Water Clarity: Clear
Water Temperatures: Lower 60s-70
Hatches: Black and Brown Stoneflies, Olive and Tan Caddis, Hendricksons, Quill Gordons, BWOs, PMDs, Light Cahils
Suggested Patterns: Pheasant Tails (#12-16) Copper Johns (#14-16-Chart) Hare’s Ears (#12-14) Montana Prince Nymphs-Black (#12-14) Kaufman Stoneflies Black and Gold (#10-14) Anderson’s Bird of Prey_Olive (#14-16) Taylor’s Gut Instinct (#14-16) Girdle Bugs (#6-10) Tan X Caddis (#12-16) Olive Elk Hair Caddis (#16-18) Adams (#12-16) Light Cahils (#12-14) Blond Wulf (#12-14) Royal Wulf (#12-14) Olive Wooly Buggers (#6-8) Zonkers #4 Montana Mouthwash Wht/Grizzly
What a heat wave! The bigger rivers warmed up quite a bit over the past few days. The Winooski was 70 at sundown on Thursday!!! Make sure you’re temping the water this weekend. I would imagine things have cooled off from the rain and cooler weather last night. Today could be a great day to be on the water. Rain yesterday was very sporadic, some areas got pounded and a lot of other didn’t see anything. Here in Stowe, it sprinkled for a little while but we never saw the storms we were kinda hoping for. Looks like we’ll get some Monday-Wednesday of this coming week along with some great looking air temps! The past few days our trips spent more time on the smaller sized streams, brook trout are in full swing aggressively taking dries and the mid sized tribs fished pretty well in the swifter more pockety water sections where there’s more oxygen.
As far as flies go, a little bit of everything should work, the streamer bites probably not going to be great with the super low flows but by the middle of the week we may be back in business in that department. Dries and nymphs have taken their fair share of fish, with the water being low and clear, go smaller. #16s and #18s will work great, run a bigger pheasant tail or stonefly #12-14 with a smaller caddis pupa such as a Anderson’s Bird of Prey-Olive. (one of my favorite flies to fish in VT) Things should improve significantly over the next couple of days as the larger rivers recover from this heat wave. I’d still be bringing two rods to most rivers, one with a dry and one rigged up with a nymph or two. Hatches and rising fish this time of the year seem to not always go hand in hand so always having a rod rigged up with a dry is going to speed things up, especially if you happen to come across one rogue rising fish. Put your nymph rod down, pick up your dry fly rod, cast to the riser, have it eat your fly, miss it on the hook set then start nymphing again…
We’ve been targeting bass and pike as well over the past few days and thats been picking up as well. Good luck to everyone getting out there this weekend! Have a plan B incase some of the rivers you’re trying to target are over 70!
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| River | Water Temp | Water Clarity | Last Update | USGS Fl | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winooski | 68 | Clear | 6/2/18 | 251 @ Montpelier | |
| Dog | 64 | Clear | 6/2/18 | 57 @ Falls | |
| Lamoille | 67 | Clear | 6/2/18 | 358 @ Johnson |
River: Winooski
Water Temp: 68
Water Clarity: Clear
Last Update: 6-2-2018
USGS FI: 251 @ Montpelier
River: Dog
Water Temp: 64
Water Clarity: Clear
Last Update: 6-2-2018
USGS FI: 57 @ Falls
River: Lamoille
Water Temp: 67
Water Clarity: Clear
Last Update: 6-2-2018
USGS FI: 358 @ Johnson