Housatonic River

I have fished a lot of CT's rivers. I have always stayed east of the Naugatuck, however, until yesterday. My dad and I rolled out to the Housatonic looking to avoid the Memorial Day weekend crowds on the Farmington. That mission was highly successful, we only saw a handful of other fisherman.
Being the first time I have ever fished the Housi, I found it to be very different water. It is definitely the biggest river I have fished for trout in. The water clarity was much much lower than other rivers, and the bottom was frequently treacherous. We were both using wading staffs. The water temperature was warm, hovering very close to the upper range of trout's tolerance.

We struggled for a little while, but Dad was the first to hook up: he got two smallmouth in pocket water using an articulated streamer. Late in the afternoon we found rising trout in a huge flat pool. The were clearly feeding on small insects. I opted for a sulfur emerger and went to stalking and sight fishing trout that were rising. The first one I caught was in the tail of the pool, only a few inches from the bank. It turned out to be a nice brown.
A bit later my dad moved into that same spot and caught three rainbows right were the pool transitioned into the riffle.

I spotted a big brown working it's way up the pool about 50 feet out. It was easily over 20 inches. I had to really work to get my roll cast out in front of that fish, which was doing very showy head and tail rises. I also had to chase it, as it would rise three times and then move ten feet upstream. I never ended up hooking it, but I did get into a good position to work a pod of risers. The second one I caught was a gorgeous little wild brown.

We were doing fairly well as the evening progressed. We both got into some fish, and although I had a take from one of the big ones we failed to get any true giants. That's OK, it was fun to fish such big water and consistently hook fish.

As we were walking out through the tail of the pool we saw a big flight of spinners. Fish had begun to rise like mad there, and I'm sure we would have caught more had we stayed, but we really had to get going. That sums up my first experience with the Housatonic, I'm looking forward to fishing it a few more times this year and maybe getting into some of its big bass.