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!
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| 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!
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| Pete with a good un' |
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