Good news on the guiding front is that I am back to fishing and guiding.  As I said in my last report, I tore a tendon in my foot and was immobile for a bit.  After Consulting with my surgeon I am foregoing surgery and have been getting back on the river recently.  I've been on vacation as well so most of the images are from the past couple weeks fishing with family as I'm getting back on the water.  I had an amazing morning helping the girls catch pickerel with spin rods, then did a week camping with my 7 year old son.  He really is progressing a lot and for the first time I felt like I could fish along with him instead of helping the entire time.  The last picture was taken by another angler on the other side of the stream while the two of us fished.  

It is mid August and the days are beginning to get noticeably shorter.  That means longer nights and more time for the rivers to cool.  This is the time of year we start seeing daily fog over our river valleys.  It's nice when the fog takes hours to burn off and can make for some nice early morning fishing opportunities. From now through September is probably the most consistent window for dry fly fishing. Ants, beetles, hoppers, iso's, caddis, stoneflies, tricos on some rivers, and midges will get looks.  

I say it every year, but my favorite hatch is the iso hatch.  These swimming mayflies provide great dry fly, wet fly, and nymphing opportunities.  It is definitely the easiest hatch to guide because having a beginning client swing my iso leech pattern through a rifle is really effective and easy for them.  

We should be seeing some flying ant emergences throughout the rest of the month as well.  An emergence near your favorite trout stream can result in a lot of ants on the water. You should have various sizes in both black and cinnamon colors, hook size 14 to maybe 18 or 20 will do. 

I am going to leave it here as I haven't fished as much as usual, but will have a ton to report next time!

A lot of fishing has happened since my last report! I have some great fishing news and some pretty unfortunate personal news to share. I recently tore the proneal longous tendon in the bottom of my foot.  This tendon runs from the outside of the knee and attaches at the ball of the foot. It looks like I'll be needing surgery asap and am not booking trips for myself right now until I have a timeline.  Walking more than  2 or 300 yards starts to get real painful.  My guides Andy and John will be available.  The amazing thing is that the fishing has stayed strong through mid July.  We have had our most productive trout trips of the season in June and early July.  Clients have hooked some trophy fish, but as big fish often do, they broke off or shook the hook on some inexperienced and rather shocked fly fishers.  

One would think we will be transitioning to real summer conditions toward the end of the month, however the climate prediction center is predicting greater chances for normal to below normal temps with no for the next two weeks with above average precipitation. We would love to see that.   We currently have had our driest stretch of the year, still not even a week, and the rivers are starting to drop to normal summer flows, while others are still elevated from isolated T-storms. Today is hot but it's only 1 day and the sun is filtered. We have had some hot days July, but no prolonged heat, and with plenty of precipitation the rivers have stayed cool because lots of cold groundwater has been pumping into the systems.  One 90 degree day a week ago saw a mid sized stream too cold for my kids to want to swim.  I'll take that all summer if we can get it.  Please remember that stream conditions change by the hour and vary greatly from one stream to the next so please have a stream thermometer handy.  I also have uploaded an article to the website about summer trout fishing so give that a read under the articles page.

Dry fly fishing has been productive. We have seen some good caddis and sulphur hatches.  Golden Stones are hatching and will be  an attractive meal for our trout. I do well with ant patterns throughout the summer.  Dry dropper has been the most productive method.  Fish have been plenty willing to come off of the bottom and feed near or on the surface.  Large riffles and pocket water has been the best bet for consistent fishing. 

I had a week in Maine fishing for brook trout. Fishing was great though we were tent camping and it rained every day.  I don't particularly mind rain, but it's certainly harder with three kids and a puppy. We also competed in another Ditch Pickle Classic fly fishing tournament for Bass.  This year saw perfect weather and good fishing so it was tighter at the top.  Mike Woulf and I got second as a team and I was third individual.  It was cool because our friends were the ones who finished ahead of us.  Congrats to my friend Jared Shaw on taking first place! He beat me by two points and deserves the trophy.  After 4 years at my place, it's good that it's going to a deserving new home for the year!  I always attribute a lot of my success to small details and technique.  Hooking a few extra big fish and then rarely losing them allows me to do well year after year.  Unfortunately this year I managed to lose 5 really big fish.  I guess the fact that I only had caught a single bass prior to the tournament may have left me rusty, or maybe it was bad luck! 

Lastly, please remember to show good etiquette on the river or lakes.  I understand that some fishers really want to fish "their" spot, but if someone is there move on. You will probably find a new, better spot.  Even better, don't be tied down to any one place.  I personally don't fish the same area more that 3-4 times in a season.  There is good water spread everywhere waiting to be found. In Vermont, where we have extremely low fishing pressure on the rivers, if there is a car in a parking spot move on.  If you can see another angler, go another way.  Now, this is relative, if you fish pressured famous rivers that may not be possible,  in that case give as much room as possible, don't high hole, and communicate with other anglers respectfully.  The reason I bring this up is recently on the river I had 4 fly fishers drop in on me, two went in 40 yards above me, and two 30 yards below me.  There was not a soul in sight, yet they just had to fish where I was.  I left, but made sure the eldest person was properly educated.  The same goes on big lakes,  if someone is making a drift along an island, don't drop in 50 yards in front of the other boat.  I think 200 yards is the bare minimum to be on a lake like Champlain.  I had a bass boat roll up about 10 yards from me the other day and fish in front of me.  Fly fishers are a generally a good and respectful group.  Let's keep it that way.

Good luck on the water.

I think we are entering prime fishing later this year than any in recent memory.  May will go down as the toughest I can remember as far as river fishing for trout goes.  Cool temps and lots of water made fishing more difficult on many days in Northern VT.  I am hearing the same across Northern Maine as well.  I guided yesterday, June 2 and the water temps were only 47 at 9 am on a larger tributary.  

I have traditionally said prime time is Mid May to Mid June.  Recently warm springs have shifted that window to early May, ending sometime later May or early June because water temps were becoming too high.  That is certainly not the case thus far.  
So while many days were much more challenging to get lethargic trout to eat in high flows over the past couple of weeks, the good news is that things look great for early June and hopefully that extends deep into the month.

It was not all bad last month, and we did have some good days on the water when river temps and flows were reasonable. I was able to get my client Bob on the largest trout of his life at age 81.  The wild brown ate an olive wooly bugger.

I find it interesting how the fish here really key into water temps more so than other regions of the country I have fished.  Our trout are clearly more sensitive to cold water than the average trout.  The exception being larger browns, but as far as catching numbers of fish, if you can hit the rivers when the temps are around 60 degrees you'll generally do far better than at 50 degrees. One thing we have seen, is that stocked fish, have been hard to find. I do not know why, but the rainbows we have caught seem to have come from a different hatchery or are a different strain.  They certainly are not eating or holding in the normal places, and they are smaller than usual.

I'll go over a session I had on the river two days ago, that was really challenging and explain what I did to be successful, hopefully you all can apply some of these tactics if you are finding things tough. Then we will look ahead at what to expect for the next few weeks (it should be really good).

There have been a few guide trips that struggled recently working around high flows and low water temps. Monday, June 1, I moved my guided trip a week back and I went to a productive river to scout since it had not fished well the week prior. Thankfully my clients were able to do so. I stopped at a pool and run that typically has some stocked fish along with wild fish.  The water was really pushing and hard to wade, but there were a lot of caddis.  I counted 5 different species. After fishing probably 10 flies on a tight line rig, nymphs, streamers, attractors and getting no bites I decided to move up river to another stretch.  I walked to a small pool that typically holds good numbers of wild fish with a few stockers as well.  I tried the same tactics in this pool and again no bites.  I knew I needed to drastically change and threw a dry fly on with a small walts worm about 30" below the dry.  On the far side of the river between two boulders was a large slack piece of water. Totally flat with fast water raging by in the main flow of the river.  On my second cast stalling that dry fly in the slack water a nice wild brookie ate the dry fly.  I then repeated this in the next piece of slack water.  I was now onto something.  I began moving up the river, which was a real challenge in the flows, and while I fished everything, the one and only way I caught fish was to float that dry in any stagnant or very slowly moving flat water behind or between boulders.  Most fish ended up taking the nymph and in not too long I had landed over a dozen wild brown and brook trout, along with missing and losing a handful more. The fish were there just hard to get to, and your casting and presentation needed to be on point to land the nymph and dry in these small pockets and hold them there.  Unfortunately many beginning fly fishers simply don't have the wading skills nor casting ability to do so and I am sure had I taken clients to that river that day, we probably would have struggled to catch fish.  

The good news is we have a dry week ahead, though the weekend once again looks wet.  Temps look warmer so the rivers should get a chance to warm up.  I expect good fishing for the next few weeks.  Hatches have been decent thus far.  I also expect to start seeing some Golden stones soon.  You'll want to be prepared for just about everything. Caddis size 14-20, mayflies, emergers, duns and spinners size 14-20, stones size 8-16, midges, and your usual nymphs, streamers and attractors like worms and mops.  Good luck on the water.

 Welcome to May, the month we have been waiting for.  It was a loooong winter up here in Northern VT and it seemed spring would never arrive. Right now we are in a period of transition on our trout streams.  Water temps are creeping into the 50's on some of the warmer afternoons, but spending most of the day in the 40's.  Fish are transitioning from slower holding water and are starting to be found throughout the river.  Smaller fish, which seem to be almost non existent in April are starting to be caught.  On a warm afternoon earlier in the week we found good numbers of 6-10" wild rainbows feeding on nymphs in some pretty heavy pocket water. Just the place you expect to find them when things really warm up. 

Interestingly enough, we didn't find fish in the beautiful riffles and pools right below the heavy pocket water. After blanking where I really thought the fish would be, it was a good surprise to find them in the pockets.  I was beginning to think I may not pull any fish out during that session.  I am sure there were fish in the pools, but they were not feeding happily like the ones in the pockets.

The moral of that story is that as we transition further into prime time fishing season, make sure you are an open  book and willing to adapt your techniques and locations. 

Looking back at the month of April, my season started with signing up to fish the Otter Creek Classic the day before the event.  While I was still in maple sugaring season, I was able to slip out of the sugarhouse and get a long morning on the water.  I had to be back to boil in the afternoon and Sunday was both a sugaring day and my wife's birthday so I was not able to make it down but I had a wonderful opening morning of the VT trout season.  I found brown trout between 15 and 19.5" willing to eat in runs about 3' deep.  The fish were sitting around boulders and willing to eat.  The key for me was slowing down the drift.  All of the fish ate below me as my sighter inverted and the nymphs were moving at their slowest.  I fished the two areas I knew of like this and then went down river to prospect for some bigger fish. When I got down there the water had come up much more than expected from the rain the night before and was off color.  Many of the pools had so much water moving through them I could not effectively access or drift the flies.  I lost one nice rainbow sitting on the inside bend right on the bank.  I was wondering if it was on a redd that I could not see.  I then really ran out of time.  I wanted to go fish a smaller stream but didn't have the time to run to the mountains and then back to turn in my score card and then get back to Underhill to boil, so I dubbed around the high water for a little longer with no success. In hindsight I should have headed for the small stream first. Thanks again to all of the people at Middlebury Mountaineer for putting on the event. It was just the motivation I needed to get out and away from sugaring for a bit.  

The back half of April was typical of the time of year.  Most fish I found were in the back half of pools and hard to get to eat.  

As we look forward, Everything should begin to fish well from small streams to the big rivers.  My recommendation would be to fish the rivers that have the best flows.  Neither too high or too low. The rivers have rising and dropping fast the past couple weeks and will continue to be a rollercoaster as long as we have rain.  Tributaries in particular, fish very different as the month rolls on and fish that were there spawning either in the spring or fall often drop back towards the main river. This is dependent on river flows,  the adult fish often leave when the water drops. The current forecast looks wet and cool for the next 7-10 days which is great in my opinion.  

I have not seen any rising fish, but I have seen good numbers of brown stoneflies and  am sure there have been a few fish eating on top.  We saw our first Hendrickson in central VT Tuesday so that will only ramp up. Midges have been ever present as well.  We will see caddis very soon if not already.  My good friend Matt Stedina always says that trout in early spring like flies moving because they have been seeing and sampling sticks and leaves all winter with very little bug activity, so something moving against or across the current can trigger a strike.  This is also probably why hot spots and bigger flies can work well. 

I have caught fish on #16 tag nymphs, mops, Pheasant tails, and my Iso Leech pattern that will be available through Fulling Mill in the Fall. Keep a few dry flies on hand, Hendrickson dun and spinners, a few caddis, and some smaller mayfly/ midges. Those should cover any brown stones, blue quills, beatis you may see.

Stocking trucks have already hit a bunch of lakes and ponds and will be dropping hatchery fish into many of our streams throughout the month.  Anything goes in May.  Get out there and find some fish. It doesn't get any better!

We've had snow on the ground in Underhill since Early November, and seen 3 months of pretty darn cold weather.  Rivers in Northern VT are mostly Iced over and lakes should have plenty of Ice.  There is not much fly fishing to be had at this time.  There are some tailwaters scattered around the northeast that could provide some winter fly fishing for people really looking to get out.  

This winter will probably put more stress on our local trout than they have seen in recent years.  My guess is that most if not all the stocked fish will die in the freestone streams.  They do not often hold over in this area but some do.  This year could be an exception with very few making it, which is not the end of the world by any means.  Fish mortality is not commonly considered in the winter but it is very real.  Most trout mortality comes from starvation.  During a long winter a trout  may not be able to intake enough calories, even though the metabolism slows it may not be enough, especially for small fish who do not have the body mass and fat to burn.  Maybe it's worth thinking twice about whether you fish for trout at this time winter, particularly a freestone stream.  I'm not saying it is right or wrong, and would not judge anyone who does get out and fish.  The truth is most of the fish simply are not eating so we are only catching a tiny fraction of the fish in a river, so the impact would be minimal at worst. In any case, they have had to endure a very long winter thus far and have at least a couple more months to go with little food. Fish also die from predators such as otters and mink,  as well as ice dams and jams forming and breaking. 

During our January thaw I did not get out, but saw a caddis fly as well as midges in good numbers in tiny mountain streams and seeps.  I assume there was a small window of feeding to be had.  If you do get out, keep it simple with eggs, worms, mops, streamers, midge larvae and  3-4 of your confidence nymphs.  

A great winter time tactic is to fish an egg, mop or brain fly on the point of a nymph rig with a small PT nymph above it on the tag.  The goal is for that point fly to roll on the bottom and even some to a rest.  It keeps the fly in the strike zone for the longest  window of time and allows lethargic fish the chance  to find and eat the fly.  On a tight line rig inverting your drift and fishing the flies past and downstream of you will produce extra fish. Inverting your drift means that the bow of your sighter is up stream of the flies, imparting zero leading effect on the flies.

Fish will certainly be found in pools, but I have seen, and been schooled in competition, when fish were sitting in shallow, slow flats more so than the deeper pools during the winter.

Lastly if you do get out, Please be safe when wading.

My father always says, one weather extreme follows another.  After 2 very wet years, including the wettest summer on record in 2024, the well has run nearly dry.  We are in a mostly dry and sunny pattern for the past 2-3 months.  It is actually amazing to see how fast things went from wet to dry/ drought conditions.  The summer was tough on many local trout streams, but I do not think that this summer was worse than gong back 4-5 years.  In my area of Eastern Chittenden County, VT I would not actually consider us to be in a  drought.  We have certainly had more rain than areas further east, and when I was in Maine 3 weeks ago it was much drier over there.  In fact, the small stream behind my house did not dry up this summer, as it has in the past, and there is still ground water just below the surface.  

We got over 2" of rain last week, and the ground did soak it right up, not even upping the river levels.  I did learn a lot about trout behavior and how they make it through the hot summer months this year.  I spent several days with the kids snorkeling around local rivers, all marginal trout streams, during the hottest days of August.  What we found that the trout seek out wood, specifically dense root balls and undercut banks and get as deep into them as possible.  We literally would peel back layers of roots and find a fish, (sometimes of shockingly large proportions) staring at us, unwilling to leave the cover.  Depth and spring influences didn't seem to matter.  They basically just holed up in the darkest, densest spots and waited, I assume, until night to feed. I am planning on mousing for the first time tonight now that things have cooled off. The good news is that many wild fish, and some stocked fish made the summer.

Fish are still going to be somewhat stressed, especially in the smaller rivers and streams until we get some consistent rain.

I actually have not fished much since I returned from Alaska. I have been working on a house addition all summer and trying to wrap it up before I start the fall guiding season again in the next week. When I have been out it has been ok fishing. Nothing spectacular.  Fish have looked at dry flies, both Iso's and golden stones. Do not overlook skinny fast water.  The most oxygen is in these areas and the fish love to set up in the riffles in the fall.

I am uploading the first part of my Alaska adventure article that is appearing in the North Woods Sporting Journal in the Articles page here on the site.  It was an amazing adventure with great fishing and some adrenaline filled events.  Here are some pictures from the trip in the gallery.

June has left us sadly, and possibly my least favorite month is upon us.  It's hot and humid every day and I am wishing for the 65 degree drizzly days we had earlier this year.  Looking back at June, it was a great month of fishing.  We had a lot of smiling faces join us on the water.  We got into some giant fish, including the two massive rainbows above a client caught on dry flies.  We saw a lot of shuffling around of trout in June as the water levels dropped and the temps began to climb.  Some stretches of small rivers that fished great early seemed to have emptied.  It appears the wild fish were doing a lot of migrating prior to the heat we had at the end of June and finding their way to the summer lies.  Likely deep holes and springs that only the trout know about.  

On the Bass front, my partner Mike and I were able to win the team category of  15th annul Ditch Pickle Classic on Lake Champlain again this year, while I was able to take 1st individually for the third year in a row, while Mike took second place just a point behind me.  We also got the cash prize for the biggest bass a 20.25" smallmouth I hooked on a popper and Mike netted.  The fishing was a grind under bright sun and we picked away at fish deep and slow during the day and had a great top water bite in the evening.  Day two was crazy windy and stormy and Mike needed two more big fish. I kept the boat in control in the wind and mike got his two big ones before we called it a day.  

The Hex hatch was good at the end of June this year, but had already peaked and was waning during the fourth of July which seemed to be the peak years ago. Depending on the body of water it could be over or they could hatch sporadically for a while longer.  This hatch is what made me want to become a fly fisher.  

July looks to be mostly a game of warm water species on the bigger lower end of the rivers and small stream fishing.  Early mornings and evenings for bass on poppers, frogs and hoppers is a really good way to beat the heat.Fish slow, and subtly.  No big pops, and a lot of pauses will get you the most bass.  Crayfish are also great if you have no luck up top. The streams fish well after a rain and cool down, however many stay cool most if not all of the hot days. I recommend going early and please take a thermometer with you.  If the water is 70 call it. When I say small I talking blue lines and upper reaches of tributaries that have good canopy cover at higher elevations. I guided a great couple on a recent hot and humid day. The small stream started out at 64 and fished good throughout the morning,  The fishing really slowed as the water hit 68 and we fished for another 45 minutes with no bites until it got to 69 and we called it.  The fish had called it earlier than we did.  A combination of dries and nymphs worked.  A simple dry dropper was the real ticket  however.  Flies didn't seem to matter all that much. 

We will be in the summer pattern for a good 6 weeks.  Keep an eye out for those big rain events and below average temps,  you'll have more options to fish at this time.  I am really hoping for a wet remainder of the summer to help mitigate the high temps.  Unfortunately, with climate change I do think that above average temps are here to stay.  As we have seen, the changing climate seems to favor more rains as well.  Let's hope we don't see widespread catastrophic flooding, but plenty of precipitation, to help our very healthy population of wild trout make it through the summer.

All of our guides, including myself  will be in Alaska the end of July and beginning of August, on the DIY drop float fishing trip in the remote Western portion of the state.  I'll have pictures and stories to tell on the report when I get back.  I'm hoping for safe travels, no super close grizzly encounters, and a once in a lifetime adventure.    

We've made it to June, though for the much of late May it felt like the end of April pr early May.  In fact the water temp on two mid sized streams the past two mornings has been only 49 degrees!  

Things are setting up for a good old fashioned June, as long as we don't get any crazy heat waves, I anticipate trout fishing to hold strong on all of our rivers for at least a few more weeks. Time will tell.  

The fishing has been quite variable,  we have had one of the wettest May's on record in the northeast.  At times the fishing has been closer to early May, with mostly larger browns out eating bigger meals in higher and cooler water than normal.  We certainly have not been catching the numbers of smaller fish and especially rainbows that we normally expect at this time of year. I anticipate that will become more consistent going forward. It is too early to tell if the population of browns has increased and the population of rainbows had decreased on some of our rivers but it's a possibility as our catch rate has been so skewed toward browns this spring.  Typically wild rainbows far outnumber the wild browns in our area, and I think that we will see it's still the case as we move into summer.

We have also had to work around blown out rivers and unfortunately we have just happened to have quite a few trips scheduled for a day or two after a big rain event and clients that were set on floating or fishing a certain river and were just unable to safely do so.  The past two days I have been on three rivers scouting new water one day and guiding the next.  Two days ago while scouting we found really tough fishing but all of the fish we hooked were quality browns, including a giant pictured above that was living in a trib of a trib.  It ate a dead drifted jig streamer on the edge of some whitewater. That day the fish only wanted bigger flies, and we only hooked fish in the deepest pools. Yesterday on a similar sized river, but in a  totally different watershed the fish were eating a walts worm for my client in the morning before the hatches started.  After lunch we moved up river about a mile or two and the fishing was dramatically different.  We had a big golden stone hatch, march browns, caddis, lime sally's, crane flies and a few other smaller may flies around that I didn't identify.  I expected the fishing to be even better, but after tinkering around with flies and our drifts it turned out the fish wanted a mop.  Totally unexpected, considering they were eating nymphs earlier on.  We did catch far more fish than the day before and the sizes ranged from 5" to 14" so the smaller fish were becoming more active. We hooked fish throughout the river in all water types.  We did see a couple of fish rise and threw dry dropper for a while later in the day, getting a few fish to look at the dry and one to eat it. 

From here on out expect to find fish actively eating nymphs, emergers and dries depending on the time and conditions.  Remember to swing your flies at the end of each drift.  Typically I will enter the river and cast across and down stream to see if there are any fish looking to take a swung fly before I start fishing up stream and potentially scare the fish below.  If you are tight line or euro nymphing the same applies.  I even swing dry flies to great success.  There are times when that is what the fish are looking for and there are times when you can pick an extra fish or two that didn't want a dead drift.  Often people are told when tight line nymphing that you have to set to start your next cast.  I feel people miss a great opportunity if they don't finish the drift.  I employed this tactic to win a session in a big fly comp a few years back.  The first thing I did before stepping in the water was to swing a couple nymphs below me. I caught two fish in two casts to start the session and ended up winning by around 10 fish.  It works, and your flies do not need to be soft hackles, though they certainly find the end of my tippet when fish are eating on the swing.  The other mistake people make is the hook set when swinging flies.  The natural reaction is to set the hook up stream, effectively pulling the fly out of the fishes mouth.  What you should do instead is set low and to the side if a fish eats when the fly is swinging.  If it eats directly below you as you dangle the fly motionless in the current then it's better to just wait until you feel the weight of the fish and simply lift your rod.  You'll probably double your catch rate by doing so.  

Looking forward, we have two warm days and then it looks like low to mid 70's and wet again.  A perfect June forecast.  Get out there and have fun.  

We have some availability to guide going forward. Please shoot me a message if you'd like to get out.

It's been a great start to the fly fishing season here in VT. April and early May are always a quality vs quantity and you can see above that is the case.  Many good fish have been landed by clients and guides.  You'll see only 1 rainbow trout in the pictures, as they are finishing up spawning and don't eat as well early on compared to the big browns.  That will change soon and I expect we will get some nice rainbows in the mix  going forward as they settle into their spring and summer habitats.  

Right now the big rivers are blown out from the heavy rains this past weekend, but mid sized and small streams are prime. Big rivers should clear up this week.  We had to cancel 2 guided trips this past Saturday.  It is rare we have to fully cancel a trip because rain that blows out rivers generally tends to be more spotty in intensity, and come down shorter and harder meaning we can move watersheds or go up or down in elevation and stream size to find fishable water, but this weekend was an area wide soaking that lasted for two days making everything go up and stay up.  I guided Friday and my clients stuck it out for a full day despite non stop rain and swollen off colored rivers.  We fished until the river was completely unfishable and managed a few nice trout.  The Leff crew proved to be a hearty bunch.  Thanks guys.   

Mayflies, caddis and stoneflies are all hatching.  This week we will see fish feeding in the drift eating nymphs and emergers.  There will be some chances at rising trout for sure.  Hendricksons have been on for a few weeks now in the lower elevation streams and are just getting going in others.  The cool weather last week slowed things down.

This week is gong to be a spectacular week to fish.  Depending on your preferences, many rivers will have been stocked.  This can be good for newer clients,  but a pain if you are looking for wild fish on rivers that get stocked.  Sometimes the wild fish can be hard to find with all the new faces in the rivers.  There are lots of small and mid sized streams that do not get stocked however.  

I expect nymphing to be the most productive method for a bit.  Larger junk flies and streamers will work, and will often hook the bigger fish in the river.  Look for spinner falls at dusk and have a spent wing hendrickson imitation ready to go.  We have some availability both weekdays and weekends. We are also offering some evening trips 4-darkish.  Let me know if you want to get out!