River Conditions: 4/26/17

Water Clarity: Ranging from Clear to Muddy

Water Temperatures:  42-51

Hatches: Black Stoneflies, Caddis

Suggested Patterns: Wooly Buggers (Black or White-#4-#8) Zonkers (Natural, Olive or Black) Montana Mouthwash, Sex Dungeons, Copper Johns (Chart. #12-14) Pheasant Tails (#12-14) Montana Prince (#12) Hare’s Ear Nymphs (#12), Black Stonefly Nymphs (#6-10)

Things are starting to pick up in our region. Some of the mid size tribs of both the Winooski and Lamoille are starting to produce some fish. Nothing too crazy but it’s definitely picking up. We’ve got quite a bit of rain in the forecast over the next ten days which isn’t exactly what we needed. Seen some bugs coming off lately including some Caddis flies and both brown and black stoneflies. Nothing eating them yet but that’s expected right now. Streamers have still seemed to be more productive over nymphs but they’ve gotten some fish as well. Sometimes it takes a while for the fish to key in on nymphs in our area, streamers tend to produce the most fish until May when flows hopefully recede a little bit. Your best bet in the near future is to hit a mid size trib and fish it with buggers, zonkers, muddler minnows and other patterns in that nature. Fish em with a sink tip leader in the 5′ range or stick an AB split shot a foot above the fly. Either way will help get your flies down a little bit deeper. The local steelhead fishing has been pretty good. Things have picked up on the Willoughby and the fishing has remained pretty solid on the Lewis. Lots of suckers are in both bodies of water now, good to keep an eye back behind any pods of suckers you see as there might be a drop back steely chowing on sucker eggs. A few guys will even fish like this on the Winooski and catch some stunning trout on egg and spawn patterns. Over the next few weeks a lot of our hatchery supported streams will start getting stocked so there’s going to be more and more options in the next 15 days. The bass fishing should start picking up soon. There’s some bass in the Lewis now and it should pick up in the next week quite a bit. Other than that, some of the lakes around us will pick up in the next week or so with some warmer water temps. The pre-spawn smallie fishing can be unbelievable if you can hit it just right. Lots of big bass in 2′-7′ of water crushing streamers before they get on their beds. We made a trip down to the Otter yesterday for pike and didn’t come up with much but it looks promising for next week and the week after. All the fish we found, which was only 5 were all in a flooded field. We put one in the boat which was a 37.5″ spawned out female. The post-spawn pike bite can be stupid good, now I think the water just needs to drain out of the fields and the fish will move back into the river and put the feed bag on. Won’t be long before we have the Hyde’s in and get them covered in pike slime!

Bob’s still been having some awesome days in NY. It turned on last week big time and he had a few days that they hooked into 25-30 drop backs! The water levels have dropped a bit so a lot of fish are probably going to start thinking about going back to the lake but we should have another week of solid fishing before that happens. Flows are at 500cfs out of the dam so the whole river now is at a good flow to wade!

Get out there!

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