New Haven River 5/29-5/30/15

So I ended up back in Bristol again this weekend for some fishing. I wanted to give the New Haven another shot, and I was not disappointed.

I started off at the upper reaches of the river on Friday evening after work. I got to the river a few hours before sunset, and was happy to see a pretty intense hatch going on. Sulfur duns, stoneflies, caddis, some green drakes, and a few others were happening for the majority of the night. I fished the surface with a size 18 Adams and caught quite a few Brook trout. Nothing extraordinary, but they are as always, beautiful fish.

I decided to come back ok Saturday to check out some of the lower stretches of the river towards the town of New Haven itself. I got to the river around 7AM and fished it until about 2, moving to various spots throughout the day. I fished subsurface the entire day, having a pit of luck on wooley buggers, hares ears (14-18), Prince Nymphs, and some golden stones.

Down to the “flats” section of the river I had pretty good luck again on wooley buggers. I managed to catch a few wild rainbows, which was a pleasant surprise to me. My phone managed to die again so this was the lone shot:

Rood Pond Williamstown, VT

Fishing Reports

Well, a trip that started well ended pretty awful for me. I drove out to Rood Pond in Williamstown VT to test out my new float tube. Caught some Brook Trout, but also had my hip pack with all my flies and supplies as well as my fly rod stolen in the process. I had forgot to load my gear after deflating my float tube. After realizing this I turned around to go back only to be told two guys took off with it. Such a shame.

Brookies in the Green Mountains

Fishing Reports

Today was a blast, it was really the first productive day of fishing I’ve had since I moved up here. Nestled among the green mountains of Vermont, I found myself at a nice high elevation pond holding a healthy population of brook trout. It was nice accessing the spot, a short, but very steep hike brought us to the top.

The view was truly spectacular and was only exceeded by the fishing. It didn’t take long to land the first fish. I tied on an old faithful, the wooly bugger to do some initial prodding of the water. A rather large pond, the temperature was at a cool 50 degrees, receiving some help from the snow melt still taking place. Anyways, back to the fishing. I packed my waders so I was able to actually get into the water, I’m still waiting on my float tube, so I only had so much room to work with. My first few casts came and went without much success. On the fifth or six, I had a pretty aggressive take. With a quick hookset, I had my first Brook trout on my line. After a quick battle, he was in my net.

Like I said, this pond was pretty large, so I made sure to make my way around it and fish as many spots as I could access. Every spot I stopped at was productive. I stayed mostly subsurface fishing buggers, grey ghosts, and a couple sculpin patterns. I did however see probably the largest fish of the day rising to what looked like a BWO hatch out in the centers of the pond. Again, this is where my lack of float tube really left me wondering just how big those fish were, and reallllly wishing I had that float tube. Short of any other drawn out stories here’s some more fish:

Before we headed out for the day, we decided to take a trip down one of the limited access roads that finally re-opened for spring:

It was a pretty surreal experience as the road seemed almost out of place winding through the mountains. The road had no real shoulders in this section, with large boulders that you could reach out and touch as you drove by. The road eventually gave way to a split roadway with a small stream running parallel to it. My gut feeling told me we should see where it led to, and boy am I glad we did. We pulled off the road to follow the stream for a while. The water was without a doubt mountain fed, it was crystal clear and absolutely freezing. As we followed it down, we found a series of the renowned Vermont beaver ponds:

We took up a spot on the edge of one of the small pond and waited for the tell tale rings from rising brookies. It didn’t take long to realize how many fish were holding in these tiny ponds, so we strung up our rods, tied on some small stimulator patterns and went to work: