Salmon in the Swift?

 "We do have to think about conservation now, although it is chilling to realize there are catch-and-release fishermen alive today who don't know how to clean and fry a fish" -John Gierach

Swift River Landlocked Salmon

It was the winter of 2018 when Quabbin overflowed in late October and sent God knows how many landlocks into the Swift River. Those brutes were still there the next summer and then the strangest thing happened - 6 to 8 inch salmon began to be caught in the Swift.

The question now is are they still there??  I've only received a dribble of reports this year (2022) and the jury is still out as to whether or not they were salmon or small browns.   Fill me in!!

 

The Unsinkable Soft Hackle

What happens when you combine partridge hackle (soft, flimsy and very sinkable) with very kinky high floating poly post wing material?  You get a fly that floats like a cork has very lively materials that suggest life.

Take a size 16 curved light wire hook and create a thread body from the thorax to the hook bend (2 layers of 8/0 will do.)

Take a small bundle of poly post material and tie it to the top of the hook at the thorax. Each end of that bundle should be about a 1/2 inch long. Pull the ends up tightly and then snip that material so that it flairs out as a wing.

Tie in 2 turns of partridge in front of the poly wing and you are done.

The Gierach quote at the top of this post is one of my favorites. Any other Gierach quote that values solitude over crowds does well for me. In fact, I am under the impression that most of the newbies to this sport really don't like to fish alone.  I guided one young man from Beantown who asked me if I ever had any concerns about meeting some strange charactors out in the wilds.I said no, but they should have some concerns about meeting me!

Three months until April

Ken

Caddis Flies

 "The solution to any problem - work, love, money, whatever - is to go fishing and worse the problem, the longer the trip should be." - John Gierach

We now have over 100 years of fly fishing literature that dissects every aspect of our past time. From Theodore Gordon to Charlie Jenkins to Charles Fox to Ernest Schweibert (the list goes on and on) these flyfishers made some great advances for our sport BUT left some huge omissions and the largest is the lack of study of the Caddis Fly.

These 20th century writers were fixated by the Mayfly, especially the east coast writers who fished in and around the Catskills. They basically were dry fly anglers and May Flies provide anglers with long extended trips down the river while their wings dry. Caddis flies are a different story. They pop out of the surface and say "see ya later". No little flotilla of dainty mayflies here!!! It's a quick ride to the surface and many times with a trout in hot pursuit.

I catch far more trout on caddis imitations than the other offerings that I carry with my DMS Caddis leading the way.

Ken

Beating The Drum For The Lower Millers

Beating The Drum For The Lower Millers

I seem to do this every year around this time and that is to beat the drum for the Lower Millers. Thirty years ago I had Wendell Depot and The Bears Den practically to myself. Now they are popular destinations and that is a very good thing but the Lower Millers is pretty much the same lonesome place that it was back in the 1980's. This is where I caught my first Millers trout in 1985. It's a great place!!!

Where is it?? I consider the Bridge Street Pool as the start of it because from here downstream there is no real road access until you arrive at Millers Falls. The railroad is the only real access which means that you have about 5 miles of hoofing it to work the entire area. The above photos are of three GOOD pools that are within .6 miles of each other.

Bridge Street Pool -) third photo from the top) This is a great place and is usually the first place that I show people below Wendell Depot. Classic riffles that lead into DEEP holding water. If I had one place to fish on a May or June morning this would be the place.

Cable Pool - About a 1/4 mile below the Bridge Street Pool is the Cable Pool. The few fly fishers back in the 1980's knew what was meant by the word "Cable". This place was crisscrossed by cables with sliding gates for kayak training. The cables are long gone but the pool/run is still there and it is perfect water.

Morman Hollow Brook - Morman Hollow Brook flows into the Millers about .6 of a mile below the gauge at Bridge St and the pools in this spot are beautiful. The trout are there along with the largest smallies that the Millers has to offer.

BTW, Morman Hollow has a good population of native brookies which seem to survive even if the DFW dumps their farm raised phonies on top of them!!!

Take a break from the crowds and spend a few hours here. It's worth it!!

Ken

My Tiny Rods And Goodbye 2022

  "I strongly suspect that much of what we believe about a particular fly rod has little basis in reality. If you're shopping for a fly rod I can think of no greater waste of your time than watching the plethora of "fly rod shoot-outs" that glut the channels of YouTube. Nothing irks me more than to listen to some dweeb prattle on about the performance pros and cons of two rods when he's obviously not a good enough caster to do either one justice". -  George V. Roberts, - Acquisitions Manager, Tail Magazine and Casting Instructor

A few years ago my friend Brad nudged me into buying a short rod, namely the CGR 5ft 9 inch by Cabela's. I hated it from the start. It had the action of a buggy whip and that's what killed it for me.  I played with the possibility of selling it but a strange quirk in my personality keeps me from letting go of any fly rod. So it went into the closet and stayed there for a few years.

Then I revisited this little blue line from my past and decided to give this rod a workout. Cabela's labeled this a 3wt but I rigged it with a Wulff Triangle 2wt and that did the trick. I was able to keep my back cast out of the trees by just roll casting. (Triangle tapers are roll casting machines) This rig may force the retirement of my Tenkara rods which are a pain in the ass on brush chocked streams. The shorter rod with the appropriate sized reel makes landing the trout easy compared to Tenkara.

I'm working on a 6 foot bamboo rod to play on the same streams. Can't wait until May.

2022

This was not a good year on the fishing front.  Let's hope for less extreme weather in 2023.  A year or two without droughts and floods would be nice.

Happy New Year!

Ken

Merry Christmas!!

  "No fly rod at any price is going to magically transform you into a Lefty Kreh or a Joan Wulff any more than a Stradivarius is going to turn your middle school violin student into Itzhak Perlman. And make no mistake: Itzhak Perlman could pick up a yard sale fiddle and extract soulful Tchaikovsky from it". - George Roberts, Tail Fly Fishing Magazine

It's been a strange year. The bone breaking drought last summer pretty much took the fun out of fishing my freestones and I can only take so much of the tailwater scene with the crowds and the rafts. My saltwater campaign was the worst I've ever had. (note to self: do more scouting). 

Fly tying carried me through the summer. As I've said to many that I've guided if I couldn't fly fish any longer I'd still tie flies!!

Merry Christmas, or whatever Holiday you celebrate, and have a very good New Year!!

Ken

Real Blue Lines

  "Trout are among those creatures who are one hell of a lot prettier than they need to be. They can get you wondering about the hidden workings of reality"

We hear a lot about "thin blue lines" but what exactly are they?  Here's my definition: it is a tiny watercourse that may or may not have a name and is not on the DFW stocking list. This last bit of criteria strikes a lot of gems from the list because the DFW just can't help themselves from stocking a lot of these streams with hatchery brookies and at times with rubber rainbows!

Who fishes these streams?  Well, hardly anyone to be truthful. I will mention the stream name and favorite spots on well known streams but never, ever mention or give the name and location of a thin blue line.

If you just bought a $1000 dollar fly rod you will not be seen on a thin blue line because you will not be able to show it off as you would on the Farmington. Tenkara rods, where there is no leafy canopy, and glass rods where there's a lot of underbrush, rule the day. In fact, thin blue lines demand simplicity in equipment and approach.

We could vastly improve the quality of life for self sustaining brook trout AND self sustaining brown trout populations just by stopping the stocking on these small streams.

BTW, beavers are important to wild trout survival.  A few years ago some local TU'ers declared war on those dam builders. I had a wildlife biologist from Maine declare that if beavers were harmful to wild brookies then Maine wouldn't have any wild brookies!!  Enough said!

Ken

Favorite Spots On The Millers

 "Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. By all rights they shouldn't exist, but if some people have them, then you'd better have one too, just in case." John Gierach

I've been fishing this river for 38 years so I know something about it. I know that this river, like all freshly stocked freestones, fishes well in the Spring but really hits it's stride at dusk on a Summer evening. I would want to find myself on the Upper Trestle Pool or the Kempfield Pool, either one will do and it's all surface action.  

Don't forget morning fishing and I mean EARLY morning and that's getting on the river before 4am. (I used to live 10 minutes from the river so it was easy). This is a summer time activity because the water will be the coolest at this time of day and the surface feeding will be heavy over a short window. At 4am the water is boiling with fish but by 6am the sun is up and it's over!!

Fishing in low light means you need a fly that can be seen like the one shown above.

The Millers is a brown trout river and throwing in rainbows is a waste of time. I worked with the DFW in sampling this river in early September (twice) and all we found were browns!!!!!

Ken