More Salmon on the Mickey Finn

 My mission to get a CT Atlantic salmon on a dry this season fell quite short of the goal. On my second outing targeting broodstock salmon and unfortunately the last day I had good conditions for fishing dries, I put in a solid effort for about an hour and only moved one fish that I'm not sure was even a salmon before I gave up and tied on a Cascade. Sometimes I like dictating the day's fishing style; but I know I can't impose my will on the fish; and I do still like to catch. After all I could count on my finger the number of broodstock salmon I'd ever caught. I was determined not to have this be a season where I only caught fish on one day, as every year prior that had been the case. One and done. Eventually I moved a fish with the Cascade. It was a great surface strike but I was sure the fish felt something and I missed it. I gave the fish a rest and switched to the ever productive early season fly, the Mickey Finn. It chased on the next cast. I rested it again. The next time it hammered the fly in a spectacularly visual surface eat and I hooked it solidly. The ensuing fight was pretty damn good. A couple substantial runs, a bunch of jumps... even these hatchery fish can put on a heck of a show.

I continued down the pool and through the next run, moved one more fish that just wouldn't commit, then headed back upriver to hit a tight little spot I'd skipped over before I headed out. Just in case. Sure enough there was a salmon there and she took the Mickey Finn. This one was quite lovely, a lot more chrome compared to those I'd caught before and had better condition fins. It took out all it's energy jumping and it was a very short fight. 

I can't tell you how badly I wish we had wild sea run Atlantics in CT or even just a fishable run in Maine still. At least there are wild landlocked salmon there, but I want big, chrome fish that still have a couple sea lice on them, that make it into backing and sound like a small child landing in the water when the splash down from their high jumps. It is so frustrating to watch as wild salmon stocks world-wide plummet while I haven't the financial means to get to them while some are still good. 

Wait for me, salmon. Please.

 Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof 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. 

Small Flies and Double-Handing for CT Broodstock Salmon

 The early season for CT broodstock Atlantic salmon the last few years has come with very low warm water. These conditions are less than enjoyable and prevent me from fishing for these salmon the way I really want to: traditional flies, swinging, spey casting. Though this isn't a real salmon fishery, I like to fish it like it is. About the only upside of the early season low water and warmth is the opportunity to get the fish to take a dry fly or riffle hitched wet, witch of course still falls in the bounds of classic Atlantic salmon tactics and is also very exciting. This year I was finally able to actually put time into this fishery and go at it on my own, and I badly wanted to get one on a dry. That said I also wanted to catch fish. So when I moved a small salmon twice with a Bomber, then couldn't get it to rise again even after a ten minute rest, I did what I knew would work and two hand retrieved a tiny Mickey Finn over it and the fish quickly obliged. 

Pinkie out for Salmo salar

 The fish was small but a firecracker. It spent a lot of time in the air and tried to make some runs, though it wasn't even close to heavy enough that I couldn't turn it without any fear of my 8lb tippet failing. The take was the highlight, I love when an Atlantic wakes up on a fly that on or just under the surface, and it always feels nice to come tight when two hand retrieving saltwater style. This is an underutilized method on freshwater rivers. I'd picked it's use up for broodstock salmon from my friend and experienced salmon fisherman Ben Bilello (actually my use of basically every tactic in the post should be credited to Ben) some year back and have applied it effectively on both salmon and trout since. Sometimes keeping the fly moving more or less continuously is very important. In this sort of fishing, down and across swinging for fish willing to move for the fly, it means the angler isn't relying on the pace of the current to set the speed of the swing. I can get the fly swinging fast in water it would otherwise be moving uncomfortably sluggish.

The next run down yielded no moved fish to a hitched wet, so I made another pass at it with the same little Mickey Finn. I sent another small salmon airborne there that didn't stay pinned. Later on, I moved another with the bomber before it went silent until, again, a two handed Mickey got it up and stuck. Once more it was a fantastic fighter though not at all a big fish. 

Always pinkie out.

My confidence with fine wire hook size 10-14 Mickey Finns for early season broodstock salmon is three fold. First off, red and yellow can do no wrong with these fish for the first month and a half of the short season. Second, small fine hooks are much easier to bury in a fish's mouth. Third, once they're in the fish they're more inclined to stay there. Perhaps some of this confidence originates in the first adult salmon I caught, my only true sea-run Atlantic, which was taken on a size 14 Sedgehammer. In low water the salmon are more inclined to notice and strike such a small fly, so it is a good move to take advantage of this and set your presentation apart from the crowd of big flies, spoons, and spinners these fish are being bombarded with as well as something more likely to get a good solid hookup. 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. 

Ghosts of Salmon Past

The dark waters of the Shetucket beckon. It is a cold and damp day, but not below freezing, and the falling river has left behind it a margin of snow-free bank. It reminds us that just days before, this river, which is big and powerful enough today, was even more big and even more powerful, and two steps out from the bank would have had a very different result. But today that is safe, and necessary to keep my line out of the reeds when I make my mediocre spey cast. It is deeper than a leak in the right leg of my waders though, and 40 degree water starts soaking through, almost slow enough not to be noticeable. But We've been fishing for a while now and my right foot is damp, I know that leak is there. Stripping line off the reel and shaking the rod tip, I get the whole head off the reel. Fifteen more feet of running line comes off the reel and I make two big loops with it. I'm no good at holding the loops with my hand and casting, so I hold them with my mouth instead. I set the anchor, make the D-loop, then cast. When I let the coils go I've been holding with my mouth they go nowhere in any hurry. The cast falls short and ugly and I swear and quickly two-hand retrieve back in. I want to do this right. Again, but this time accepting that my sink tip was too much for a single spey, I made my go-to spey cast, the Perry Poke. This time the cast flew and the running line slapped tight with a satisfying thunk. In rod and line speak, that says to me "good cast and it could have gone even farther". I mend and let the line drift downstream under no tension to sink some before it starts to swing. My fly, an orange gaudy no-name thing, is presumably riding about four feet below the surface. As it reaches the inside seem of the strongest current tongue, the unmistakable pull of a large fish taking bends the rod. I lift, register three big head shakes, and then the fish is gone. That's how it has been today and that's how it will continue to be. By the end of the trip I'm doubting whether any of the takes, even those that resulted in brief hookups, were actually fish at all. Though these are hatchery raised Atlantic salmon, fish that have never seen the ocean, they still act like salmon for the most part in the river. I've accepted their weirdness for what it is.

For whatever reason, I get the urge to swing traditional salmon flies and two handers this time every year. Maybe its the bombardment of steelhead photos from NY, maybe its simply the comfort swinging flies affords when the water is on the cold side. There's not much of a rhyme or reason for it, this wouldn't be prime salmon time here naturally were they still around. But I find myself on rivers that have no more salmon and rivers with mediocre facsimiles of the real thing, swinging flies for the ghosts of salmon past.  Every now and then, in a river with no salmon in it stocked or otherwise, a big rogue trout will find my fly, maybe even following and boiling after it, sitting in the same sort of water an Atlantic would. I lose myself in those moments, I forget that I'm in Connecticut, fishing a river that is not just a shadow of its former self, but a different and remarkably less healthy river all together. As my good friend Ben Bilello put it, "It's kinda nice living in fantasy land, if only for a moment."

Atlantic salmon are dying. They're dead here. They'll be gone elsewhere in my lifetime. They may well be near extinction if and by the time I have kids old enough to go fishing for wild Atlantics. I've only caught one sea run salmon in my life and it changed me forever. Hopefully it won't be my only. But even if it is, I'll likely spend many more days standing in once great salmon rivers, swinging flies for fish that no longer exist.

Photo Courtesy Bill Platt

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, and Shawn for supporting this blog on Patreon.

Home River During the Spawn

This is a less than easy time of year on my favorite stream. It's wild trout population has a tendency to migrate quite a bit up and down stream, especially during the spawn, and it can be tricky to find them up until the second week in December. But I like to go regardless, because the fish are rarely prettier than they are right now and I also like to find and make not of fresh redds so I can avoid them when they start to turn dark again (when fresh, the gravel is light colored and clean, but algae and vegetation will grow on the gravel before the alevins emerge). Beyond that, it's just fun to watch trout spawning. If I get really lucky and find a big communal redd cluster with anywhere from 5 to 15 trout on it, there's often a ton of fish immediately downstream that aren't spawning and are there to eat loose eggs. In the last couple days I made two visits. The fishing was as slow as I expected it to be, but very much worth while. On the first visit I caught one brown and lost a big fish, likely 14 or 15 inches. That was almost made up for by the number of wildly colored juvenile salmon I caught.

On day two I took four casts in the first pool I fish almost every time I come to my home river, a pool that had produced six salmon parr the day before and nothing else, and pinned an absolute stud of a brown and missed two similar fish. What a difference a day makes. 

One of the progeny of the late great Grandfather? He has the same coloration. Not that parr marks are still visible. I hope to encounter this fish if and when he reaches 18 inches. 

That had me hoping that this would be a bang up day, fish after fish after fish, and maybe a few big ones. Nope. I caught browns, but not double digits, and none as spectacular as the first fish. And I don't mind that it let me cover more water. I refuse to catch and release more than 12 wild trout in a day during the spawn. I want to limit my impact. If I'd caught that many in a quarter mile of water I wouldn't have seen as much of the river to look carefully for redds. I did find redds, which I will avoid for the next few months, but didn't see any trout actively working them. I suspect they were there but saw me coming. 

The last fish of the day was a big old holdover which was cool to catch. I leave anything that held over the summer alone. It's lucky for this fish we didn't cross paths in April, I may not have treated it well.

The stage is well set for early winter, one of my favorite times of year. On Christmas Eve Morning I will be on this river, as with every year for the last five years. And that day has a lot to live up to. 

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Every little bit is appreciated! 
Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines. 

Homewater Humdinger: A Few Days, a Ton of Trout.

This week has been one of those where I've had so many trips with so many being to different places that I've got a backlog of really good stuff that is all just awesome, but too disjointed to make a single post per outing. Fortunately today's fishing was relatively mediocre where I chose/had to be, and that leaves me with a void I can fill. And it just so happens that I have a ton of stuff from a bunch of trips, both short and long, that I have taken to my home river since the season opened.

The first couple of outings were really short, and I basically just concentrated on putting a hurting on stockers. I really would prefer this stream not get stocked as much as it does, so I do sometimes kill these fish. But early in the season when they aren't fully adjusted to stream life I just release them downstream from the deep holes where they were stocked. They have a hard time not getting eaten by the myriad of predators that just love these easy meals, which takes them out of the system while also feeding fish eating predators... or at least that's the idea. And it is lent credence by the fact that heron and mink activity is always much greater downstream from the stocking locations after I do my redistributing!  If more people fished here on opening day and took everything, I wouldn't bother doing this.

This year the size of the stocked trout I caught was quite exceptional, and I'm not going to lie I did have some fun beating up on these chubby critters with mice and streamers. I actually caught my biggest rainbow too, a fat ugly broodstock male with a gnarly kype.

To make things interesting, on each day I went down to harass the stockers, I caught one wild fish out of the school. Most pleasantly, the first wild brookie from my home river since last summer! What these wild fish were doing in the meat market I have no idea. I just hope they have the good sense to avoid powerbait and worms on eagle claw hooks.

Very much to my surprise all of my outing produced a fair number of bright salmon smolts, as well as juvenile salmon of similar size that were still in parr markings. These fish are always pleasant to encounter, giving spectacularly acrobatic fights, basically a small scale version of what they would do if they ever were to return as adults. I wish them all a safe journey and tell them I will see them again in four years when I let them swim away. I know they won't be coming back, but I can't help it. 

Friday was wild day. I fished two and a half miles of my home river, prospecting every bit of that water that was worth fishing with nymphs and small dead drifting streamers. It was an exciting day because all four major insect types that trout feed on (midges, caddis, stoneflies, mayflies), and I saw the first Paraleps hatch of the year! The water is still too high and a little cold for the fish to take notice of the few duns, but the nymph bite was OK. With the water as high as it is it can be difficult to nymph as effectively as I would were it about 35cfs lower, so I had to cover more water for fewer fish. That doesn't mean I didn't catch a ton of trout, but I didn't catch as many in that long distance as I know I could have were the bite really on.

The first fish spoiled me. From that beautiful, good sized brown it went to a mix of small browns, salmon in various stages of immaturity, and the odd rainbow. For two miles. I did miss some that stung a little and definitely wasted good water fishing it "the wrong way".

Then, suddenly, I found what I was looking for. Fishing the slick behind a large uplifted slab of bedrock, I caught a small salmon par in the mid section of the seem next to a branch, which I thought was the best looking lie in the area. Not fully deterred I dropped my Walt's Worm in the roiling water at the top and in two seconds felt a jarring hit. I lifted, and the culprit, a wild brown of over a foot long, suddenly decided that this whole staying underwater business just wasn't for it.

This stream is about as close to a mountain stream as you can get in a state without hills over 2,500  feet, and it's water doesn't sit around waiting for much. It goes down and it goes down fast and cold. It isn't at all uncommon to catch sizable browns in very heavy riffle here even when the water temperature is below 40. The result is fish that fight like hell. And this one was one of those fights that will be ingrained in my mind forever. It wasn't the most colorful brown I caught, and if I play things right it won't be my biggest home water wild trout this season, but damn did it ever fly! Over and over and over. High vertical leaps, splashy somersaults, tail walks that took it 10 feet across the run. It didn't even tire quickly, the whole battle was tooth and nail. This one was one of those trout I had to land, and the fact that it was doing what it was doing both scared the crap out of me and inspired awe. I really would have loved to have had a camera rolling at 960fps on this one, from hookset to hand. Not a dull moment.

That wasn't the last fish I caught, I still had a good amount of water in my planned hike/fish, but none really compared. All gems, but often I'm looking for the bigger ones.

With the water dropping and warming I'll be back sooner rather than later to catch my favorite hatch, the Paraleptophlebia adobtiva. Hopefully I hit it right. I failed to last year.

Juvenile Salmon, The Last Stand

After Hurricane Sandy the multi state federal Connecticut River Atlantic salmon restoration program ended. It was the unfortunate point of most certainty that salmon would indeed never be coming back to sustainable numbers.

There has been a lot of misunderstanding about this program, why it ended, what the state of CT has done since, and why Atlantic salmon won't be coming back any time soon. There is an awful lot of ignorance about fisheries in the general public and even in the fishing community, as was evidenced by the brief excitement in 2014 when salmon redds were documented in the Farmington. A lot of people that knew I fished brought it up to me ."Did you hear about this? Maybe they're coming back after all!" Meanwhile, fisheries biologists and those who had a decent understanding of what the situation looked at the same information and just shrugged. It was interesting, but it was not a good sign. Some of the last salmon from the huge federal stockings returned that year, and because the hatcheries had already been closed, these salmon were allowed to proceed up river through the fish ladder at Rainbow Dam. Every year during the duration of the program fish were trapped in the fish way, trucked to a hatchery, and spawned under controlled conditions, thus skipping much of the mortality that would occur with the adults in the river during the summer, during spawning, and in the first weeks of the juvenile salmon's life. The offspring of these fish would then be stocked into the appointed rivers. So salmon spawning in CT was not a good sign of things to come, but a symptom of their eventual death.

CT is the last state doing anything at all with Connecticut River Salmon, and it isn't a restoration program. It is what's being called a "Legacy Program". Basically, we are trying to maintain a little bit of the genetic stock while producing some limited fry and surplus broodstock for stocking. It won't result in a viable population, but it is something. Almost certainly a hopeless something, but even a hopeless something is better than nothing.

Last week I helped a crew volunteers and seasonal employees lead by CT DEEP Fisheries biologist Bruce Williams stock unfed salmon fry in two Connecticut River tributaries. The odds that even one or two of the fish we released comes back in 4 years is are nearly zero, but what we were doing was not without its benefits. These little fry will a fraction of the biomass that is missing from these streams without the natural presence of salmon reproduction. These little fish will act as a food source for numerous organisms between here and the North Atlantic, from wild brook trout and striped bass to macroinvertabrates and microbes to birds and mammals. It isn't much but it's something. It is nearly impossible for humans to replace what we have destroyed, but trying is a lot better than mindlessly going about the destruction and pretending we aren't doing anything wrong. So I carried my bucket of tiny fish for a mile, distributing them in the best possible habitat and keeping them as happy and healthy as possible, all the while knowing that if this needed entirely to be about getting wild salmon back it would be an exercise in futility but as a way of making this habitat just a little bit more natural, it was a service to the stream.

The result. 

If you really want to help Atlantic salmon, which are at some level of risk everywhere the exist, there are a few things you can do.

The first is to stop eating them. Farmed, wild, it doesn't matter. There is no sustainable way to maintain Atlantic salmon as a commercial food product at this time.

Another way is to help raise awareness. If you yourself are not informed well enough, you can still help those who are get their message out. A friend of mine, Brandon, has written a children's book about Atlantic salmon with illustrations by a student of his. He wants to be able to publish at least 200 hard copies. Please consider donating here: www.gofundme.com

Not only will the book itself inform children on Atlantic salmon, but a portion of the proceeds will go towards salmon conservation. 

These are spectacular fish. The hope may be gone for the Connecticut River, but we shouldn't let them disappear from the rest of their range.