2020 Season Wrap, Fly Fishing Team USA, looking forward to the 2021 trout opener

I am extremely proud to announce that I am now a member of Fly Fishing Team USA for the next two years. Equally exciting is that my friend and fellow
Vermonter and guide Matt Stedina earned a spot as well.  This was a goal I set when I began competing and just got the call from the team captain last week after earning enough points to make the team. It will be a true honor to represent the United States in competition.

I am happy to turn the page on the 2020 fishing season and am looking forward to 2021, as is the rest of the world.  I would classify the 2020 season as difficult.  We started with cold weather and snow in early May resulting in slow fishing, and then it turned hot.  I feel we only had about 3 weeks of prime fishing conditions all spring.  Thankfully the bulk of my guided trips were during that time frame because my clients were locals only and we could play the conditions.  As we all know the summer was just terribly hot and fishing was tough unless you were on a cold tailwater.  Even lakes fished tough for bass at times.  Some of the highlights were some nice fish on dry flies and stalking trout in technical conditions.  Fall finally rolled in a produced decent to poor fishing.  The water temps for much of the fall were cool, but it was so low that fish were just burying their heads under rocks all day long.  I certainly caught fewer fish on average for most of the season even though the fish were there.  It really made you up your game and the result will be that a lot of anglers will hopefully have improved their game, I know I did even though it felt at times I was doing the wrong thing.  

I am optimistic about the 2021 season but as always we play the cards that mother nature deals us.  Let's all hope for a cool and wet summer.  I do know that there were good numbers of fish that survived last summer and plenty will be waiting for us come spring.  I will be producing more youtube videos this year with some friends and guides so keep a lookout for those.  Also feel free to chime in on what you would like to see.  I am also hoping to get back to competing should COVID allow. And as always, I am excited to get out with new and return clients.  See you all soon!