My deepest apologies for being so late with this report. On Monday I spent a lovely afternoon on the river with Farmington River guide extraordinaire Steve Hogan and Delaware River guide/photographer par excellence Bob Lindquist. Steve and I were fishing and Bob was shooting, both for an article he’s writing and for my book. We started off in the PTMA, me swinging wets and Steve with a dry/dropper combo. There were a few caddis about, but not a lot. We both took several trout.

We moved operations to the lower river where I focused on some snotty whitewater in a boulder field to swing wets. Steve went to Euronymph the dum- in to a pool and took trout after trout on his rig, mostly fat, stocked rainbows. I had less action, but did take a gorgeous wild brown with brilliant orange spots. Witnessed: caddis, Light Cahill, Isonychia, and sulphur, albeit in statistically insignificant numbers.

At this point, you may be wondering, “Steve, you were on a photoshoot. Where the heck are all the amazing photos?” Sadly, what Bob shot — and he got some wonderful pictures of fish and anglers and action and bent rods and splashing trout — is for his article and the book only. What’s more, I forgot to bring my camera along, so I have no secondary shots to share. All I can tell you is: it will be worth the wait.

At this point Steve left and Bob and I ventured off to another boulder field. Even though the sun was still high and there was virtually no hatch activity, I had a banner 60 minutes bailing trout on wet flies. We called it just before 6pm, as Bob had a long drive home, but I have no doubt that if I had stayed, I would have done some significant damage as the evening hatch ramped up.

Later, I did some thinking about why I didn’t get as many fish on wet flies as I thought I should have. My best guess is that in the bright sunlight, the trout were congregating in the deepest water they could find. The last mark I fished was mostly in shade. The evening hatches were probably starting to ramp up. So there’s your most likely answer.

This is a great time to be fishing the river. I hope you get the chance to get out.