Water Clarity: Clear
Water Temperatures: Bigger Rivers are still pretty warm
Hatches: Golden Stones, Yellow Sallies, Olive and Tan Caddis, BWOs, PMDs, Light Cahils, Sulfurs, HEX
Suggested Patterns: Pheasant Tails (#12-16) Copper Johns (#14-16-Chart) Hare’s Ears (#12-18) Montana Prince Nymphs-Black (#12-14) Kaufman Stoneflies Gold (#10-14) Anderson’s Bird of Prey_Olive (#14-16) Taylor’s Gut Instinct (#14-16) Tan X Caddis (#12-16) Olive Elk Hair Caddis (#16-18) Adams (#12-16) Light Cahils (#12-14) Blond Wulf (#12-14) Royal Wulf (#12-14)
The heat waves finally over! We finally have started to see grass hoppers out! If you know where to look right now, some of the smaller to mid sized streams can give up some awesome wild, dry fly eating browns that are more than willing to smash a hopper super early in the morning. We love the More or Less Hoppers as they float super well and work great as an indicator to float a beadheaded nymph! It doesn’t look like we’re going to see any precipitation of any significance anytime soon and the next few nights aren’t looking like they’re going to cool off a ton so I’d stay off the bigger rivers like the Winooski and Lamoille as the water temps are up there. If you want to get your fix on the bigger rivers head down lower on the and fish poppers for smallmouth. The Lamoille fishes well from Lake Arrowhead Upstream to the Fairfax falls for bass. Poppers early and late and streamers throughout the day as well as dead drifting bigger stonefly patterns like Kaufmans and Girdle Bugs.
The Brook trout fishing has been pretty good over the past couple of days, although the water levels are super low the fish seem to be pretty active. They’re definitely spooky but making longer casts with smaller sized dries will fool fish.
The bass fishing on the lakes and ponds has been pretty good as well. The Largemouth we’ve been catching have been in the thickest cover possible. Don’t run a 6wt and 10lb tippet for em. Time to bust out the 8wt and 20-30lb tippet to really be able to put the wood to those fish as will try to take you into even thicker stuff as soon as they’re hooked. The Smallmouth are definitely moving into the deeper water making the larger fish a little more tricky to target on the fly. Early morning and late evening they’re up high in the column but mid day the bigger fish are going to require a deep, slow presentation. Clousers, deceivers and larger wooly buggers will all work well. Typically when it comes to top water, we like smaller sized poppers for smallmouth and really big ones for largemouth. That may just be personal preference though.
On another note, right now all the cooler tribs leading into the bigger rivers are going to attract fish due to them seeking out cooler water. It’s likely that there may be anywhere from a dozen to a hundred fish stacked up in some of these brook mouths. Don’t fish for them! They’re trying to survive, some of those fish are going to die anyway so lets keep those death rates as low as possible so they’ll be around this fall for us to play with! Take a picture and go brook trout fishing!
Good luck to everyone getting out there!
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River: Winooski
Water Temp: 75-80
Water Clarity:
Last Update: 7-6-2018
USGS FI: @ Montpelier
River: Dog
Water Temp: 75-80
Water Clarity:
Last Update: 7-6-2018
USGS FI: @ Falls
River: Lamoille
Water Temp: 75-80
Water Clarity:
Last Update: 7-6-2018
USGS FI: @ Johnson