River Conditions: 5/24/17

Water Clarity: Clear

Water Temperatures:  52-60

Hatches: Black/Brown Stoneflies, Mothers Day Caddis, Hendricksons, Quil Gordon

Suggested Patterns: Wooly Buggers (Olive and Brown-#4-#8) Zonkers, Muddler Minnows (#4-#8) Sex Dungeons, Pheasant Tails (#12-16) Copper Johns (#12-16) Prince Nymph (#12-16) Black Stones (#8-10) Two Tone Stone, Anderson’s Bird of Prey (#12-14) Morrish Hotwire Caddis (#14-16) Adams (#12-14) Olive or Tan Elk Hair Caddis (#12-16)

The fishing has been pretty awesome over the past couple of days. We’ve been seeing a few more rises, (still not a whole lot of consistency) we’ve also been seeing more bugs hatching. Hendrickson, Caddis Flies and Quil Gordons. The flows are still a little up on the Winooski but the fishing is good. You just have a little more water to work through to find them. It’s a perfect time to run a raven 2.2 gram float and some additional split shot to help get your fly down deep. Fished the Winooski the other day for a while upstream of the Zoo and caught 5 stockies and one wild one. The stockies all took a heavy and very large Caddis pupa, the wild fish took a #18 red brassie. Big difference in how the fish fight, the wild fish spend more time out of the water than in it trying to throw the hook, the stockies just shook their head and tugged a little bit. Water temps on the Winooski are between 58 and 60. Time to hang the waders up… The Lamoille is in about the same shape. Water is high but still very fishable. Both rivers are perfect to float right now. Clarity is great as well, they both just have a hint of tea to them which will help keep things productive even during mid-day conditions. We’ll see what happens with the rain we get tomorrow and friday. We could really go a few more days without getting rain but it is what it is… The bigger rivers may puff up a bit for the weekend so don’t be surprised if you end up fishing some smaller streams or hitting some stillwater stuff. The bass fishing has gotten pretty good over the past week. Most fish are on their beds and willing to take a streamer stripped through their “turf” Good luck to everyone getting out this weekend! Definitely make sure to have some dries for the weekend. I saw lots of Olive and Tan Caddis this morning along with some Quil Gordons.

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