Highs And Lows On The Swift

 "I think I fish, in part, because it's an anti-social, bohemian business that, when properly, puts you forever outside the mainstream culture without actually landing you in an institution."

One can find the Swift in either one of two conditions - nice and low, around 42 to 60 cfs where it's been for most of 2021 or in the 110 cfs or above range. Thee flows are manmade and can occur at the press of a button (I'm not kidding). From the first of the year until June 15th the flow was 42 to 48 cfs. Then it hit 114 cfs where it's been since. It will go down very soon due to all the rain and when the Connecticut River rises with that rain the Swift gets turned down.

Now, which flow do I like best?  I'll take the low flow any day.

1. I love skinny water! I love drifting small dries, wets and emerging patterns over trout that are in less than 10 inches of water. Tiny flies and stealthy casts are in my blood. You have those conditions with a cfs in the 40's.

2. Euro nymphers appear lost with those conditions.  The current is too weak to barge those tungsten bombs that they fish with.

3. Flows over 60 cfs change the Cady Lane section from something that is very wadable in the 40's and not wadable at 100 +. (and I'm not talking about the top of Cady Lane but below the horse farm to the cottages.

4. Brook trout love skinny riffles for spawning beds with just a couple of inches covering their backs.  114 cfs is, in my opinion, way too much velocity for successful spawning.

Top Summer fly

The Summer just works and is #1 on the Swift for me during the warm months.

All the rivers are flowing nicely (maybe too nicely). I've had good results on the Millers and have heard the same about the EB.  BOOK ME!!!

Ken

July News

 

1.Someone must of been doing a mean rain dance because all the streams are up and very fishble.

2. Swift got stock 7/1 and if it's like last year it's 2000 from the dam to Bondville.

3. Pray for rain and cloudy, cool weather this weekend to keep the kayak crowd down.

4. Have a great 4th of July

Ken

  "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