Farmington River Report: The rewards of putting in your time

Aug6

After more blanks and (relatively speaking) dinks than I’d care to mention, finally a really good night. Hit four spots and found hungry fish in three of them. I had more bumps than I could count. Four fish to net, three in the upper teens, and the fourth just in at 20″.

This buck was hiding under a tree, waiting to ambush. Taken on the dead drift.

A substantial hen that crushed the fly on the swing.

Saving the best for last. She whacked the fly on the swing, then followed up, but no hook set. Two casts later, I started to strip at the end of the swing. Ker-POW! I had a little trouble fitting her in the net.

Farmington River Mini Report 7/29/15: If only the fishing were this hot

Jul29

You know it’s hot when you’re standing up to your waist in sixty-degree water and there’s sweat streaming down your face — and it’s only 10am.

I fished from 9am to 1pm today. My focus was on prospecting for bigger trout by nymphing the fast water. No bigguns’, but I did get into an assortment of lovely wild browns, one in the mid teens. I used the drop shot rig under a yarn indicator, with a size 14 olive Iron Lotus on the bottom and a size 16 soft-hackled Pheasant Tail as the top dropper. I adjusted between one and two BB shot, depending on the depth of the water and the speed of the current.

Now that is one impressive tail. Full adipose, nice little kype — this buck is a surely a wild thang. Taken on the SHPT. Why I like indicator nymphing: the indicator never went under with this guy. It was the slightest of takes, almost imperceptible. The indicator just suddenly slowed and twitched. Remember, it doesn’t cost anything to set the hook.

Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the full sun. Maybe it was the lack of hatch activity. But I blanked in three runs today that I was certain held fish. The other three I hit all produced. Go figure — I did better outside of the permanent TMA. The river was surprisingly busy for a mid-weekday.

If you are heading out in this heat, please don’t forget to hydrate. And while the water is still plenty cold, let’s do our best to get those fish in and released quickly.

A jewel of a mid-summer Farmington brown. I can’t decide what I like better: the halos around the spots, the golden belly, or the parr mark remnants.

Farmington River Tip of the Week

Jul23

Yesterday, I went fishing. Sunny, middle of July, and windy. The perfect day for a grasshopper to get blown off its perch and into the water.

I fished some fast water — a mix of riffles and pockets that ranged from shin high to waist deep — with a team of three wets. The top dropper was a just-about-too-small-for-a-hopper-and-way-too-big-for-a-caddis fly I call The Monstrosity. Size 8-10 streamer hook, body of yellow or insect green rabbit fur, gold wire rib, palmered with webby brown hackle. Deer hair wing lashed at the junction of thorax and abdomen, same deer hair strands tied over the thorax, then a caddis-like head. Simple. Impressionistic. By mending the line I was able to keep that fly on or just below the surface.

The trout loved it.

Back you go, Tubby. Thanks for playing. Look at that sky. Ain’t summer grand?

I whipped through the run in 45 minutes. No hatch, no active surface feeders, but the fish picked that fly out to the exclusion of all others (Drowned Ant and SHBHPT). None of the trout I brought to hand were under fifteen inches. And I regret to report that I lost a pig of a brown just as I was coaxing him into the net.

Hoppers. Wet or dry, ’tis the season.

Not the fly I was fishing — this is a Hopper Hammerdown, which is a little bigger than The Monstrosity and doesn’t have the soft hackle palmered along the whole body. But you get the idea and the energy of the design.

Farmington River Report 7/18/15: Wet, Dry, Pow!

Jul19

After the Wet Flies 101 class I wandered off to investigate a snotty, treacherous boulder field with a team of wets. From top dropper to point, a size 12 Partridge and Light Cahill, a size 12 Hackled March Brown, and a size 12 BHSHPT. The sulphurs and Isos were out, as were the Cedar Waxings, who were having a regular airborne feast. I witnessed several sulphurs make it out of the river, only to be snapped up by an open beak moments after their emergence. The wet fly fishing started slowly, but as the hour hand moved past 6pm, things picked up. I ended up with over a half dozen fish, all wild browns save for one recent stockee, that ranged from eight inches to the low teens. I took them on the swing, the dangle, and short line deep. Some of them were active feeders; it’s always fun to successfully target specific fish, but I’ll take the ones that aren’t showing themselves just as readily.

The smallest trout of the day, but surely one of the hardest fighters. He hammered the BHSHPT on the swing.

Part Two of the evening was dedicated to the dry fly cause. At least in theory it was. I fished a spot that has seen declining numbers in fish in recent years, and sadly, that trend continued last night. I saw only handful of rises over the course of two hours. (I think I saw two dozen rises as I drove over the bridge at Church Pool earlier in the day.) Some olives and stenos, but not many of them. I was able to get two offers to the dry, but no hook sets.

Now well into dusk, the dry skunk would have been a bummer way to end the day. So I took the long way home and walked a pool with a nameless cone head black marabou streamer tied to the end of my leader. Plenty of bumps as darkness fell kept me entertained, but no hookups meant the fish were smaller than the foot-and-a-half-plus browns I was after. Off to Spot B where I couldn’t see squat due to the dense fog bank that had settled over the river. A bit of a disappointment with only one bump and no hook sets. (I know there are some bigger fish that live there. Where you at?)

Finished up at Spot C with an olive Zoo Cougar. The fog enveloped me with its chilly fingers, but I could now see some stars in the clearing skies. It was quiet.

Quiet enough to hear the sound of the brown as it tracked the streamer down and across the current. Bump! No return strike. A second cast to the same general area, same swing, same retrieve, same sound effects…Whack! There he is, a mid-teens brown that put a smile on my face and a skip in my wading step.

Then, a few minutes later…plop. I heard the fly hit the water. CRASH! The sound of the take came before I felt the tug or even managed to get the rod into post-cast position. Another good fish, not quite a bruiser, but aggressive enough to charge headlong at what must have looked like a most satisfying dining experience.

Speaking of food, I was famished. So I sped off to the McDonald’s in Unionville, which I discovered is closed at 11:30 on a Saturday night. Really? Closed? Saturday night? Contrary to the corporate tagline, I wasn’t lovin’ it.

That last brown must have felt the same way.

Farmington River Report 7/16/15: It must be magic

Jul17

I guided Jim yesterday afternoon into evening, and we started in some faster water in the permanent TMA with a little Wet Fly 101. While we found a few feeders, they were reluctant to jump on. So we headed up river to get situated for some topwater action during the evening rise.

A sulphur emergence of sorts. No editing legerdemain here; some funky macro setting on the camera did this. We had a nice assortment of bugs last night: Sulphurs (14-16), Summer Stenos (18-20), Isonychia (10-12), BWOs, (14, 18-20), and midges. However, the spinner fall was not what I had hoped for. Every day — or evening — is different. Cold again! Water temp in the permanent TMA was 58 degrees.

A nice brown that absolutely hammered Jim’s size 20 BWO Comparadun. Terrific hook set by Jim on this fish.

Same fish, moments before release.

I waited until what I thought was the right moment during the hatch to introduce Jim to The Magic Fly. This is what happened on his second cast ever with that pattern. Another fat, beautiful wild Farmington brown to net. Jim did a great job, and was a pleasure to fish with.

After Jim left, I banged around the river in the dark from 9:30 to almost 1:00am. While I had plenty of action — close to ten bumps — most of them were smaller fish, with no resulting hookups. Here’s a fifteen-inch brown who did stick. I like the play of water and flash along his flanks.

Monster Delaware brown on the Magic Fly

Jul16

I received this from Keith A. last night:

Hi Steve,
Want you to know that I just caught a monster brown, at the Delaware river, on one of the flies that you tied for me. Size 18. My guess is 24+”.

Thanks,
Keith

No, Keith. Thank you. And well done!

In proper nomenclature, these would be Pale Watery wingless wet variants. I think, however, that Keith would cast his vote in favor of calling it The Magic Fly.

Farmington River Report 7/12/15: Nice. I think.

Jul13

M*A*S*H’s Frank Burns once said, “It’s nice to be nice to the nice.” He’s right. I met some nice people on and off the river last night. Some of them shared water, conversation and positive energy. Some of the fish, though, weren’t particularly nice to me. Nor were my leader and tippet, which insisted on repeatedly wrapping around my rod. Oh. My casting also sucked (I’d rate it somewhere between incompetent and atrocious). A fatalist might offer that the nicest thing about last night was that it proved that every day is different. But to quote George Formby, it turned out nice again.

I fished dries (or wets as dries) from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. The hatches were about a five on the Bug-o-Meter scale: small olives, summer stenos, sulphurs, creamy midges. No caddis that I could see. Sadly, all the consistent risers were either above me or below me for the first 90 minutes. I raised fish on a size 22 BWO parachute, size 20 Magic Fly, and a size 18 Usual. But no hook sets. Surprisingly, I saw some refusals to the Magic Fly. I think a sparse tie on a size 22 hook is in order. I’ll let you know how that plays out.

Jeff, who was kind enough to share the water, was fishing above me and took two trout in the first 90 minutes. By 8:00pm the trout got a little more hungry, and fed until dark. I switched over to classic Catskills Light Cahils, size 18-12 (I increase the size as dusk deepens) and started hooking trout.

First customer of the evening, a small vessel of a wild brown. Caught him in a — you guessed it — current seam.

And so we ended game one of the twi-night doubleheader. I re-rigged for streamers and tried to warm up (wow, the water is cold for this time of year!) before heading back into the foggy void. Two anglers in the lot said they had done well in the last hour on sulphur spinners. When I got back into the water all signs of feeding (from what I could see) had ended.

I started with a Sex Dungeon (behave, now) which is a dumbbell-eyed, deer-hair headed articulated monstrosity (I use the M-word in a most positive manner). I blanked on it in Run A and Deep Pool B. For Run C, I started with something a little more casting friendly, a horrible black marabou leech mutation of my own doing. No. When I got to some flatter water, I tied on a Zoo Cougar, another one of Kelly Galloup’s patterns (the Sex Dungeon is his). The Zoo Cougar is meant to be fished on a sinking line, but I liked the idea of something quasi-mousy-sculpiny. And what’s there not to like about a commotion near the surface in the near absence of light? Precious little. In a thirty yard stretch of water, I connected with three trout. All of them first whacked the prey to stun it. Two came back for the coup de grace. One, I had a lousy hook set, and since it didn’t feel particularly big, I wasn’t upset when we parted ways. The other was a rather nice way to end the night.

Not super big at sixteen inches, but this wild brown buck (note full fins and intact adipose) gave me a worthy battle as the clock neared the witching hour.

Farmington River Report 7/9/15: That’ll put a bend in the old cane

Jul10

It may seem foolish to drive 90 minutes to fish for 90 minutes, but I have no issues when it comes to irrational behavior in the name of fishing. On the water at 7:30pm (many thanks to the angler from Massachusetts for sharing the run) and was greeted by some sporadic splashy rises. The hatch activity was off-the-charts strong, with vast numbers of sulphurs (16-18), summer stenos (18-20), BWOs (18-20) and midges. Unfortunately, the rises were inconsistent and not as plentiful as I would have liked for that level of bug activity. Still, you get what you get and you don’t get upset.

I was fishing the traditional cane rod in some untraditional dry fly water — this was more of a wet fly run, current moving at a good walking pace and with a very mottled surface. I had swings and misses on a size 18 creamy Usual, a size 20 BWO parachute, and two Magic Flies (18 and 20). Nothing on the big guns (Isonychia). The angler below report similar swings and misses.

Air was dense, overcast, with a sprinkle here and there. The hatch ended around 8:15, and the surface activity wound downward.

One small fish had vexed me for the better part of an hour. He’d come up gently. Then disappear. Then resume feeding. Then stop. Couldn’t get a sniff from him, and the little ones are usually easier to fool. At 8:30, for no reason other than visibility in the rapidly advancing darkness, I tied on a size 20 sulphur comparadun. On the second cast, ker-pow! Good hook set. Felt great to finally be on. But why won’t this fish come to net? The current is strong, but this is ridiculous for a fish that size. Unless it’s not a fish that size. Turns out it was hulking brute of a Survivor Strain brown in the high teens length, hooked neatly in the corner of the mouth.

The photo does not do the fish justice, but my hands were shaking and Fred here wouldn’t stay still. Wild and Survivor Strain browns are a different animal on the Farmington — cantankerous comes to mind. What a bend he put in the cane rod, and I was happy to have 5x on so I could get Medieval on him when I needed to. My best guess is that’s a dark green elastomer, making this a four year-old fish that was planted as a yearling in 2012.

Farmington River Report 7/7/15: Scary Monsters

Jul8

I wish I was referring to the gator browns I envisioned catching, but last night’s late night (or early morning) streamer session produced only three bumps, no hookups, and lots of angst. It’s easy to see why kids are afraid of the dark. Once you are robbed of the sense of sight, the imagination of all things terrible exerts a relentless grip.

A dense fog blanketed the water and woods. The headlamp was useless. It’s not easy working your way through a run in the soggy blackness (while trying to fish) — not to mention having to bushwhack after you realize that you’ve strayed well off the beaten path. I’m a fearless wader, but I have to cop to being a little antsy while negotiating that first run. It’s unnerving to feel the bottom sloping downward, the water rising up toward your waist, getting faster, and you have no visual reference as where your next step might lead you.

That first hit felt like I had snagged a tree stump. Ker-shloosh! The roll on the surface sure sounded like it was a good fish. Tug-tug, and then it was gone. Dammit.

Blanked at Spot B. Surprised at that. Two whacks at Spot C — the same fish, I’m sure — but again, no hook set. I almost jumped out of my waders when I saw the headlamp glowing on the shoreline right behind me. Silly rabbit. It was a firefly.

Spot D was also a blank. Well into the wee hours, time to call it a night. I sang improvised songs as I trekked through the woods. As everyone knows, monsters cannot attack you if you have your music with you.

Block Island All-Nighter IX: It’s Father’s Day…and I got my cake!

Jun23

We dip into the obscure 80s movie vault for that opening. But if you remember the first segment of Creepshow, you know from whence I quote. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. The first day of summer comes riding in on a white charger to banish the memories of the miserable spring that was striper fishing from the shore in Connecticut.

This was my first-ever solo BIAN (Block Island All-Nighter, for the uninitiated). A couple last-minute cancellations saw to that, and I couldn’t take Cam this year because he’s recuperating from an injury. You never know what you’re going to get on the BIAN. But there’s only one way to find out.

Getting ready. Big Eelies are a high-confidence pattern for me on the Block in June and July. The bass don’t have a color preference — it’s a profile and presentation fly — so I like to play around with different palettes. Crazy Menhaden colors on the paper, False Dawn on the cork. The entire top row left of the box is assorted other Big Eelies.

I was sitting in my Jeep in the ferry lot. It was tropical for a June in Point Judith, so I had the door open. A squadron of passing gulls (if you’ll pardon the expression) evacuated their bowels over my position; most of it ended up on the truck, but a good tablespoonful got me square on the left leg. I took this as a sign. Yep. It was going to be a good night’s fishing.

Over the course of the night, I bounced around to several spots and found sand eels and stripers everywhere. I started fishing at 8:30; by midnight I had caught more bass than I had the entire spring in Connecticut. Plus, it was Father’s Day. That called for a celebration. A wee drap of Highland Park 12 year-old paired with a Gispert Churchill. (Sold separately.)

My first encounter of the night was with bluefish — it did not end favorably for my leader or my fly. After that, it was bass after bass after bass. The vast majority were scrappy pugs in the 20-24″ class, but there were a few keepers in the mix. It took me until June 22 this year (my longest stretch since I started fishing for stripers) to catch a legal fish. He she is, about to dash off to freedom. Note the curious observer to the right of her gill plate.

My best fish of the night, twenty pounds, just shy of 37″. She surprised me when I started hand stripping her in. The next thing I knew, line was hurtling through my fingertips and noisily chattering off the reel. The power of these larger bass is almost irrational, although they have a distinctive flight pattern: head for deeper water, and, failing at that, swim at attack speed in a broad half-moon arc. I’m trying to be as photo-friendly as I can with fish these days, and that translates to keeping them in the water as much as possible, even if it means not getting a classic hero shot. I encourage you to do the same.

Stripers often feed like like trout taking emergers or sipping spinners. I witnessed both rise forms. Here’s the back end of a spinner sip. Look in the foreground for worried water and a caddis-like leap by a sand eel. That spot erupted moments after I took this photo.

The beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad. But I did not have another for dessert. That was reserved for Ernie’s. Scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes and toast, my first real food since those sublime fried scallops at Finn’s twelve hours earlier.

You know the fishing is good when your fly ends up like this. In it’s heyday it was an L&L Big Eelie. Now it’s a testament to the potential of primal carnage and a top-ten-ever night of fly fishing for striped bass.