Farmington River Cleanup & A Gift From a Friend

 Last weekend I took part in the Farmington River cleanup organized in large part by the Farmington River Anglers Association. It was a fantastic event with a big turnout and some serious effort put in by all involved, and something I hope to see continue for years to come! Rich Strolis and others ran the event very smoothly and an impressive amount of trash was removed from the river. I took part as a team member from Native Fish Coalition along with board members Michael Day, Josh Parsons and John Wadsworth. We felt pretty good about our four bags of garbage and a few larger items, but some teams brought out such impressive treasures as a recliner, baby doll, bubble gum machine, and entire rear axle! 

Sometimes I have a pretty strong dislike for the "fishing community" in general, and all the in-fighting, controversy, and what not that takes place. But sometimes there are indeed good things that come out of it. 

Speaking of, one of my favorite people recently sent me a wonderful gift out of the blue. Since Covid has prevented me from seeing a lot of my friends, this lovely painting and wet fly from Alan Petrucci (Small Stream Reflections) was a wonderful surprise. 

Though Alan and I haven't gotten to fish together in a long while, I'm sure we'll end up on the same brook trout stream at the same time soon. 

Muddler in Dark Waters

 If I had to pick one fly to fish for trout at night for the rest of my life, it would be some variation of the classic Muddler. With variations in size and wing material, and adding or removing weight, the Muddler can do pretty much anything I need a night-fishing fly to do. I can imitate a large stonefly nymph or sculpin with a few split shot bouncing the fly along the bottom tightlined. Dressed with floatant and dead drifted or twitched, a small Muddler imitates an insect appropriately. Large, unweighted Marabou Muddlers fished in the film, across stream and with a slow retrieve, does a fantastic job of imitating a rodent or frog. It's true that a simple black Bunny Leech has accounted for the largest trout I've ever caught, and there are times I may have said that was my favorite night fly. But when I'e stopped and thought about it, there's no question, the Muddler covers all the bases. 

On a unfortunately well lit night in early September, this fly once again proved it's value. The Farmington was low, the water crystal clear, and the conditions all but assured slow fishing. I was confident that smaller, more subtle presentations would dominate productivity, and there was enough surface activity that I expected good action in the film. I tied on an unweighted size 10 Muddler Minnow and fished it across and down and sometimes across and up, occasionally giving it little twitches but otherwise just maintaining contact. The feed was slow. The first fish to hand was an average rainbow, released quickly. Not what I was looking for. A while later, I registered a gentle take. I lifted the rod into a heavy fish, though one that didn't fight very hard. In my experience, it's either all or nothing. Some night hooked trout hardly fight at all, others put up an excessive show of power and acrobatics. This one was very much one of the former. It was at hand without much fuss at all. 

It was a stout fish, a wild brown with girth to spare, though certainly a bit short of 20 inches. Nonetheless, exactly the sort of fish I was looking for. 

Time and time again, that simple pattern proves it's worth, be it in daylight or in darkness. The muddler really is a template, not a pattern. That template has morphed into new patterns, from Lou Tabory's Snake Fly to Kelly Galloup's Zoo Cougar. The neutral buoyancy and eddy making capabilities of a spun dear hair head are some of the best tools in a fly tyer's arsenal.

 Until next time,

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, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon.

Big Trout on the Farmington, The Way I Like It

I'd sworn off trout fishing during the day in Connecticut this season after I saw fishing pressure, littering, poaching, and unethical behavior by anglers spike on some of of my favorite streams. I mostly followed my own advice until one day in early July when the weather was just too perfect and a buddy asked if Id like to go to the Farmington. With thunderstorms in the forecast, some of my favorite hatches underway, and the flows just right, I couldn't resist. Over the years on that river I've gotten good enough at a hit and run style of fishing. Get into a spot, do what I want to do there, move on. The weather this day was conducive to both head hunting and streamer fishing, all the better for my fishing style.

The first spot was vacant. I hit it thoroughly with a streamer and pulled out a couple rainbows and a small wild brown, then found some heads. A couple modestly sized browns were rising in a flat tail out. I'm seeing an awful lot of super long leader dry fly fishing for these sorts of situations, and I'm sure it works... but so does a 14 foot leader if you know how to use it.

I duped and landed two of those fish and let the third go about its business. Both were wild browns of a foot and change, and very hefty. Both ate the same simple CDC summer caddis. 

Later on, finding fish doing much the same thing in another spot, I switched to a foam back pupa. It worked every bit as well.

With about a half dozen heads successfully hunted, maybe a little more, and some juicy looking fast water in front of me, I switched back to a stout leader and a streamer, a Full Pint, and was promptly rewarded. The bite that followed was one of the most unique streamer bites I've had on the Farmington... fat holdover rainbows one after the other, with a couple wild brook trout in between, through a whole 100 yard stretch of fast pocket water. It was pretty unusual for this river.

After that stretch, the character of the river changed for one bend. The bottom went from large rocks to smaller cobble, in a bend with a nice deep trough and a riffled tailout. I fished the head, cut, and trough of that bend run without a hookup. It was in the shallow, fast, featureless looking tailout where I hooked up. The take itself was unremarkable, but the moments immediately after proved to me that the culprit was the most impressive trout I'd tied into in awhile. It was a brown, and I knew it was a wild fish almost immediately. The fight was absurd, happening entirely in a foot of water or less. For part of it, the fish was rooster-tailing and jumping over rocks heading upstream defiantly, something I'd never had a hooked trout do before. It was wild. Both the fight, and the fish. I was shaking when I got my hands on it... 22 inches of stunning Farmington River wild brown trout, caught with one of my preferred methods... this was my best Farmington fish ever, no question.

That fish left me as violently as it had come, with a shower and a soaked arm. I wouldn't have it any other way, I hope he reaches 26 inches and gets caught only very rarely.

That wasn't the end though. I continued to pick off fish heading downstream until I reached another big flat with some heads on the far bank. I waded into position and picked off the first head with a CDC caddis. Then I got the next, and a third, and then a fourth after that. All mid sized brown trout. I then focused on the real challenge, a sipper doing cycles in a small eddy behind a grass tussock. I assumed it was a nice wild brown, and it definitely behaved like one. I cycled through flies, carefully timing my casts and playing the game I love to play. I may not be a great trout angler, I don't fish for them as much as I used to, nor as much as many others. But if I'm good at anything, I'm good at working bank sippers. I stuck with my guns, watched, made careful moves, and eventually, up she came, for a sulfur emerger. It wasn't a brown, it was a 19 inch rainbow, a very nice looking one.

We proceeded back upstream after I released that fish, hoping to move some of the fish missed earlier. Suddenly came the Isonychias, and the pocket water boiled. I tied on a Iso Cripple, laid a cast against the bank, and let it slide through the shade under an over hanging tree. That fly disappeared in a massive toilet flush like rise, and I lifted rod to feel a very heavy fish. It began darting around in a panic, and it was clear that this was a trout on par with that big brown earlier. When it jumped, it was obviously a very heavy rainbow well over 20 inches, a silver bullet with a pink band. That trout then made the fastest run I'd had a rainbow make in years, and I was powerless to stop it. She broke me off in the rocks. I couldn't help but smile. There's nothing wrong with being bested by a fish like that. 

I'd had plenty of fun anyway. More than enough. I got to do everything exactly the way I like, and that isn't something I can always say. 

Until next time,

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, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon. 

The Mystery Fish

Swinging streamers has never been much my style. Part of that is to do with the species I have easy access to. I suspect if I were very frequently fishing for salmon and steelhead I'd be swinging flies much more often, but it is my opinion an experience that a down and across swinging streamer for the trout in the waters I fish is one of the least effective methods of presenting a meaty fly an getting trout to pounce on it. I'm far more inclined to present a streamer up and across with a fast retrieve when fish are aggressive, or straight up with a slow retrieve for less active fish, even dead drifting tight lined or under an indicator for the most lethargic trout. But I've realized that whether swinging is the most effective method of presenting a streamer to my trout around here or not, by not practicing on them I'm setting myself up for failure when I actually do get to go swing flies for Atlantic or Pacific salmon or steelhead. I do practice with my spey rod, here an there, very infrequently, but not enough to have a rhythm, for my cast to be automatic, or for me to know exactly what my fly is doing in the water on each swing. So practice I must, and I'm taking every opportunity to fish big water I can to do so. When my good friend Joe asked if I wanted to join him an our mutual friend Dan and suggested the Farmington, I said yes quickly. Mostly because I hadn't fished with them for far too long, but also because it would be an excellent chance to swing flies on water I've fished a lot but never applied the technique to. It was a brutally windy day, and the fishing was slow. But it was great to be out there with those guys on the river, feeling manly because we were some of the only people tough or crazy enough to be there in those conditions (Here's to Dave Machowski and the handful of other nuts that were out there in that shit with us, cheers! *clink*).

Though the fish weren't on fire, Dan an I pulled on a few. I missed some really solid grabs and caught two small fish, one a survivor strain with a red elastomer. Dan got the best fish of the day, one right about 20 inches, and lost a slob. Joe skunked out, which is surprising because typically in the winter I'm the one skunking when I fish the Farmington in the winter.

Photo Courtesy Joseph Apanowith, taken by Dan Allegue

The highlight of the day for me was seeing a trio of otters, who seemed just as surprised to see me out fishing on such a day as I was them. All three would dive and pop back up staring at me in tandem. It was really amusing and had me laughing aloud. 

In more comfortable conditions the next day I was out swinging again closer to home. On the Farmington I'd been fishing quite large intruder style flies, but I switched to smaller stuff to fish near home and it proved to be effective enough on the dumb ones.

 
After covering water I knew had fish, I moved upriver to water I was fairly confident wouldn't have anything but was a classic run to swing. I started at the top, made two swing, took a step, and continued that rhythm until I reached the bottom. I never felt a thing to make me think I'd touched a fish during that work through.

When I got to the end of the tailout I retrieved, grabbed my leader, an then noticed something on my fly. On closer inspection, it turned out to be two somethings. Two scales, actually. At some point while I fished that stretch of water, I had indeed made contact with some sort of mystery fish without ever noticing it. In a run I'd typically write off as a likely spot to catch a winter fish, something as simple as two scales on a hook changed my understanding of how this river I'd fished for more than 10 years could fish in the winter. I will be back for that mystery fish. I have to catch it, whatever it is.

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, Shawn, Mike, and Sara for supporting this blog on Patreon.

Big Farmington Browns on the Move

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

Dad and I made a Farmington run today (10/13/2019). Things worked out quite well, frankly. The day he had time to kill had about the nicest conditions we could have asked for. Maybe had it been cloudy and foggy the fishing would have been better, but maybe not. With fall colors near peak and the rain during the latter half of the week telling the browns it's getting to be near spawning time, quite low water, and a wonderful warm afternoon with high clouds and very little wind, we couldn't go wrong. It was going to be a very pleasant day.

We turned up at the river fashionably late and found it pretty well devoid of anglers. For a warm Sunday, I was impressed by how much breathing room we had. I guess the low water and other pursuits were keeping some people away. Low water doesn't scare me off larger streams and rivers though, as long as the water is cold I'm confident. Quite low water has lead to some of the best dry fly fishing I've ever had, and, believe it or not, some extremely good streamer fishing as well. I've been in plenty of situations where flow increases turned what seemed like a fish-less river into a streamer slayfest, but in the fall on the Farmington I'm every bit as confident in low water as I am with average flows and more confident than with high flows. I know what the fish want to do, which is get to good spawning places. I know where a handful of those places are and where fish stage before they set up on gravel and cut redds I know they're hormonal and therefor pretty "snappy" and aggressive. I think moving fish feed more opportunistically than fish that have been on the same feeding station all day, at least that's what I've observed. So I really should have expected today to be as tremendous as it was. I was also due... the Farmington has been giving me the business for a few years now. It had been a very long time since I'd last caught a large wild fish out of this river. And I'd had chances, many of them. I consistently screwed myself out of big Farmington fish for... I think four year. Yup. That long. In that time span I got a few big stockers (yuck), plenty of small to mid-sized wild fish, and lost probably 30 fish north of 18" and about a dozen WELL over 20", including one that would still be my biggest wild trout had I actually gotten it pinned well, and a few that would be runners up. But let's not dwell. Today was a new day, I was fishing with my dad and it was gorgeous out there.

From the start my strategy was simply to pound pockets and riffles with simple medium size streamers. I worked the fly fast, sometimes on a two hand retrieve, banging a couple casts to each lie then moving on to the next. Honestly, regardless of whether I'm nymphing, fishing wets, or fishing dries, if I'm prospecting this is how I do it on most streams on most days, and I do it wicked quick, quick enough that I know it bothers my fishing partners sometimes. That is completely unintentional. I learned very quickly that my patience with the kind of minutia that some put into even prospecting was limited, so I instead try to put my flies in front of as many fish as I can, using my willingness to take a physical beating to my advantage. For the first half hour today I think I moved 15 fish, most of which did eat the fly, and I missed all of them. That's the roll I'd been on for almost four damn year on this river. But then I broke out of it, right when it mattered most. I dumped the fly into a seems at the top of a run and saw a large fish roll on it immediately. I stripped the fly quickly down hoping the fish would chase, which it didn't. I re-cast and just let the fly tumble down.  This time the fish followed it down and took a swipe. I set into nothing, and the fish started frantically trying to figure out where that piece of meat had gone. I plunked it in front of the fish, watched it take, and set hard. The fight was nothing special, there wasn't much of a chance for the animal to right itself and run or jump in just five or six inches of water. But it really isn't about the fight for me with trout. The less of it there is the less I have to worry about losing the fish. So I made quick work of this one.

So that was a start. Not giant but not at all small, and gorgeously colored up and thick. Just the way I like them. I worked up and down that stretch quickly and got three more smaller but not small wild browns and one rainbow then headed down to where my dad was. He hadn't gotten anything in the pools, but I suspected the fish in the fast water weren't done yet, I certainly hadn't put them all down. We opted to rest the water there and fish a different similar stretch in the meantime. That ended up being a fruitless endeavor, but when we got back to the hotspot nobody was there and my confidence was high. I got to watch Dad play a little chess game with a large male in the primary run, a game he damn near won. We both saw the fish rise once initially, the kind of spectacular downstream head and tail style eat that will replay over and over in my dreams. He then got that fish to move off station for a Royal Wulff, then take a small nymph behind it. The fish won the battle and won it swiftly. But it was quite a show, very much worth the price of admission.

I continued upstream, casting to each lie I'd found a fish in previously. There were fish in all the same spots and some new ones, but most interestingly the fish in spots there had been before were often very plainly not the same fish. These guys are on the move. The spawn approaches. There were even a few early unoccupied redds. Fish will probably set up on redds after the rain and cold we should get on Wednesday.

Near the top, I stripped the fly through the gut of great mini-run, and a fat fish followed it out. She ate, I set, and with more depth to work with than the previous big fish this one actually had some room to pull. But I still had the upper hand, with my 15lb tippet and 5wt. A fat egg wagon hen was soon at hand. Another gorgeous specimen of wild trutta. 

I would have gladly ended on that fish, but the river wasn't done yet. It threw me one final bone, in the form of an even longer, fatter, and more colorful hen.

And that was that, we wrapped up the best Farmington trip I've ever had in terms of high quality fish. Neither of us skunked, we tested our wit against some large wild trout, and the weather was pristine. Considering this is only the third or fourth time I've fished the Farmington this year, I'm very pleased. I may not even get back there this year and I'm fine with that.

Rivers and Trout Big and Small

I like to go out and hone my skills before any big trip, especially with trout. This is particularly paramount before my upcoming trip because it was best for us (my dad and I) to ship our gear to our destination before hand. For the first time in my life I'm going to be flying to get to my destination. Montana. Oh yeah. This one has been a long time coming.

Anyway, I wanted to get a little bit of practice in before going to the mountain west. On Thursday I fished my home river. This time of year is odd there. The fishing is probably the toughest it can be here, excepting winter ice lock and drought conditions. The water can be flowing very well and at the perfect temperature, I still struggle to locate good numbers and good sizes of wild browns. Often though this is when the less common brookies come out of the woodwork. That didn't happen this time. Salmon parr and small browns provided some practice with attractor dries and small streamers.

This morning I joined Mike Carl on a morning trip to the Farmington. We had chosen a time frame after some rain passed over a less convenient nocturnal time window before the rain. In retrospect, we almost certainly missed an excellent bite before the frontal passage. We got on the river well before sunrise and both fished different methods that should have produced. They didn't, almost certainly because the bite window had come and gone well before we got there. It wasn't until the sky started to brighten that I moved the first fish, on a fly I tied with a combination of traits from Joe Cermele's Master Splinter and Jackie Treehorn's Dirty Rat. I dub the, the Marabou Mouse. The fish I moved probably wasn't big, because I heard but didn't feel the take. A large taker is often the opposite: felt but not heard. 

I then bounced between fishing a Sparkle Minnow and a pair of nymphs, with no interest on either. Eventually I threw on a more neutrally buoyant articulated fly. On the first cast it got slammed pretty much at the rod tip. On the fifth cast I hooked and landed a handsome young wild brown. Then, back where we started, I got the best streamer take I've had in the Farmington in a long time. Lots of the trout there are, well, sissies. They grab and nip rather than slam. This guy slammed. He was a big fat survivor strain fish. No elastomer, just a clipped adipose. 

So I had one really solid fish on the morning, certainly no 20 incher but nice fat brown. Mike decided to show me some new water. I am never one to refuse to fish a new place, I was into the idea immediately. I already new the section we were going to had big fish potential, though undoubtedly it would hold fewer trout than many parts of the river. You know what? Those are the pieces I like most. I tend to believe that the biggest trout live where there aren't as many trout. And in time, this stretch would prove to be some place I have to fish again. 

I got a solid off hits right away, mostly I think mid sized rainbows. Eventually I got one pinned and landed it, a crisp and clean holdover. 

There seemed to be a pod of fish hanging around right where we started. I caught that bow, hooked and lost one other, and got two smallmouth there. I also missed an exceptionally large smallie and lost a questionable fish. The take and late hookset felt like I may have fouled the fish. The brief fight also indicated that either it was excessively big, or snagged. I'll never know for sure, but I'm sticking with snagged fish because that's the type I'd rather have had come off. 

Working upstream though I had a take for which there was no question: it was excessively big. It was a little unexpected. I was twitching my streamer in front of a partially submerged log that was being bonced up and down by the force of the current. I thought it would be odd for a trout to tolerate lying close something moving constantly and making noise, but a large, very thick, kyped up buck rose up and shadowed the fly for five feet up and across stream in heavy current, tip of his snout just glued to the tail of that streamer. Do you know how many times a legitimately large wild brown like this actually eat the big streamer after a follow of this kind? In my experience it is very uncommon. This one broke the rule and slammed the fly hard. I set as well as I could, and was treated to four of five seconds of violent thrashing, the big trout sending spray high into the air, before the line went slack. My heart sank. I had to take a short. There wasn't really much I could do in that scenario. But as anyone that plays the game of big trout on large streamers knows, missing and loosing fish is to be expected and, if you know it couldn't be avoided, not to be sweated. I continued working the waters with even more focus and intent than I had before because I now didn't just have a hunch, I was certain there were big fish here and that my method was the right one. 

Time and energy were not on our side though. I got one smaller brown in a pool tailout before succumbing to my lack of sleep. It is rare that I am the one to reel up first, today I did so. 

Black Bears and Brown Trout

The Farmington is over-rated. I know that opinion is probably going to piss a few people off, but hear me out. The Farmy has a decent macroinvertabrate population but it isn't anything special. I can't really think of a hatch that is uniquely great on the Farmington. Even less special is its baitfish life. Since the big Atlantic salmon fry stockings ended there has been a notable decrease in the size of the wild and holdover browns.What the Farmy does have in spades in tubers in the summer and way too many anglers all year round. The pressure this stream receives far exceeds it's quality.

I still fish the Farmington only for a handful of reasons: it does have some of largest wild brown trout in the state and it is a bottom draw tailwater that stays cold in the summer. A few days ago Mike Carl invited me out in the morning and I jumped on the opportunity. I don't often get up there early in the day and the chance to fish streamers and dries in some of my favorite water there before some idiot stepped on all the good lies, and that had me pretty certain of a good morning.

I started with dries in a shallow riffle with some rising fish. There were way too many bugs in and on and around the water to really pin down a specific hatch at the time so I went with an easy choice for non-selective risers: Sturdy's Fancy. Two small wild browns landed and a few missed later I was satisfied and ready to throw big streamers.

I moved up into some pocket water with what I call "good bank holds". A good bank hold has to be 1-4ft deep, have some shade nearby, some riffle, and moderate-fast current. These are the places I feel most confident will result in an aggressive take on a large streamer.
This time I got two very aggressive surface hits very quickly casting upstream into bank lies that I knew never had fish any other time I'd fished them. Why? Anglers had stood in them at some point during the day to nymph the pockets further out. Too many anglers still stand in the water they should be casting to.
Further up I hooked and landed a nice fat little brown, once again within feet of the bank.

I released that fish and then walked back up into position to work the next lie when I heard what I thought was another angler coming down to the water's edge. I was ready to reprimand somebody for thinking it was okay to jump in right next to me when there was easily 100 yards on either side of me with nobody fishing when I saw something black and fuzzy. It was a little bear, probably no more than 30 or 40lbs heavier than me, clearly very healthy. He popped out of the grass about 15 feet away, clearly oblivious to my presence. I said "Heeeey Bear!" and he calmly sauntered off. I kept fishing just as if he hadn't been there and caught another fat brown that stayed airborne for most of the fight.

I had pretty much exhausted the water I wanted to fish up there and so went down to the flat water where pods of trout were rising to little black caddis. It wasn't easy pickings, flat water never is, but we fooled a few before breakfast.