Water Clarity: Clear
Water Temperatures: 60s-70s
Hatches: Stoneflies, PMDs, Flying Ants, BWOS, ISOS, Hoppers, Tricos
Suggested Patterns: Pheasant Tails (#12-16) Prince Nymphs (#14-18) Hare’s Ears (#14-18) Yellow Sparkle Soft Hackles (#16) Joca’s Caddis Pupa (#14-16) Hotwire Caddis (Tan #16) Parachute Adams (#12-16) Light Cahills (#12-14) Blonde Wulfs (#12-16) Elk Hair Caddis #14-18) X Caddis (#14-18) RS2-Trico #20-22
Fall continues to start to show some signs like it might be here! I’m sure we;re just getting teased but the forecast for the rest of this week is looking pretty awesome. Hopefully we get some decent rain over the next couple of days. It definitely looks like some cooler temps will set in after tomorrow, night time temps in the upper 40s should help bring water temps down a bit more as they didn’t cool as much as we had hoped last week.
Be on the look out for ant hatches over the next few weeks. We had an epic one last night. There’s a few spots around where you can get on trout during an ant hatch and tons of great bass fishing. It’s pretty awesome drifting flying ants to 16 plus inch smallies that are sipping them. The other hatches we’ve still been seeing have been tricos along with some sporadic BWOs. As we get later into the fall we’ll see a lot more BWOs. I did see some ISOs hatching on the lower lamoille last week, not a ton but there were some bass feeding on the duns as they drifted downstream. Over the next few weeks we should run into more and more ISOs as well. Hopefully we’ll be able to target trout feeding on them at some point in the next few weeks.
From a trip standpoint we’ve been spending time on the smaller brook trout streams, a few outings have taken place on some of the sections of the Lamoille and Winooski for bass and we had a few trips where we got on some of the tribs of the Winooski and Lamoille and found 62-64 degree water. The stillwater bass fishing has been pretty good as well. Early and late has been the best, we’ve been spending more time targeting largemouth lately as the local smallmouth waters are warm enough the the larger small mouth are pretty deep at sunrise and sunset. Large poppers and deer hair frogs and mice have been getting some ferocious strikes from bass and pickeral in both the early am and late pm. Pretty awesome when you see a wake form from 10ft away and head straight towards your fly!
Over the next week or so we may get some opportunities to fish some water we haven’t been able to for a while, just be sure to bring your thermometer and remember that those fish have had a relatively stressful summer so once the water temps hit the right degree give them another few days to get re-adjusted before you start fishing for them.
Good luck to everyone getting out on the water this week! Be sure to bring your thermometer!
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River: Winooski
Water Temp: 69am
Water Clarity: Clear
Last Update: 8/24/20
USGS FI: 75.5
River: Dog
Water Temp: 68
Water Clarity: Clear
Last Update: 8/24/20
USGS FI: 12
River: Lamoille
Water Temp: 68
Water Clarity: Clear
Last Update: 8/24/20
USGS FI: 91.6