Water Clarity: Clear/Green Currently-Should be Coffee with Cream by Saturday
Water Temperatures: COLD-Ranging from 36-45
Hatches: Tiny Black Stones
Suggested Patterns: Squirmy Worms, Pat’s Rubber Legs, Kaufman Stones, MFGA Prince, Jig Buggers, Pheasant Tails (#12-14) Hare’s Ears (#12-14) Strolis Quil Body Jig (#12-14) Montana Prince Nymph-Black (#10-12), Complex Twist Buggers, Montana Mouthwash, Nutcracker #4 Black, Sex Dungeons
We hope everyone’s been having a good spring! We’ve been busy here at the shop gearing up for the upcoming season with tons of new gear!! We’ve got boxes of stuff coming in daily!! In our spare time we’ve been able to get out a little over the past couple of weeks, nothing super noteworthy but we were able to get into some fish dead drifting and slowly twitching larger streamers. Water temps have still been relatively cool, the warmest we’ve temped has been 45 on a trib of the Winooski today. Most other rivers in the past few days have been between 36 and 38 degrees. We are in for a considerable amount of rain over the next few days. This will bring water levels up on everything. The bigger rivers like the Winooski and Lamoille will likely be out of the game for a few days-(they’re currently at great levels) The small/mid sized tribs should be fishable, the size of what’s fishable and what isn’t will all be dictated by the actual rain totals.
A few of our guides along with a handful of our customers have had the most success lately on the larger tribs of the main rivers. That’s often where we have our best success early in the season. These may be flowing pretty high on Friday but hopefully by Sunday they will have dropped a little in flow. A sink tip line or sink tip leader and a bigger, heavier streamer wouldn’t be a bad idea. If the water is only slightly stained or more of a green color we like throwing white or olive flies in the early part of the season. If it’s more on the muddy size darker always tends to stand out better. If the water is on the really clear side, opting to nymph isn’t a bad idea, we’ll often keep two rods with us just to save a little time on re rigging between spots if we want to try both methods.
The fishing on some of the tribs of the larger lakes should be good as well, on these you may find steelhead, landlocked salmon and just about anything else. Guys have been doing alright on the steelhead lately, the biggest thing now is to just get a few warmer days to bump those water temps up another couple of degrees. A few degrees this time of the year can make all the difference in the world. On the earlier side of those runs nymphing seems to be the most productive. San Juan Worms, Egg Patterns, and Stoneflies all see to work well. As temps warm up and we approach the month of May we often get into fish swinging streamers which can make for some awesome, aggressive strikes!
Good luck to everyone getting out over the next few days. The harvest trout season does open on Saturday so there may be a few more spin fishermen out but I wouldn’t expect a large wave of fly fishermen since we’ve been able to fish all winter!!
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River: Winooski
Water Temp: 36
Water Clarity: Green
Last Update: 4/6/22
USGS FI: 931
River: Mad
Water Temp: 45
Water Clarity: Green
Last Update: 4/6/22
USGS FI: 349
River: Lamoille
Water Temp:37
Water Clarity: Green
Last Update: 4/6/22
USGS FI: 871