Water Clarity: Clear-Some streams are still slightly off from rain Wednesday night.
Water Temperatures: Bigger Rivers are still pretty warm a lot of the smaller streams are cooling off
Hatches: Golden Stones, Yellow Sallies, Olive and Tan Caddis, BWOs, PMDs, Light Cahils, Sulfurs, Hoppers, Tricos, Flying Ants
Suggested Patterns: Pheasant Tails (#16-18) Hare’s Ear (#16-18) Caddis Pupa (#14-18) Iron Sallies (#16-18) Taylor’s Gut Instinct (#16) Soft Hackles (#16) Light Cahils (#16-18) Tan X-Caddis (#16-18) CDC PMD (#16) CDC Sulfur (#16) BWO (#16-18) More or Less Hoppers (8-12) Dave’s Hopper (#8-12) Foam Ants (#14-16) Triple Decker (#10-14)
The rain we’ve gotten over the past few days has helped a lot of stuff out. Although it did very little to the bigger rivers it bumped up a lot of the smaller streams, flushed them with cool water and got the fish fired up. The cooler night time temps we got last night and will continue to get over the next five or six days are going to help out a lot as well. We’re supposed to get quite a bit of rain this afternoon into early tomorrow am which we’ll welcome with open arms. As we mention all the time, high muddy water and big flies often equals a couple of really big fish! Might have to sneak out tomorrow am before the shop opens.
The trips lately have still been doing pretty well, a few slower trips in the mix but in the grand scheme of things it’s still been solid. Definitely working for the fish right now but whats a little extra challenge? Been getting some pretty good river small mouth on topwater lately. The smaller streams were fishing really well yesterday afternoon for a few of our guides. The brookies were all pretty aggressive, a few of the streams and pools the fish wouldn’t come up to a dry so they had to switch it up and throw small streamers. In a few of the other brooks that didn’t see as much precipitation they were able to coax up plenty of fish on dry flies.
Hatches are pretty insignificant on most of the streams right now, mainly since we’ve been on a lot of the smaller brooks where there just isn’t the bug life that there is on the larger rivers. Terrestrials are a significant portion of a fish’s diet right now and we’ve been slinging a lot of foam lately. There was a small flying ant hatch yesterday afternoon here at the shop. Definitely one of the most enjoyable hatches to fish over the course of the year, provided you can find cool water. We’ll probably see a bigger hatch next week if we get a couple of warmer dry days in a row. Given the temps for next week the bigger rivers may start to cool off which would be great for the fish, its unlikely that they’ll be fishable but temps will definitely drop. Good luck to everyone getting out this weekend! Do your rain dance!!
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River: Winooski
Water Temp: 75-80
Water Clarity:
Last Update: 7-6-2018
USGS FI: @ Montpelier
River: Dog
Water Temp:
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