A Lyme-Haver's Tick Season Warning

 We all love ticks (he says entirely facetiously). These little parasitic arachnids suck, literally, and if you thought we might get a break from them to some degree this early spring, you are sorely mistaken... at least here in southern New England, where heavy snow has blanketed the ground for most of the last few months. 

The unmistakable and devilish lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum

It is generally understood that  harsh winter kills ticks. Why, then, have I already picked more than one off of my pants? It was certainly colder than average, and though it felt snowier than average it barely was at just two inches more than the statewide average. We've gotten all too used to mild winters in recent years. That snow, ironically, was the ticks' savior. In a dry stretch of extremely cold conditions, it is true that there is a higher tick mortality through the winter leading to a lower number around come spring. When a heavy snow blankets the ground, though, it provides an insulating layer that gives ticks a shot. Think of it like the ticks all having some sort of mega-igloo. They remain alive under that protective shelter, just waiting to come out once things do finally thaw. Yayyy.

Unfortunately, that provides us outdoorsman no hope of a break from tick precautions, something everyone should be taking seriously. I've been diagnosed with Lyme a number of times. Lyme is a nasty disease that takes many forms. Mine came with severe muscle aches, joint pain, and a fever bad enough to spur hallucinations. It isn't worth acquiring Lyme. Lyme isn't alone, though. Powassan, tularemia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and plenty of other diseases all find their way around within ticks. Unfortunately, human activity has worsened this to an exceptional extent. Suburban sprawl reduces predator populations while allowing dear, rodents, and other small mammals that are ideal tick hosts to continue to thrive, not only increasing the total volume of ticks and increasing the odds that humans come in contact with them, but increasing the percentage of ticks that are carriers of these diseases. Climate change has expanded north and eastward the ranges of tick species like lone star ticks, which were not historically abundant in New England. They are becoming increasingly common as the conditions become more similar in climate to their historic range. Since not every tick species is a vector for every tick borne illness, this really does matter. 

So, treat your pants with permethrin and cuff sleeves with tick tape. Do regular checks and pay very close attention to symptoms of potential tick borne illnesses. Medicate your pets and make sure they don't carry any arachnid hangers on home. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, Javier, Ryan, Dar, Eric, Truman, Collin, and Josey for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog and access more informative content, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version!

March Patreon Happenings

Over on Patreon this month I'm starting a new Collection (series) on chubs... that's right, something absolutely nobody asked for! I'm here for the needs of the people whether they know it or not, and I've determined that everyone needs more Semotilus and Nocomis in their lives. The first post available to all tiers comes out next month and covers the diversity and distribution of the Semotilus genus within Connecticut, to be out March 9th. One of the two monthly videos will chronicle efforts to catch the largest creek chub I can in Connecticut. Down the road I'll delve into as many chub species as I can with this collection, detailing their biology, identification, and how to catch them on the fly. 

The "Forecasting for Anglers" collection will also be built upon this month, with a cow+ tier post on locations that warm up fastest in the spring publishing later today (March 2nd) and an all member weather analog post later in the month. The other weekly posts include a sunfish ice fishing post tomorrow and a final post to be determined. The other bimonthly cow+ tier post is on targeting early season bowfin, and the other video will be one in the Small Stream Streamer Fishing Masterclass. 

As always, if you support me over on Patreon, thank you! It really does keep this whole thing going. If any of you ever has an idea for a topic you'd like to see covered, don't hesitate to reach out and ask as I'm always open to new ideas and it is a lot of work to come up with them on my own. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, Javier, Ryan, Dar, Eric, Truman, Collin, and Josey for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog and access more informative content, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version!

Late Winter Update & March Guiding Schedule

 Two consecutive great ice years for Connecticut, what a treat! I've been greatly enjoying putting the hours in to get much better at hardwater pursuits, traveling a little further afield, and putting in as many consecutive hours out there as possible. Noah and I have been ice camping when the opportunity arises, even in some very harsh and cold conditions. It has been extremely enjoyable and I've been very okay without casting a fly into open water in a couple months. 

Lake trout are a fish that is growing on me more and more, both in open water and on the ice. They're aggressive but also moody, capable of producing blitz level feeding windows and long, slow periods just as easily. They're very pretty too, and they don't taste bad at all either... in my limited experience of exactly one laker kept. They're oddly like small bluefish in flavor. Tremendous fish, all around. We just need to figure out big lake wild rainbows and landlocked salmon next. 

On the home front, I've been doing quite well with big bluegills, not as well with crappie as I'd like, not as well with perch as I'd like, and laying into the stocked trout because, well, of course... that never changes. On the crappie and perch front I do have a hard time believing that over harvest and the now limitless regulations aren't at least partially to blame. Time will tell, but there certainly don't seem to be as many big crappies and perch in popular locations as there were even five years ago. This probably isn't an audience to whom preaching selective harvest would make any difference to, but man... I wish people were a little more conservative with their trophy panfish harvesting. 

On to March, though. The mud month is only seven days away, and it promises to be a very muddy March this year. There's a potential blizzard on the way as I write this, and still 2-8 inches of snow on the ground from the big January storm depending where in Connecticut you are. This is good; very good in fact. We went into winter with a big deficit and depleted aquifers, the more snow we get the better. It's good for river health but also good for floating. It looks like March will present a number of opportunities to float rivers, both for trout and Atlantic salmon. March is my personal favorite salmon month during the Connecticut season. Fish are often well spread, can be aggressive, and if you do want to keep one it is definitely the best time to get one that has much better flavor than they do when they're first put in. I'll be doing floats basically whenever the weather allows, as the ice is now leaving and many days in the long term forecast exceed 40 degrees. If you'd like to try it, let me know!

John Kelly caught this show stopper with me back in December.

When the Salmon, Willimantic, and Farmington are floatable I'll be doing those as well. As it stands those aren't, but they should come into form soon. The Salmon is still iced up heavily and at the least the Merrow Rd. gauge on the Willy is reading "ice effected, so for now it's a waiting game. We had a lot of fun on both rivers last year, though, and I'm looking forward to putting the NRS down both again in 2026! The Farmington is the Farmington... if you want to fish it I'll take you. 

Alternately, the carp season is coming and coming fast. Most years we do have great fishing in March, odds aren't bad that the same is true this year even though it feels cold now. April is filling in already. If you want dates in April, reach out ASAP while I still have some schedule flexibility. It's shaping up to be a really tremendous flood plain season. It sort of always is, though. If you haven't experienced that fishery, you owe it to yourself to do so!

Pete with a good un'

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, Javier, Ryan, Dar, Eric, Truman, Collin, and Josey for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog and access more informative content, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version!

The Fight for Conservation

 That's the title of one of Gifford Pinchot's publications. I'd call it a booklet- it's a very short and easy read -and I recommend it not just to any outdoorsman but to any American, because it lays bricks for the foundation of how resource and land management is meant to work in this country. The understanding of that is paramount to being an informed citizen. Gifford Pinchot was a pivotal figure of the conservation movement, one of the forefathers of the US Forest Service, a Pennsylvania Governor, as well as a Connecticut Yankee and Yale graduate. Down low on the Farmington River, in Simsbury where Pinchot was born, a big old Sycamore takes his name. 

The conservation movement evokes certain images for many individuals... perhaps you picture vegan hippies tying themselves to trees in a haze of cannabis smoke. That might make reading The Fight for Conservation a confusing experience for you. The writings from one of the key individuals who started the conservation movement focus more on economics, national security, and prosperity than on the sort of fru-fru peace love and harmony ideas often ascribed to that movement today. That isn't because Pinchot didn't care for or appreciate nature in a spiritual sense, far from it. He just understood that a country's prosperity is directly tied to how it preserves, conserves, and develops its resources. The Forest Service's roll goes miles beyond a sort of park ranger perspective, to that of fireman, mine geologist, farmer, and more, and the role of federal land isn't just to provide a place to recreate- see Land of Many Uses -but to safeguard resources for development. "The first principle of conservation is development, the use of the natural resources now existing on this continent for the benefit of the people who live here now."¹

How, then, would Gifford Pinchot feel about the possibility of a Chilean-owned mine in the watershed of the famed Boundary Waters in Minnesota, the countries most visited wilderness area. I'd make the case that Pinchot wouldn't support the development of this particular resource at this particular time in this particular way. Mining was changing in Pinchot's day, with the "mom and pop shop" mining claims on federal lands beginning to cede to larger companies. A lot of federal land mining that fell under Pinchot's supervision was quite small scale, and that does still exist. Small scale gem, mineral specimen, and precious metal mining still exists and some individuals do make their livelihood off of that. That didn't really describe Minnesota's iron mining. In 1910, when The Fight for Conservation was published, development of the Mesabi Range iron deposits was in its early stages. They were never really small operations. Many started as underground workings but have all transitioned into open pit mines by the present day, leaving a broken scar visible from space as a red-brown blemishes stretching northeastward from Grand Rapids to Babbit. These mines are or were operated by a variety of companies, some US based in Cincinnati and Pittsburg, others foreign owned. Foreign ownership leads to big questions for "the benefit of people who live here now". Mining has been a fundamentally key part of the prosperity of Minnesotans, but how much of the prosperity will the area feel with another foreign owned mine and ever progressing automation? I don't actually know the answer to that, but I have a hunch... 

Furthermore, will this mine poison the boundary waters? 

Maybe. It certainly could. It isn't the first mine in the watershed, either. Dunka River, just to the south and flowing into the same lake the proposed mine would abut, skirts between the open pits of two other mines. Perhaps it's less egregious than the immediate abutment of the proposed mining underground project to Birch Lake. And perhaps the byproducts of this copper, nickel, cobalt focused mining are worse than those of the taconite mines .The company that would run this mine has a history of failing to comply with water management regulations, and the Forest Service under the Biden administration put out an environmental assessment stating both environmental and economic concerns for the region. A 20 year mining ban was placed, what we're seeing now is the attempt to undue that. It stands to reason that Pinchot might fall in favor of the continued ban, as the boundary waters themselves represent a resource already developed and an existing driver of economic benefit to the region. This mine certainly could threaten that. In many regions, outdoor recreation is now an outstanding source of employment and economic growth. In 2024, both Ag, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting and Arts, Recreation, Accommodation & Food Service contributed more to Minnesota's GDP than mining.³ That suggests the resource more worth developing and in turn preserving is the Boundary Waters, rather than this individual, depletable ore deposit. 

 I'd think Gifford Pinchot's head would spin if he saw what resource management were like today, with massive percentages of US mining falling under foreign corporations, fire management fundamentally flawed, water power and canal infrastructure falling out if favor, and scientists understanding of land and resource management completely repaved and resurfaced from his time. It would probably be a confusing world to him. Perhaps disappointing, even. 

That's just speculative. I have no idea what he would thing. If you don't want to see this new mine in watershed of the Boundary Waters, though- and yes, I know I'm extremely late and the senate vote could happen any moment - here's an avenue for comment: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/get-involved/take-action

1. Pinchot, Gifford. The Fight for Conservation. New York, Doubleday, Page & company, 1910. pp. 18-19

2. Staff. (2022, November 8). Agencies announce critical next step for the Boundary Waters. Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. https://www.trcp.org/2022/06/24/agencies-announce-next-critical-step-banning-sulfide-ore-copper-mining-near-boundary-waters/

3. What is the gross domestic product (GDP) in Minnesota?. USAFacts. (n.d.). https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-gross-domestic-product-gdp/state/minnesota/

Ghosts of Winters Past

2025 was a pretty good ice fishing season in Connecticut. 2026, so far, is even better.... the best in recent memory, in fact. Noah, who doesn't work in the winter anymore, has gotten fully ice obsessed, and that has carried along to me. Going from very casually stepping onto local lakes with a spud bar and one jigging rod to fully shanty-d up with heaters, vexilars, specialized rods and even more specialized jigs, and making spring bobbers at home is a bit of a leap. It was any easy leap for me to take. I'm a fly guy in open water virtually everywhere and every time I can be. With almost no exceptions, if I'm making casts with an artificial offering, I'm going to do so with a fly rod and don't care at all to use anything else. That doesn't operate well when the water is frozen. Walking on water is pretty darn fun. Trotting out on the ice nearly daily and even sleeping out on it has got me thinking about the winters that have passed, though. 

I caught my first fish through the ice not that long ago, in early January of 2018. It was a striped bass. Noah and I both got our first that day, actually. They were on handlines. They fought... poorly. 

That winter of 2017-18 was the first time I ever put even a measurable effort into ice fishing, and it wasn't a huge effort. I did give it a go with jigging panfish and bass and started to at least catch fish. That wasn't an exceptional ice winter, but it was good enough. My most significant memories on the ice that involved attempting to get carp through the ice and even losing a set rod to one, and dropping my phone down a hole and managing to grab it as it sank. The open water opportunities were probably markedly better that winter than the ice opportunities, at least given our lack of skill. That skill lack extended beyond just ice fishing though, Noah and I were both very much still in a developing age in our angling careers- not unskilled, per-se, probably better than average, but growing rapidly. We'd just gotten back from our first Florida trip, which opened our eyes in significant ways. 

I'd ice fished prior to 2018, of course, but in an even more disorganized fashion. In 2017 we had a very mild winter that gave no ice. January and February both presented more opportunities at open water bass, sunfish, and carp than they did at ice fishing. 2016 was much the same. In fact, winters like these have been more abundant in the last two decades than winters like the one we're having now. I can recall falling into a pond in early February of 2010 and it being a complete non-issue. 

My friend Rik and I poked around this snowy but open pond one January day in 2017

2014 was a late winter but cold enough and snowy enough to keep me off a lot of water. I don't know that I ice fished at all, my friend Dalton and I may have half-assedly attempted it. I did more snow-shoeing than fishing that winter, especially from February into early March. What I keenly remember was that shelf ice built up significantly. In combination with deep snowpack and the fact that we still had a short closed trout season back then and it made for a very good spring trout season. Fish were hungry, had been unpressured, and flows were fantastic. The hatches were better back then too. 

I believe it was 2013 that I recall struggling to cut through the thick ice on a local lake with a hatchet, and when I finally did it shot through and I lost it.  

In 2020 and 2021, I did a little bit of ice fishing, but not much. In 22 and 23, hardly any at all. I devoted some days in 24 but the window was short. Ice was largely absent each of those years but so was snow, with little in the way of prolonged snow coverage. So far 2025-26 has provided the longest duration of snow coverage locally that I can remember in a long time. What does that all mean, though? I hope this produces a spring trout fishing boom equivalent to 2013 and 14, but the reality is the streams are open to fish the moment they thaw now, and that closed March really was advantageous back when we still had that. Combined with the boom in popularity of two high impact trout methods- Euro nymphing and especially center pinning, now -the fish won't see the benefit of a deep freeze that they used to in conjunction with a chance to settle into early spring without heavy molestation. At the very least, snowpack melting into the ground a steady pace has significant groundwater benefits. We have a lot on the ground all over the northeast at this point, and all of February to accrue even more. That leaves another question: with snow on the ground all over the Mid Atlantic region, will there be a significantly better striped bass spawn this spring? My suspicion is, no, there will not, at least not enough to make up for the collapse we've seen thus far, but I could be mistaken. Colder winters with more precipitation are indeed tied to improved recruitment. We'll just need to wait and see.

What I'm most excited about, personally, is this: 

https://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/index.html?year=2026&month=1&day=31&units=e&region=Northeast

I anticipate a pretty good spring floodplain season for me... if you've done that fishery with me, you know why that brings a smile to my face. It's the coolest. And with snowpack like we have throughout the watershed, it should be very reliable this spring. Book soon, because late March, April, and May do fill right in! 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, Javier, Ryan, Dar, Eric, Truman, and Collin for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.