Water Clarity: Bigger Rivers are Pretty Dirty-mid sized and smaller streams are in good shape
Water Temperatures: 55-65
Hatches: Stones, Caddis, Sulfurs,Drakes, Cahils, Yellow Sallies
Suggested Patterns: Pheasant Tails(#14-18) Hare’s Ears (#14-18), Tan Montana Prince (#12-14) Frenchies (#12-16) Strolis Quil Body Jig- Brown or Olive (#12-16) Kryptonite Caddis, Zug Bugs (#14-18) Soft Hackles, Light Cahils (#12-14), Sulfurs #14-16) Green and Brown Drakes (#10-12) Elk Hair Caddis Tan or Olive (#12-16), Sex Dungeons, Wooly Buggers, Zonkers, Kreelex
Happy to see the rain we’ve been getting! The larger rivers are still cranking this am and will need a few days to drop and clear up. As of right now both the Winooski and Lamoille are not fishable. The mid sized trips should be in good shape, think rivers like the dog, mad, Gihon, Northbranch… Been getting great reports out of those streams over the past week, with this push of water the fishing should only improve. If you can get into some stained water today and throw some big streamers you may just stumble into a giant. Sometimes even when the water is clear, after a good push of rain the big fish will still chase and hit streamers, we like to see tea colored water but if the water is high and clear, don’t rule out streamer fishing. A few of our best days have been when we didn’t expect to run into any fish because the water was clearer than we’d hope. You never know, and the fish never seem to read the rule book! If you are going to fish streamers, be sure to have a far heavier leader than what you’d be throwing if you were nymphing or dry fly fishing, if you’re using a tapered leader, pick up one of the SA Absolute Streamer Leaders, we like using those in the 4ft, 16lb tippet size for most streamer applications. We’ll also often just run 3ft of 15lb ultragreen maxima off a sink tip line or sink tip leader. Be sure to stay out of the water and always fish your fly right to the bank, some of the largest trout we’ve seen come out of rivers in VT have eaten flies within a couple of inches of the bank. If you’re standing in the water, or you’re pulling your flies out of the water before they hit the bank you’re gonna miss opportunities on some giants.
The smaller streams will be in great shape, the dry fly fishing on most of them should be pretty awesome, although, depending on how high they are, there’s a chance you may have to go subsurface. Start off fishing dries, if you don’t start catching fish within 3 or 4 pools, switch to a small streamer and you should get right into them. We have been spending a little time on the local bass lakes and have been doing pretty well on the smallies, the big fish all seem to be off their beds but they’re still in pretty shallow water which is great for us fly anglers! Clousers, buggers, zonkers and crayfish patterns all seem to work well, poppers early in the am and late in the PM also seem to get the job done!
Good luck to everyone getting out, and Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!!!
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River: Winooski
Water Temp: 60am
Water Clarity: Chocolate Milk
Last Update: 6/18/23
USGS FI:2310
River: Dog
Water Temp: 58am
Water Clarity: Clear, a little stained further down towards winooski-will clear up quickly
Last Update: 6/18/23
USGS FI:262
River: Lamoille
Water Temp 62
Water Clarity: Chocolate Milk
Last Update: 6/18/23
USGS FI: 2850