoons and evenings any day of the week. 6 hour trips can start at anytime although early mornings are the most popular. I have a few spots open in May and June is beginning to fill up.

Contact Me!!

Ken

A Short Swift Trip, Pinheads, DHE Emergers And Booking A Trip.

4/20/18 - It appears that the Swift got stocked yesterday - Ken
4/21/18 - Lost streamer wallet on Ware or Swift (see comments)

Ray Bondorew (RaysFly) said...
Ken--Good to see a word or two about the Hornberg. I've fished the Hornberg for years and it's one of my old favorite and reliable patterns. In northern New England it's a prominent and well known pattern tied in a wide range of sizes and variations. In southern New England it's not that popular. I've always fished it dry on the drift with the retrieve bringing it just below the surface. Never thought to weight it and fish it deeper in the water column sizes. Have to tie and try a few weighted ones. Thanks for the tip!
Ray Bondorew Author of "Stripers and Streamers"

                                                         A Short Swift Trip

Patriots day gave us 2 inches of driving cold rain which blew out most of our major trout streams - except the Swift! I've heard during March that there were trout in the upper reaches, something that can't be said below Rt. 9 but good news from the Y Pool and the Bubbler Arm.   Time to check it out.

I love the Bubbler because it is QUIET. It's hard to get packed in there and I can say that the 20+ years I have been fishing it I usually fished it alone or didn't have an angler within 100 feet of me.  It's also the land of sight fishing and by that I don't mean just seeing fish but LOOKING for fish.  That's what i did!


I got there at 8:00 am, three anglers were in the Y Pool but the Bubbler was empty.  Taking a S-L-O-W walk I didn't see a fish until half way and then they were there - all rainbows and some seemed to be actively feeding.

On went a size 18 Zebra Midge which produced NOTHING in a 100 foot sweep of a section.
Next was a size 22 pinhead and that ended the drought. I took two good bows just drifting that fly past stationary trout that made aggressive moves towards that fly! The fish were in the 13 to 15 inch range.

I worked my way down to the Y were I found regular Gary and another braving a nasty wind over the dam. Gary had caught a brookie but that was it. I dropped my Pinhead into the fray and in a half hour had two strong hits but missed both. I was freezing and after two hours I packed it in. So did everyone else!

Pinheads work on the Swift, the Farmie and any other tailwater/spring creek that you come across. The best sizes for me are in the 20 to 24 range and although I've tied them down to size 28 they just don't seem to do the trick in the very small sizes. 20 to 24 puts them into the size range of most of our black fly larvae.

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DHE Emergers

Author Bob Wyatt nailed it when he realized that it is the emerger that most trout are after and not the adult dun.  He also nailed it with his DHE Emerger, a fly that trout just have to eat.

This imitation mimics the pre-adult stage of ANY mayfly that you will encounter. A few wisps of pheasant tail for the tail, floss, thread or dubbing for the body, buggy dubbing for the thorax and then deer hair for the wing stub. (substitute CDC for smaller sizes) One can skip the pheasant tail fibers but I think that it helps the back end of this fly sink which is what you want.

It has all of the feeding triggers that trout fall for and is a perfect Hendrickson imitation.

Don't worry, REAL Spring will be here soon and despite the lousy weather people are booking trips into June and July already.  Don't get left outside!!!






Ken

 

Mayfly Pointers, The Comments Section And An Update

Joe C said...

You certainly nailed that one Ken. I do a lot of small midge nymphing using Gamakatsu C12BM barbless midge large eye hooks. I fish them in sizes 26 to 30 and always use 5X tippet because I can with the large eye. It has never seemed to affect the amount of takes I get plus I can quickly bring the fish to net and get them released without exhausting them. Joe C., July 8, 2015 Ageless advice from a very good angler!

Mayfly Pointers

We are rounding into the first of the major mayfly hatches here in New England. By early May the water temperatures will warm significantly and  insects will start their hatching process.  The first of the large Spring mayflies is the Quill Gordon.

The QG has the misfortune of being misidentified as it's cousin, the Hendrickson, whose hatch overlaps it.

How to identify it  -
1. The QC is slightly smaller and will hatch a few days, generally, ahead of the Hendrickson. But the big clue is that the Gordon has only TWO TAILS and the Hendrickson has THREE.


The QC is one of the very few mayflies that DOESN'T rise to the surface as a nymph and then split out of it's nymphal shell. It SHEDS the shell on the stream bottom and rises to the surface as a fully formed insect. That is why wet flies, such as the quill gordon, the coachman and soft hackles are so damn effective.
                                                                                       
2. Look for the first week of May and a water temperature in the mid 50's to get these flies going.

3. Look for a mid day emergence  and a late afternoon spinner fall. (make arrangements to be there. This is a special time)!!!!

4. If the river flows are not heavy you will not need to use any weight with your fly. The emerging hendrickson nymph is imitated nicely by a partridge and olive soft hackle. Quill Gordons live in strong riffles, hendrickson in not-so-strong riffles.

5. As with most surface rises during "the hatch" the target of the trout is NOT the freshly hatched dun but the struggling emerger who is trying to break through thesurface.  They are very easy pickings!! That is why traditional dry patterns with tails and hackles are being replaced with creations such as Bob Wyatt's DHE emerger and Klinkhamer style flies with a criss-cross hackle. Save your tails and parachute styles for the spinner fall!

Your Comments - Take a minute and go back over the last half dozen posts and read the comments. You will find tons of advice from the readers and all of it is good!  Our comment writers are not afraid to name streams and even sections of streams!!!!  It really is a "blog within a blog"

River Update - The Swift below Rt 9, in the opinion of many, SUCKS!!!  I saw a total of 3 trout looking down into the Tree Pool the other day.  In the meantime some Greater Boston trickles have  received brook, brown and bows ALREADY. Remember, the Swift is a flagship river in Massachusetts for the wading angler and should get more consideration.


Ken
P.S. I got 2 inches of snow last night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hornbergs , A River Update, A Millers Afternoon And Book Me!!

 

"I've heard people say that any trout here without an adipose clip or an elastomer tag/dye mark is wild, and that is completely inaccurate. Most of the trout stocked in the Permanent Catch & Release/TMA are indeed marked by the state (about 10,000), but the other well over 30,000 stocked trout are NOT marked in any sort of way." Upcountry Fly Shop  setting it straight for the Farmington,5/17/17

Commentator "Kozman" turned me on to this style of tying the venerable Hornberg a few years ago. I love this fly because it looks like REAL trout food. The shape and the colors just gives one a lot of faith when it's on the end of your leader. I love fishing this fly on May and June evenings when caddis are dancing on the riffles and stone flies fill the air but I shied away from adding any weight to this classic. That changed three or so years ago when I took his advice and worked some up for the Ware. They did well in the heavy Springtime flow which was good to see because this wide bodied, flow resistant fly, normally doesn't like to sink. Even with the weight it requires an upstream presentation in heavy water.

I'd really like to see a resurgence of this fly, weight or no weight.

Flows Are Getting Low

Study the map to the right. Red means a serious low water condition, Orange means the flows are below normal. First, we haven't had a lot of rain in the last month but at the same time we didn't have the rapid snow melt of years past. The short story is we haven't had much rain and may be looking at a drought. The long story is that this condition could be totally gone in a month.  We will see. (Note: the cluster of red dots belongs to the screwy Deerfield and the Connecticut Rivers, forever burdened as hydro rivers.

Your Trip

All of the rivers are being stocked as I write. I can put you onto some famous rivers and some that people really don't know much about. It seems that most of my clients don't want to be fishing shoulder to shoulder and I can really understand that. So we will go to spots where you have plenty of river to fish without gangs talking about equipment, technique, hot flies and whatever.  Book a trip with me to find out-of-the-way places on famous streams and then great spots on the lesser known streams. After a trip you will know where to fish in the future!!!!

A Millers Afternoon

"Make hay while the sun shines" the old saying goes and that means fish the Millers when they have held water back for the Canoe Race and before they release it. At 3:30 yesterday (4/12) the Millers had dropped from over  1100 cfs to 700. That's still high but perfect for my old reliable setup: a 9 ft 6wt with 6wt full sinking line. This was the standard high water, Springtime rig back in the 70's  and would still be popular today if the tackle industry hadn't convinced us that sinking tip lines and other toys were better performers.  The goal in fishing heavy flows is to get the fly down and a fast sinking line and 4 feet of 3x leader is all you need. The fly itself doesn't even need to be weighted and contrary to to conventional wisdom this line is not hard to cast and certainly casts better than anything with split shot! You can nymph with it and you can swing flies with it as long as your rod has some zip to it.

I tied on that hybrid Hornberg, now referred to as the "Kozman", and began to pick up fish at the Bridge Street Pool. Three bows and a brown (holdover?) and another three that were dropped. Not a bad 1.5 hours and I enjoyed this "old school" session.

As I write (5:30am, 4/13) the Millers is at 600 cfs and should drop during the day SO FISH IT IF YOU CAN!!!! This time Saturday morning this river will be north of 1500 cfs and that flow will last at least a week. Hit it today and use a wading staff!



Ken

River Update, Other Species And A Word On The Millers

I barely ever use 7x...maybe on a few super tiny flies but I only buy a spool every year to keep it fresh not because its gone. I fished the highly technical South Platte in Co for the last 7 years...presentation is king. The really good fishermen never really use anything below 5x except on occasion for the tiny bugs. I used to use 6x and 7x on the Swift exclusively but realize after many years that I was probably casting from the wrong spot more often than not. You hit the nail on the head Ken..
to all readers here there is a lot of great information randomly dispersed throughout Kens blog...well worth the time to go through it-you will be a better angler. Thank Ken for his great blog.  Frequent commentator Bob T regarding the fallacy of using ultra fine tippet  July 9, 2015 at 9:18 PM

 

Is it too damn cold out or what? Maybe it's because I've spent 3 glorious weeks in Florida catching many different species of fish in 80 degree weather or maybe it's because of this cold AND the fact that the rivers are still high and cold and seem kind of empty of fish. I took a ride to the Swift Saturday morning after my grandson's soccer game and saw a total of 5 vehicles for all the parking areas. There was one guy at the Tree Pool who caught nothing and he said that the few that were there had left fishless. Now, backcast to the comments section of my last blog post and read what tincup said: DfW guys told him that they stuff these trout with food BEFORE stocking so they are not very hungry. Makes sense I guess. Anyway, I really don't care that much because things will get better by early May. I'm old enough to remember OPENING DAY (3rd Saturday in April) when the fishing always SUCKED because the water was cold and high!!

We need some warm weather, period. Many places have been stocked but the trout are lethargic with this water temperature. A tick upward in temperature is all that it will take and those "fishless" streams will come alive.

A Hint On The Millers

The annual canoe race is set for Saturday 4/14 and if things go as they usually do they will be holding water back in Royalston for a huge early Saturday morning release. That means that Thursday and Friday will have some very fishable levels on this river.

Other Species

It wasn't always trout for me and it always wasn't fly fishing either. Since I was 5 years old I've used EVERY method to catch ANY kind of fish.  It all settled down to the long rod and trout but before that there were smallmouth bass and Shad.

I actually got pretty good catching some oversized smallies on the Millers and in Wachusett Reservoir. I intend to go back to some of these haunts this season to get reacquainted with this critter.

Shad - I loved fishing for this fish as much I I liked fishing for stripers and even more so because it reminded me of Atlantic Salmon fishing. That season will be here very soon.  Now, this doesn't mean trout are taking a back. I'm just going to relive some old memories!!!!!


Ken

 

Basic Black And A First Trip

I'm old enough so when I say "years ago" I mean decades and not a handful of years. In short, that insurance commercial with the saying "we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two"fits this blog perfectly! So, back to the time machine for this 1970's era event.

Years ago the Squannacook River was my home river and I met a lot of local fish hawks on those waters. One of those characters was an old gent who only fished nymphs and only BLACK NYMPHS. It didn't matter what insect was hatching or what stage of life cycle the insect was going through, black was the color! All his sunken flies were black and his fly box looked surreal. One thing was for sure and that was the fact that he caught tons of trout, period!!!

Now, why did this color work for him? First, he had enough skill to catch trout and could of done it probably with any fly. I think that black worked because its profile STANDS OUT in the water better than flies of multiple colors. Now, I never tested out this theory but I never forgot about it either. Last November I put it to a test on the Swift.

The black soft hackle looked ok with its black floss body, ultra thin copper rib and black starling hackles. (note: starling is very fragile so it pays to tie the feather in by the tip which causes fewer break offs. Do this with all soft hackles) Both size 14 and 16 took fish on that cold day. A better fly? Too early to tell but I like the idea of simplifying my fly selection. Now for a black streamer!!!!

First Day Out

T.S. Elliot said that "April is the cruelest month". That bit of prose certainly applies to the trout fishing scene here is central Massachusetts where we have been bitten by high cold flows and trout with a case of lockjaw. It reminds me of 2015 which had even higher flows along with cold temperatures.

I braved the 23 degree temperature and high wind to hit the WB of the Westfield. I was forced to take some detours due to trees on the roads. The WB was roaring away at just below 600 cfs and in my two hours there I got no runs, no hits and no errors. As I write the flow is down into the mid 300 range which is nearing perfect for this stream.

All the streams are being stocked and I think it's a bit earlier than last year. Pick a river, tie on something heavy and go shake the rust off. In a month we will be starting the dry fly season and I'm not talking about midges but good old traditional mayflies. That's what we wait all winter for, right???

The Roaring Millers, A Good Bugger And Another Pet Peeve

Note: Add the EB of the Swift, The EB of the Tully, the North and the Quaboag Rivers to the central Ma. stocked list as of 4/3.


Most flies are tied to catch fly fishers, not trout! - Author Unknown

The Millers is running a few ticks below the 1000 cfs range AND it's been stocked! I know you'll want to fish it so BE CAREFUL!!! One false step and you may be on the evening news. Don't think that it's going down soon because rain is in the forecast. The good thing about the stocking is that this flow will move those bows around so there will not be any stocking point heroes. I'll be waiting until things become a bit more civilized!

A week ago a comment was sent in by Phil Foster about his tried and true brown and peacock bugger. I've had this fly on my brain over my 10 state drive from Florida. I love the color of this and I believe that it is a VERY good imitation of a crayfish just as he said. My version is above. Also long time reader KOZMAN again mentioned the fabled HORNBERG. This fly worked well for me on the Ware last spring and I need to tie up a few more.

I couldn't resist placing a photo of a big Swift Brown from last Fall. This will be the year to watch this specie on the Swift. There is no DFW sponsored program to promote browns on this river as in Connecticut because it appears that we really don't need it. This population has exploded in the last two years ALL BY ITSELF.

Pet Peeve

It really bothers me when someone says that a river is sub par or worse, that it sucks. No river deserves that. Years ago a western Ma. outdoor writer called the Millers an open sewer and it took years to get rid of that branding. Maybe these people haven't developed the skill set to successfully fish a place and they don't realize that one trout caught on a tough freestone can be a better experience than a bunch on a famous, but crowded tailwater!

Ken