"If  you're weary, sick but still ambulatory, fed up, overworked, angry, frustrated, heartbroken, need to think things over or need to stop thinking things over for a while, you should definitely go fishing and you should go alone so you don't bother anyone. But then fishing, like most other human pleasures, is better when it's done out of love than when it's used as a painkiller."  John Gierach

June represented the best and the worst of the trout fishing calendar.  Anyone who could tear themselves away from the Farmie and the Swift and fished at the right time of day did well on the freestones The Ware and the EB held their own with the Millers picking up the slack during the second half of June.  These are true New England trout rivers!!!

Right now it is too hot and the flows are too low on my favorite streams.  We are having another G.D. drought so I'll wait for some RAIN.  I'll drop by the Swift after July 1 to see what the DFW gave us for our change-of regulations stocking and then enjoy a nice July and August stalking sippers, chasing stripers and anticipating Fall.  One thing I will do is avoid the crowds. To get what I mean go back to the previous post and read the comment about crowds by  one of my readers.

It was T.S. Elliot who coined the term "prenatal darkness", that time of night when the stars and the planets still grace the night sky but there is that faint glow in the east signaling the start of a new day. From the last week of June to the 2nd week of July  I would find myself at 3:30 facing upstream at the Upper Trestle Pool or at the Kempfield Pool as trout rose EVERYWHERE.  This action would last until dawn (5:30) and then would come to a hard stop.  What I was witnessing was "behavioral drift" - the habit of some aquatic species of insects to pack their bags and migrate downstream.  It was the best dry fly/emerger fishing that I've had of the Millers.  A small (size 20 to 22) buzzer suspended 4 or 5 inches below a tiny indicator or just (at times) a Griffiths gnat was all it took.  If you thought that a mile long nymph rod and a half ton of tungston  would be your weapon of choice then think again.  Your fishing day would be over quicker than a knife fight in phone booth.

We Need Rain!!

Ken

Big And Bushy

 "You get over these small loses the way a lizard grows a new tail, and you end up remembering the great uncaught fish as vividly as you do the caught ones - and just as fondly too, because there's a part of every fisherman that roots for the fish."  John Gierach

Here's my favorite later Spring and Summer searching pattern.  It looks like a half dozen different flies but most importantly it floats like a cork and works very well in fast water like you see at the EB.  

A typical EB evening starts around 5pm with this fly in the heavy water.  It will probably be the biggest morsel those trout will see on the surface and they will attack it.  As the sun begins to set the standard hatches start up and I retire this beast until the next time.

Hook - size 10 dry or light wire nymph hook

Tail - deer mask

Body - bright synthetic dubbing (I like yellow)

Hackle - cream, grizzly or badger

Wing - More deer mask

Drop a soft hackle off the back or fish it solo.

The Rivers

The Millers is perfect at 205 cfs and the Swift is fine at 114cfs. Pick your spots on the other rivers.  Remember, the the hot spot of May can be as dead as a door nail right now.  Search out SHADED DEPTH early in the day or at dusk and pray for rain!!!!

Ken

Bet On The Baetis

 "I have not failed. I just found 10,000 wats that won't work" - John Gierach

This fly may account for more full stomachs on your average trout stream than any other insect.  The word "Baetis"  is a catch-all for at least a half dozen different mayflies with the Grand Blue Winged Olive, mostly known as the BWO, leading the way.  All of these species lumped into this group have a few things in common - they are small, love to hang out in the nymph stage in weedy areas, like to drift around and take their time emerging and they are a ball to fish.

Size 18 to 22 will work. The body should be olive or brown thread with a fur thorax (mine is a light olive).  Tails are optional.

Find a steady but slow flow that may be a few feet deep.  Use a long leader of 12 to 15 feet in a size 6x.  Drift this fly down and across keeping the line fairly taunt.  This method works well especially in the very early morning when you have that activity called "behavioral drift", namely the whole baetis population decides to check out new neighborhoods.

These insects will rule the stage from now through the Fall.

Have Fun!!!

Ken

Lucky So Far

 "The purist fishes exclusively with a fly rod, which means that he owns a spinning rod and sometimes uses it, but he doesn't talk about it much...and stores it separately from his fly tackle." - John Gierach

So far, so good!! We get blasted by a heat wave but then we are greeted with a weather front that drops the air temperature by 20 degrees. As I write (5:30am) the air temperature in Trout Land is only 46 degrees.  What is equally important is the fact that our stream levels are holding their own and this is the key to everything. If the aquafers are fully charged then there will be ample cool  water seeping into our rivers and the trout will find thermal refuge that we will not find with our hand held stream thermometers.

The Swift

The Swift went up on the 15th to 114cfs and has stayed there. I was discussing this with Brian at the Deerfield Fly Shop and we are leaning towards a very dry landscape in the northern Connecticut River watershed which keeps the tap running out of Quabbin.  That should not last much longer.

BTW, there's a lot of talk about the scarcity of trout in the Swift.  That will end with the July 1st stocking BUT there's plenty of trout there now. One of the doubters saw his first "pellet hatch" and said "where did they come from?" A couple of my newbies took their first trout EVER recently from that river.  There are fish there.

Hatches

Sulphurs rule the day on the Swift. Size 16 to 20 in a soft hackle and size 20 to 24 in a dry will work although the soft hackle, if fished as an emerger, will out fish the dry.

The March Brown can be found on freestones in June and early July like the Millers. Look for them in slower water with soft, silty bottoms.

Remember, fish the freestones in the very early morning or in the evening right into the dark. If they (browns) are rising then they are feeding and that's a good thing. Get the fish to the net quickly and that means using a fairly stout leader.

Tenkara

I'm getting a steady pulse of requests for tenkara lessons and we are catching fish using that wonderful method.  Contact me!!!

Ken

Summer

 

"When you begin to understand the technique of the wet fly, the search for places where fish are lying becomes fascinating. The more you practice it, the more you realize that it is far from being merely a question of promenading a train of flies under water." Charles Ritz, A Fly Fisher's Life 

Mid June has arrived and it's not too early to declare that the Summer fly fishing season is upon us. and with that comes the reemergence of that old time dogma about summertime trout fishing.  None of that dogma applies to tailwaters but only on natural flows.  Let's take a look at some "truisms".

"Don't fish when the water temperature is above 62 degrees". This nugget actually goes back to the early 20th century when the trout season ended in early July.  Trout, especially BROWN TROUT, can acclimate to a warmer flow IF some thermal refuge (cool water) can be found to carry them through the day.  They will become active after sundown and still be feeding at dawn.  One of the best dry fly experiences that I've had was on the Millers at 4am on a hot July Weekend.  Everything was rising but stopped at 5am.

"You will stress out the trout if you fish for them"- This sounds true but it really isn't.  You can get a trout to take a fly only if the water temperature would promote a trout to feed.  Optimum feeding temperature for a trout is between 55 and 65 degrees. Above and below that range their metabolism will lessen and so will their feeding.

I mentioned "Thermal Refuge".  These are the tribs, springs and seepages that all freestones have. I stay away from the obvious ones during the day during the Summer just to give the trout a break.  My best example of this occurred on the Squannacook years ago.  It was a hot, humid Sunday afternoon and i decided to walk the river below the Harbor.  There was a swampy area that I used to avoid but not on that day.  The swamp drained into the river with a trickle of water about the length of a pencil. Downstream from that mouth there were about 20 browns forming a conga line in that cool water. I never fished for them and sometimes after a heavy rain they would move out into the river but come back when the flows got low.  

I've also broke off trout on an early summer evening only to catch them again an hour of so later.

Fish very early or late or go to the tailwaters!!

Ken

" Successful trout fishing isn't a matter of brute force or even persistence, but something more like 

 

This is the High Season for rising trout on the Swift.  The Sulphurs are back and you will need a few essentials: Some sparsely dressed sulphur emergers in sizes 14 through 18 tied as a traditional wet fly.  Wait a minute you may say, "isn't size 14 just a bit too big. Yes, but not in the riffles where you want a larger fly to stand out in all that turbulence. 

The wet fly still is presented on the swing and and probably no more that 10 inches from the surface in that knee deep column of water. the trout will be near the surface too or at least looking up.

The way I like to tie them - 

Body- yellow or yellow olive thread around 8 to 12 o/o

Thorax - Bright yellow dubbing (I like rabbit)

Hackle - ginger colored hen hackle.  Look for a cape with the smallest hackles.

I had two guys who caught their first trout on this fly this week.  The hatch starts around 10 am.  On the next post we will talk about the dry fly for this species.

It's currently 2:30 pm and it's pouring with a flash flood watch and the temperature has dropped to 72 degrees.  Good bye heat wave???

KEN

The Rivers

 "Fly fishing is solitary, contemplative, misanthropic, scientific in some hands , poetic in others, and laced with conflicting aesthetic  considerations. It's not even clear if catching fish is the point." -   John Gierach

It was a good month of May on Massachusetts rivers. Trout were on the attack and we had some good hours on the EB, The Ware and the Swift if you knew where to look.

We worked the EB this past Wednesday from 2 to 6pm with a flow at 311 cfs.  The Bliss Pool rewarded us especially when we put on a green caddis larvae.

The Ware has been top notch but it pays to move around.  Below the Church Street bridge is not the only place to fish. There are many good sized browns in that river.  Try River Run a few miles upstream.

The Swift has been on and off the last few weeks. There have been a number of zero days but some days where 18+ fish have been taken.

I hooked and lost an 18 to 20 inch brown in the bubbler arm on Thursday.  It's still there so go for it.

Let's give the Millers a few more days.  It's still over 800 cfs.

As you can tell I'm not one of those writers who will never divulge the spot on a river that I fish or let alone the name of the river. People work hard in this world and having some time to fish and knowing where to go is important to them.  That's what this blog does.  I know of two bloggers who used to read my blog and would then pepper me for more details, "where, when, what time and what were you using." Then they would draw a blank as to the river on their blogs.  An outdoor writer should not make himself and his buddies the center of attention.  It's the river that gets top billing and then the fish.

Book me.  The fishing is great!!

Ken

Sulphur Season And Weird Awards And The State Of The Rivers

 

I enjoy fishing too much to risk my life at it.  Death can really cut into your fishing time. - John Gierach

My Favorite Sulphur Pattern

It was two years ago when I witnessed one of the best insect hatches I've ever seen on the Swift. For most of June and a lot of July the birds (Cedar Waxwings) would start swooping along the river around 10am picking off these delicate yellowish mayflies by the thousands.  I had birds come so close to me while chasing these bugs that I could feel their wings beat  close to my face.  One angler actually got hit in the head by one of these crazed birds.  It was wonderful!!!

Yes, you can toss a dry fly BUT you will have more success with a small (size 18 to 20) soft hackle.  It is the fly to use BEFORE the hatch and is the perfect emerger pattern during the hatch (remember, most surface disturbances that we see are not trout taking insects on the surface but insects just below the surface.

The State of the Rivers

Here is where we are at 6am, June 1

The Ware - 353cfs (this was the best river for the month of May)

West Branch -328cfs

Swift             -46cfs

Millers          - 1110cfs

EB                -534cfs

We have a dry and hot week coming up so we can be thankful for the water.  The Swift is fine, the EB will be fine in 24 hours, give the Ware and the West Branch until Friday and who knows about the Millers.

Beware the Awards

"The worst is when they email out of the blue to ‘congratulate’ you. Usually, they’ll want you to pop an ‘award badge’ on your site; which, embedded in the code, is a follow link. Sites like Feedspot are the absolute worst for this.

What is feedspot? It’s a site that claims to be legit but they will keep hounding you to put the badge on your site and they even replicate your content on their site without permission. I’ve emailed them several times about basically running my full blog posts on their site which they claim helps them with traffic. They still haven’t removed my site from their's!" https://thebloglancer.co.uk/  

I've seen these "awards" before and I stay clear of them and their offers. They will award anyone including cat blogs, baby boomer blogs, amigurumi blogs (that's yarn art), Christian book review blogs and such with a garish gold medal which appears to be a tracking device.  It's funny but some of these "ranked" blogs have very little activity with  little or no new content.

This blog has had a steady growth pattern for years. Growth, in my mind, comes from page views and READER COMMENTS!!!

                                                 Praying Mantis

No, I didn't tie this critter, I just like the looks of it.  I wouldn't fish it either. I'd be afraid that I'd stick it in a tree. 

Book an evening trip!

Ken