Water Clarity: Muddy-Clear
Water Temperatures: 35-42
Hatches: Stones, Midge, Some Caddis
Suggested Patterns: Girdle Bugs (Jig #8-12) Squrimy Worms, Egg Patterns, Kaufman Stoneflies, Montana Prince Nymphs-Black (#12-16) Zebra Midges (#18-20) Zonkers, Wooly Buggers, Sculpins, Sex Dungeons, Muddlers.
Hopefully everyone has gotten out and taken advantage of this summer like weather!! It’s definitely made things tricky in our neck of the woods. This warm weather has brought all the streams in our area to mostly unfishable levels. If you head south and/or towards champlain the flows seem to be much more manageable. Likely due to the fact that the majority of the snow over that was is completely gone!
We got out a bit this past week on a handful of streams and got into some fish, nothing spectacular but enough fish to keep things interesting. We also hiked into a few beaver ponds and had a couple great afternoons throwing dry flies for wild brookies! The pond fish obviously are not influenced by the snow melt and on the warm days they were quite eager to hit dry flies! We’ve gotten some promising reports out of the NEK with lake run fish showing up, the fish at the Willoughby falls have started to jump, not a big push of fish as of yesterday but I’m sure in the next few days the fish activity will pick up. The Lewis is getting super low, likely warming up quite a bit too, I’d imagine the smallies should be arriving any day, there will still be some steelhead around but if the water levels continue to drop and warm up they won’t be around for too much longer.
For anyone getting out this week, plan on sticking with the mid sized tribs, the big rivers will likely not be fishable due to water levels. As things cool off a bit, snow melt will slow down and hopefully water levels will drop a bit. We are forecasted to get some rain this week, depending on how much we get that may bring levels back up. Be sure to have some streamers in your box this week, Kreelex, sculpin patterns, and jig streamers will all be good choices, heavy flies are useful in higher flows when you want to get your flies down deep quick, they are also great for dead drifting either with a euro rod or underneath a bobber.
On another note, if you’re around May 7th, the Mad Dog TU will be hosting a 2fly competition! Proceeds go to the Vermont Trout Camp which is a fantastic program for getting teens on the water and exposed to fly fishing! For more info go to https://www.maddogtu.org/2fly-competition/
The Fly Rod Shop is Northern Vermont’s finest fly fishing guide service and fly fishing gear retailer. Visit our shop on Route 100 in Stowe, VT or shop our online store to find gear from Simms Fishing Products, Redington, Loon Products, Montana Fly Company, Lamson Waterworks, Winston, Sage, Rio, Scientific Angler, Thomas and Thomas and more!
River: Winooski
Water Temp: 40
Water Clarity: Muddy
Last Update: 4/16/23
USGS FI: 2330
River: Mad
Water Temp: 41
Water Clarity: Muddy
Last Update: 4/16/23
USGS FI: 919
River: Lamoille
Water Temp 39
Water Clarity: Muddy
Last Update: 4/16/23
USGS FI: 1680