Category Archives: Fishing Reports

Farmington River Report 6/8/20: Our Lady of Blessed Magic Fly, or: spectacular sulphur wet and dry fly action

I fished last night from 5:45pm until 9:15pm, well past when I could no longer see my fly. I started out swinging and dead-drifting wets, sometimes prospecting, but mostly casting to active feeders. I had to work for my fish, but that was OK since some of them were larger wild browns. My rig was a size 12 Squirrel and Ginger top dropper, size 14 Partridge and Light Cahill middle dropper, and Light Cahill winged wet on point. All three patterns took fish. Hatch activity was a 7/10: caddis, sulphurs, Light Cahills, mobs of midges, and a few stray Isos. Around 7pm I switched out the winged Light Cahill for a size 14 Magic Fly after I saw a batch of larger sulphurs hatching. The fish opened their mouths in approval.

You can’t tell from the photo, but this is a high teens wild brown, taken on the Squirrel and Ginger. He was feeding in a narrow slot about a foot deep. The presentation was an oblique angle upstream cast, then dead drift. WHACK! (Editorial: I’m proud to say that on this website there are no photos of trout being thrust into camera lenses, angler arms fully extended. I know my readers are far too intelligent and sophisticated to put up with such shenanigans.)

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All the while, I was vastly outfishing the anglers around me. I mention this not as a brag point, but rather as a teaching point. Properly presented wet flies have been, and will continue to be, the best way to fool trout during the early stages of a sulphur hatch. Every other angler was fishing dry, which can work, provided you’ve got the right pattern and presentation. But when trout are on sulphur emergers, I’ll go with a team of wets every time.

However, there comes a time during every hatch where the trout begin want the topwater fly rather than the subsurface wet. So at 7:30pm I switched to surface presentations, mostly the Magic Fly (dusted with silica powder), a few drifts with creamy-colored The Usual, and finishing off with Catskills Light Cahills. Classic spectacular dry fly action: I took trout after trout until darkness enveloped me. By then I was gloriously alone. Well, not really. Just me, the trout, and about a million bugs.

Life is good with a cane rod on a sunny June evening on the Farmy. I thought it both poetic and proper that my first surface Magic Fly trout this year was a chunky mid-teens wild brown.

Small Stream Report 6/4/20: the natives aren’t restless

I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon knocking on the doors of two favorite brooks. Conditions were similar on both thin blue lines: low water, clear water (thankfully still cold) and bright mid-day sunshine that kept the bite off. Still, a dozen-plus were pricked and a handful landed. All the bite activity came in the deeper plunges, runs, and cutbanks. Given the low water, I decided a downstream approach was best.  (For more on small stream approaches, please read my article “Upstream, Downstream, Small Stream.”)

Bugs were bountiful. One of these streams sees a good number of yellow sallies this time of year, so I fished a size 16 Partridge and Yellow dropped off my bushy dry. It definitely got the attention of the char. Also seen: caddis, midges all sizes, sulphurs, and a few large spinners (March Browns?). 

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I love how nature makes something out of nothing. No soil? No problem. We’ll just make a fertile bed on this boulder out of leaf compost and moss and lichens and let the ferns do their thing.

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It was no surprise that the best char of the day came from one of the deeper pools, and took a subsurface fly, in this case a black micro-bugger. Given the size of the brook, this buck could be considered a giant.

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Striper Mini-Report 5/30/20: A 10,000:1 bait-to-bass ratio

I fished Salt Marsh B last night for a couple hours with #2 Son, Cam. The water was infested with silversides, crabs, and grass shrimp. Surely this bountiful buffet would summon legions of striped diners. But no. There were a few bass around — we even managed to catch some of them — but the audio feeding tells of a hundred popping mouths was strangely absent.  We fished a team of three shrimp flies, a Micro Gurgler on top, Caddis Shrimp middle dropper, and Black General Practitioner on point. All three flies found favor. Given this season and our general location, we’ll take it.

A fine silhouette to see, even in murky marsh water. 

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Striper Report 5/28/20: Slow, slower, slowest

2020 is shaping up to be my worst striper spring in 15 years. To be fair, I haven’t gone as many times in years past. But, to be fair again, it hasn’t been slightly off — it’s been disaster bad. Last evening we had two-and-a-half hours of casting practice. Conditions were great: falling barometer, outgoing tide (fishing a marshy area), dense cloud cover into dusk. I saw two bass landed among six anglers, split evenly between fly and spin. That ain’t exactly lighting it up. I saw very little bait in the water and no confirmed striper feeding activity. So it goes…

The great thing about June is that it’s prime time for trout fishing. With visions of sulphurs dancing in my head, I direct my attentions to the northwest.

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Rose = Vitreus. Oh, + Smallmouth

Like clockwork, the first rose bloom in my garden means the Vitreus are popping. Funny thing: I went last night not to the Farmington, but to the Housatonic. (All this warm, humid weather had my smallmouth juices running.) Sure enough, there was a substantial hatch of Light Cahills. When we left the river at 8:30pm, there were clouds of spinners overhead. The fish surely ate well after dark. To the fishing: a little slow, but a few smallmouth were brought to hand on deerhair head topwater flies. My first smallie of the year came on a Countermeasure. That seems right.

My Grenada hybrid tea is usually the first out of the gate, and the Light Cahills were out in force. My Housy spies tell me that the spawning beds have cleared, and that the smallie action is picking up. I think a couple more weeks of warm weather would help. And of course there’s the Farmington…hmmm…decisions, decisions.

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Striper Reports: a little shrimping, a little herringing, tonight’s Zoom

“Herringing” may not be a word (or even the formal name of your German neighbor), but that’s what I was doing last night while you were sleeping. But let’s back up a day, to the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning.

A-shrimping I did go. I didn’t like the cold air or the east wind, but we’re getting near the May new moon, which is, if you keep track of this sort of thing, primo grass shrimp time in these parts. I fished two marks. The shrimp mating swarm tally at both was disappointing — I’d give it a 3 out of 10 — and the striper action was correspondingly below par. Nonetheless, I fished and hooked up and had a blast. There’s something about the “ploink!” and “squsplish” noises the feeders make that makes me cackle.

Sunday’s rig was Micro Shrimp Gurgler on top, Caddis Shrimp middle dropper, and RLS Black General Practitioner on point. I liked that my first grass shrimp bass of the year came on the GP. So much for the importance of casting distance — the take came about 20 feet away. When stripers are focused on feeding, you can often wade comically close to their position if you’re careful about it. What a hoot to be catching stripers on size 6 and 8 hooks!

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Last night’s outing was a fine way to spend the evening, if you place a premium practicing your Perry Poke and short backcast two-hand overhead volley — not to mention nursing an expertly crafted cigar. I fished one mark, a trib known to hold herring and stripers, neither of which were present in any great numbers. So. I covered lots of water. I greased line swung. I swam my Razzle Dazzle in short, staccato bursts. I set a hard stop of very early AM, and made it into bed before 3am.

So goes the night shift.

Hope to see you for tonight’s Zoom. Some of you asked yesterday about getting on the list and haven’t yet sent me an email.  (To be clear, leaving a comment on this site is NOT an email. To get on the list, you send an email to swculton@yahoo.com asking to do so. I hope that helps.)

Small Stream Report: Social distancing at its finest

I’m busy. Like, in the weeds busy. Writing, garden/yard projects, filling fly orders, content for this site, planning Zoom events…the list goes on. But every once in a while, you have to say screw responsibility. Yesterday was that day. So I loaded up the Jeep and drove many, many miles, far, far away, and enjoyed a thin blue line all by myself. Water was clear, cold, and high. Fished a dry/dropper to start, and it was all dropper. Once the sun came out and warmed things up, I had a few swipes at the dry. Micro streamers produced in the deeper plunges, as did heavily weighted wets. Non-biting midges were out in force. A couple of cigars took care of them. Pricked dozens, landed a bunch, drove home tired and happy.

(With apologies to Julie Andrews): Fiberglass blanks that flex down right to the grip. Silica powder that floats flies like a ship. Honduran puros gauged 52 ring. These are a few of my favorite things.

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Farmington River Report 4/23/20: Fishing with Montresor

“I have my doubts.”

“And I must satisfy them.”

Aficianados of classic American literature will know the reference. As for me, my doubts yesterday hinged on weather and flows: cold, overcast, 45 degrees and 750cfs. Not exactly the stuff that gives me confidence in the swung wet fly. So I ventured forth to satisfiy them.

I fished in the Permanent TMA from noon to a bit after 3pm. I started off nymphing, which, as I suspected, was the most productive method. Hatch activity was virtually nil. (I’d give the Hendricksons a 0.5 on the 1-10 scale, if seeing two Hendricksons in three hours warrants even that.) I also spent a good portion of my time on situational filming for future presentation/projects.

Tip of the week: if you must swing wets in higher flows, try adding a tungsten bead head pattern on point. With a few strategic mends, you’ll be able to sink your team to a greater depth. It’s often the difference between fishing and catching: yesterday all of my wet fly trout took the point fly, a tungsten beadhead Hendrickson like this one.

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I finished up at a reliable wet fly mark and was able to get a few browns and rainbows to hand. All the action came in a 15-minute window when I could see some fish working emergers near the surface. Doubts cast aside, I decided to end on a high note. Later, I celebrated with a highly satisfying Montepulciano.

Amontillado would have to wait for another day.

NOTE: If you value solitude, the Permanent TMA will try your patience. There were six(!) vehicles in the dirt pullout by Woodshop. Greenwoods was a gauntlet the length of the pool (I stopped counting at 15 anglers). Also, be careful wading at these flows. I’d consider myself a sure-footed, confident wader, and I struggled to keep my footing at the last mark. A wading staff is your friend. As always, if you see me on the water and have questions or just want to say hello, please do. Thanks to everyone who did so yesterday — always a treat to put faces to subscriber names. Be safe and be healthy!

Farmington River Report 4/17/20: Hendricksons & spectacular wet fly action

“Do you always fish three wet flies at the same time?” I get this question a lot. “Almost always” is the answer. The “almost” comes from days like today when I had to remove the middle dropper because I was catching multiple trout on every cast.

I certainly didn’t expect it to be that kind of day.

Wind was an issue. Cold was another. The Hendrickson hatch I experienced was nothing extraordinary — I’d give it a four out of ten. But I hadn’t done a session dedicated to wets this year, and the start of the Hendrickson hatch seemed as good a time as any.

Spot A below the permanent TMA was a blank. Off to Spot B inside the permanent TMA, which was fully occupied. (If you haven’t been to river yet, you may be shocked by the number of anglers. Church Pool was as close to looking like the Riverton Opening Day Fishing Derby as I’ve ever seen it.) But then, as luck would have it, one of the anglers decided to leave, and I took his place in the lineup. Thank you, generous stranger, because I discovered a pod of ravenous trout that showed themselves the moment the hatch began.

Today’s lunch, fresh from a captured brown’s mouth. 

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So, for two hours, I bailed trout. The tally was surely in the multiple dozens. I know I had close to ten doubles, even after I took one fly out of the mix. Business was about 10% on the Squirrel and Ginger and the rest on the Dark Hendrickson Winged Wet, which, if you don’t tie, you should. (You can thank me later.)

Having so many active feeders was certainly a plus, but the guy above me was nymphing and I didn’t see him hook up. Ditto the guy below me, who, after I waved him up and he changed to wets, began catching in earnest. I’d say most of my fish came from placing my team over the positions of active feeders. The trout did the rest.

This is great time of year to be swinging wet flies. Hit a prolific hatch (like the Hendrickson) just right, and you’ll be giggling in your waders, too.

Striper Report 4/8/20 and a great piece on fishing and social distancing

First, to the ohfer. That’s right, folks, I blanked yesterday at the Mouth of the Hous. On the one hand, I feel like the kicker who misses a chip shot FG in OT. On the other, it’s not like the river was en fuego (fifteen anglers spaced out on both banks where I fished, and I saw two bass landed in nearly three hours of fishing). Not exactly the stuff from which legendary days are created.

The tide was massive and the currents and rips were in full moon form, but for now I’ll hang my hat here: you cannot catch what isn’t there — or doesn’t see your fly. And I made sure they could see my fly.

While the Mouth of the Hous in April is not a place you’d normally go to practice a CDC-Approved space between you and the next person, the number of anglers was eye-opening. This was 70 degrees and sunny Saturday afternoon traffic. Solitude seekers, you will not find your bliss here. Except maybe today or Friday when the winds are supposed to be in the 20s with gusts to 40mph. (Thanks, I’ll pass.)

I can see it. You can see it. But if there are no bass to see it…

Rod-Fly-Grey

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Second, here’s a terrific read from Joe Cermele: Don’t Blow This for the Rest of Us: How We Keep Hunting and Fishing During the Pandemic.  Joe was my editor at Field & Stream, and this article is worthy of your time.

Please stay safe and healthy, and thanks for reading.