Vermont's White River: A System in Recovery

In late August, 2011, Hurricane Irene, at the time actually a tropical storm with minimal winds, impacted Vermont. With no coastline and little potential for wind damage during this storm, many would have believed a tropical storm wouldn't severely impact this state. That turned out not to be the case. In it's dying state a tropical storm turns into a rain making machine, dropping every once of moisture that had stayed with it since it left warm waters. Irene was carrying a lot of water. When it passed over Vermont, it dropped as much as 10 inches of rain in under a day. The results were catastrophic. Even small streams exploded over their banks. Roads were undermined and washed away. Bridges buckled and collapsed. Homes and businesses crumbled as the ground under them was washed away.

Before the storm the White River and its branches had been one of Vermont's most exceptional wild trout streams. It was always overshadowed by the Battenkill, and didn't get the fishing pressure it could have pulled with its robust wild rainbow and brown trout population, but everything I read from the years before Irene made it sound as though this was a truly exceptional river system. Irene did not spare this watershed. The river rose more than 10 feet above flood stage. Not 10 feet above average. 10 feet above flood stage. The destruction to both the aquatic life and the riparian zone was incredible. The bottom was scoured out. Banks were scraped clean of all vegetation. Water quality decreased with numerous hazardous waste spills. Once thriving macro-invertebrate populations essentially vanished along with smaller fish. Silt deposits built up. Wild trout populations decreased at an alarming rate, with some streams seeing numbers cut by more than half. In the six and a half years since Irene, the watershed has not recovered completely, and it may be many many years before it is what it used to be, if ever.

But I had heard some rumors that some wild trout were still to be found in the White River. So, when my friend Mike asked me a couple weeks ago if I'd be interested in joining him there, I said yes, in large part because I was very interested to see what had happened to this river that I had read so much about. There were next to no reports since 2013. The Orvis page for the river said "destroyed by floods" and had not been updated once since that year. What would we find there? It was a bit of a mystery. It would be a real adventure.

Reaching the river a little while after sunset, we parked in a spot where we couldn't see the water and started to rig up. Mike noticed it first. A delicate rusty spinner, dancing over the car. While we rigged up more gathered, and by the time we were ready to go down to the water there were at least a dozen hendrickson spinners in the air above Mike's car. We walked down to the river, and the view was a bit stark. What should have been thickly vegetated riparian zone was either devoid of growth or had only small shrubs and knotweed. Very few trees grew close enough to the bank to provide continuous shade over the water. Rock provided almost all of the cover. Riffled water appropriate for holding trout was minimal. The water was stunningly clear and green. What I saw was very pretty looking, but knowing the what wild trout require to survive, it did not instill much confidence. Then, in very hard water, Mike caught the first fish. A wild rainbow. Then another. And another.

Photo Courtesy Michael Andrews

After covering a fair bit of water in our first stretch and loosing a quite large smallmouth, I presented a CDC caddis to a splashy riser, the top fish of four that were all working the same seem, and it took. I set a after a second to let her turn and my glass rod bent deep into the cork. Soon a 14 inch wild rainbow went airborne. It was my first Vermont trout, and to have it be a gorgeous wild rainbow was a treat indeed.

Our second spot ended up being the most productive we'd fish all day, giving up an absurd number of rainbows, both stocked and wild, during a morning caddis emergence and an evening spinner fall. We doubled up there probably a dozen times. Unfortunately, almost all of these fish were cookie cutter 10 inchers, and if they weren't that size they were smaller. We found that all over the river: pockets with lots of trout, but almost no sizable fish. I never caught or hooked one bigger than my first, though I saw a couple, and neither did Mike.

We also didn't catch many brown trout, and the ones we did catch were freshly stocked. They all came from the same pool. I did catch one wild brown, but it was all of three inches long. We also didn't find brook trout in any of the tributaries or branches we fished.

Photo Courtesy Michael Andrews

Was it surprising to find the fish population so limited? Not really. I was amazed we caught as many as we did, and for the condition of the river and its recent history, it fished exactly as it should. We caught a lot of small trout, many of them healthy and wild. There was bug life and a little bit of baitfish life. From the sounds of it, what we had was an exceptional day compared to most days in recent years. With exceptional action and near perfect weather, we never found big fish that were catchable. Mike and I are both experienced trout fisherman with a lot of tricks up our sleeves. I know if there were as many big trout as there should be in a river that size, we would have caught a couple. 

Photo Courtesy Michael Andrews

One of the cooler fish I caught wasn't actually a trout, it was a smallmouth bass. Looking over a broad, deep pool that I was very much tempted to go for a swim in, a spotted a nice bass. I tied on a black woolly bugger and stripped it past. the fish followed but did not take. On the next cast I let the fly fall right down into the rocks. It got hung up. The bass charged over and plucked it right out of the crevice. It wasn't huge, but it was a gorgeous bass, with hyper-pigmentation almost giving it a mask, and the brightest red eyes I've ever seen on a fish. 

In 10 spots fished in 14 hours on the water, Mike and I caught a lot of fish. It was a nice day. About the best thing about it was there was hardly anybody out there, even on a memorial day weekend. We must have seen less than 15 other anglers. 

I hate to name rivers, especially sleepers, which the White certainly is now if it wasn't before, but I see a need for advocacy for this watershed. It badly needs help, because it hasn't recovered yet. The water quality is coming back and so are the bugs and some fish, but there is one thing that is obviously missing. It takes only a few glances to see it. There is not enough cover here. What this river needs to have in order to come back is some serious habitat work. Tree planting, log depositing, shade making. I can't imagine how difficult it is for these fish in low water with the lack of in-stream cover and shade. That is almost certainly what is slowing down this river's recovery the most. The potential is there, wild fish still swim the White River, but it is going to take a lot of time and work to make this fishery good again.