Fly Fishing Information On The Millers, Swift, Middle, West and East Branches Of the Westfield River and the Ware, and Mill rivers. YOUR BEST SOURCE FOR MA. FLY FISHING INFORMATION, the top ranked fly fishing blog in Massachusetts! WHAT FLY FISHERS READ!!
Autumn On The EB
Tuesday, June 8, 2021
" 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???
"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.
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.
Jack Gartside and a few of those old Scottish tiers knew the value of aftershaft feathers. You know, the fluff that we peel off of the stem and then toss. Try working them into your larger soft hackles like 10's and 8's. It makes a world of difference as the aftershaft fluff is more lively than the traditional soft hackle fibers and it will give your fly some needed bulk to present a good profile in the water.
Aftershaft at bottom of feather.
I always wrap a partridge hackle in by the tip of the feather. With the fluff I tie in at the base of the feather. Sometimes I have to cut back on the base if the stem is too thick.
This pattern landed two skinny water trout (brown and a bow) on the Ware yesterday.
The Rain
Well, the rain finally came to Central/Western Ma yesterday as an on again, off again event. All watersheds got rain with some more than others. The Ware took the top prize doubling it's flow to 111 cfs as I write.. The others ticked upwards which is a good thing. Now we need another dose and not a deluge!
"It's an odd fact of life that whichever side of the stream you're on, two-thirds of the best water is out of reach on the other side" John Gierach
June is the month were we begin the transition from Spring to Summer AND making sure that we on on the freestones at the right time to witness the Damsel Fly hatch which may be the biggest insect hatch in terms of size and numbers for our central New England freestones.
What is a Damsel Fly? Without getting scientific on you just think of a large dragon fly that is a beautiful light shade of green AS A WINGED ADULT! Actually the adult is of little importance to the flyfisher or the trout for that matter. It's the nymph that creates all the action. Here's how it works:
Find a bright sunny day and be on the river around 9am. Watch the rocks along the shore and if your timing is right and the conditions are good the shore side rocks will be covered with Damsel nymphs by noon.
Now, the damsel fly nymph is fairly quick in the water and the trout will chase them as the nymph tries to get out of the water. I've seen trout BEACH themselves trying to grab one of these outsized morsels. I once was fishing the Bliss Pool on the EB from the other side and I could hear splashing behind me. The whole bank was full of trout chasing these critters. It's an easy guess that on a prime day these insects number in the thousands.
What Fly To Use
Forget the adult insect. The trout don't seem to know it exists. It's the nymph that is the attraction and a size 12 brown wooley bugger or a Gartside Sparrow tied on a size 10 dry fly hook will work.
Add very little weight to this fly because you will be fishing it in shallow water anyway.
The EB and the Millers are tops in Central Ma for this event and I have seen them on the Ware. You will probably not find them on a tailwater.
I was perusing the fly fishing web the other day when I noticed that this well known rod maker was selling the personal fly rod of the late, great fly reel creator Stan Bogdan. The rod was bamboo, of course, and was only 6 ft, 6 inches long which harkened back to a different time when rods were shorter and lines a bit heavier.
Backcast to the early 1970's before graphite took center stage. The old bamboo "factories" were dropping like spinners leaving only the individual craftsmen working with cane. Fiberglass owned the market and with good reason - glass was cheap, strong and easy to work with. If it had a problem it was that it had a weight problem in the longer lengths just like bamboo. (the odd 7.5 ft length was an American attempt to push the length of a trout rod out to where it was still a trout rod. 8 feet was the practical limit). Then graphite blew everything out of the water and overnight fly rods became l o n g e r and lighter.
The fly fishing industry embraced this stuff and pushed the "longer and lighter" mantra to the extreme (maybe that's why we have so many reports of broken euro nymph rods). But was it really necessary? The industry will say YES because it's their job to promote new products but personal experience would tend to disagree. Back in the day my 7 foot 5wt Fenwick glass rod conquered tiny streams where it was easy to fish in close quarters, and held up well on larger rivers. The truth is I didn't know that a 7 foot rod put me at a disadvantage because I was still catching lots of trout and with casting adjustments I could handle most casting distance easily..
I have realized that my average rod length has dropped in the past few years. My 9 and 10 foot graphite sticks are gathering dust and have been replaced in the lineup with 6.5 to 7.5 foot cane rods. I still fish graphite in the Winter (bamboo and ice don't mix) but my rods of choice are graphite, a 7ft 3wt or an 8 ft 6wt depending on what I'm throwing.
I can truthfully say that my shorter rod length doesn't handicap me. On a 30 foot wide stream how could it? And on larger rivers I'm only concerned in that first 30 to 40 feet. I have no problems mending line or with line control Now, I'll draw the line at some of these "trick" rods that are in the 5 foot range. Novelty has its limits.
The Rivers
Every river is now within the "good flow" range. Even the Millers has stared to behave (537 cfs as I write) and with a dry forecast things look great this week. The EB, the Ware, especially the Ware have been producing well. And don't be a 9 - 5er. Fish through dusk!!
Ken
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Sure, sometimes a non-angler will ask how I can stand to hook, play, and land these increasingly rare fish that I claim to love and respect so much, adding to their already heavy burden of survival. To that I say, "It's because life is more complicated than either of us could ever imagine". John Gierach
I love all rivers, large, small and somewhere in the middle. I love transitional rivers that border on cold and warm (big insect populations and big trout live there). I guess I can say that I love freestones the most. What about tailwaters?someone may say. All I can say is if I were to have the best day of fishing in my life I would want it to be on a freestone BECAUSE I wouldn't have to deal with the tailwater crowds or artificial conditions. In fact, the best days of fishing, for me, have been on freestones.
There is something natural about freestone streams just like fishing a bamboo rod as opposed to man-made composite materials. And also a freestone river is subject to the weather that we have on that day. A tailwater is usually the same if we don't have flows subject to hydro power generation. Fishing a tailwater can be done at bankers hours because of the artificial flow of the river. It's always cold. Freestones, especially in the summer, fish best in the very early morning and at dusk when things are cooler. It's my favorite time!!
I used to find myself getting into the Millers at 4am in early July when there was still some darkness to show a few planets and stars. In that dim predawn light you could make out the rise forms of dozens or maybe hundreds of trout as they rose to drifting nymph forms and I caught a lot of rising trout UNTIL DAWN when the whole show would shut down. 15 hours later I would be back as the evening, or should I say the "Dusk Rise " would start. This went until after dark and it was great. I played under Mother Natures Rules and not a dam release schedule. It was great!!! This is flyfishing on the Millers, the EB and the Ware and you may have the place to yourself (no crowds).
"Tailwaters are what Thomas McGuane called "the great theme parks of American fly fishing," with their more or less stable water temperatures and artificially inflated populations of insects and fish. They are irresistible for all kinds of reasons, but all of those trout breed the peculiarly postmodern sense that anything short of a 20 fish day is a bust, so when things are slow there's the temptation to lie about numbers or to vaguely allow that you are "getting your share" - John Gierach
Many may not realize but the first of the tailwaters was unleashed on the American fishing public in the late 1930's as a solution to power generation and/or flood control. Turning natural rivers into refrigerated trout zones was not the intent but a biproduct of the design. Also, tailwaters are not the trout heaven that we imagine. There have been some major fish kills below the dam(s) when released water has a low oxygen content. That will kill off more trout then when Mother Nature rewards us with a drought.
The Rivers
As I write:
The EB - at 514 it is fishable but maybe not crossable in all sections
Millers - at 1060 cfs it is slowly rounding into form. Look for a flow of 500 cfs or less.
Ware - 248 cfs is good. Fish this river
Swift - 45cfs - Yes, it got stocked again. Very fishable as always.
