Fished the Lower TMA last evening from 6pm-8pm. I haven’t fished the lower river at close to a 1,000cfs in a while, and I was curious to see how some of my favorite spots fared in the higher water.
It was still crazy humid, but the water was warm enough (67 degrees within a foot of the surface –don’t worry, it’s colder along the bottom) to defeat any notion of those classic Farmington River fog banks. Visibility was good, although there was still a light stain. My plan was to fish wets with an emphasis on Light Cahills (three fly rig from top dropper to point: Squirrel & Ginger, Partridge and Cahill, Light Cahill winged wet), but the hatch never materialized. I only saw two lonely creamy duns, a few stray caddis, and the omnipresent swarming midges. That last crew made me happy I had a cigar.
Catch-and-release works. Some sporting bird of prey tried to drill a hole in Mr. Brown’s head, then had the decency to let him go.
Fished a long deep run for about 45 minutes, waiting for a hatch that never happened. So I hiked upstream about 500 yards, and fished a series of rapids, walking, wading, and swinging the flies close to shore. Took the bird-wounded brown above in that maelstrom, along with a JV Atlantic Salmon.
Finished up in a deep pocketed run where I took a leaping brown on my second cast. Signs of good things to come? Sadly, not. One more courtesy tap, and that was it.
currentseams.com 
Steve, how do you rig your double-dropper set-up? What do you do when you get three on at once? (Zoinks!)
Hi Kate,
Great question.
If you send me an email (swculton at yahoo dot com) I can send you a diagram of how the setup works. For wet fly, it’s basically a 6′ section of 3x tapered leader with a series of attached sections of Maxima Chameleon 4#. Each section of Maxima is attached with a triple surgeons knot; you leave the lower tag ends on each knot about 5-6″ long, and that forms your dropper. The diagram will do a better job of explaining it.
I’ve never gotten a triple with trout; here’s a link with a shot of a recent double: https://currentseams.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/spectacular-wet-fly-action-on-the-farmington-river/
Fish that school heavily like striped bass are much more likely to take multiple flies simultaneously. I’ve had countless doubles and even a few triples with stripers. It’s crazy. But fun. 🙂