Lookout for Our YouTube Videos

As you all can imagine, guiding will be slow to no existent for much of the spring.  Because of this I have decided to start filming some fishing sessions and put together some YouTube videos that will offer some pretty good tips for you all out on the water.  I uploaded the first video yesterday, where myself and guide Andy fish a pond for the first time and get into a lot of brook trout.  There is some good footage of trout taking the fly and lot of info that will help you if you decide to hit some still water, which right now is the way to go if you want to consistently catch trout.  Bear with me on the editing as I'm doing this all with an iPhone 11 and tripod and am still figuring out the editing process and capabilities among other things.  For instance, I didn't know the text would cover my face the entire opening monologue, i just thought it was going to appear and go away after a few seconds.  Either way I guarantee you will learn something from this video if you haven't spent a lot of time fishing still water for trout, and if you have there is hopefully enough fish catching footage to keep you entertained and we show you out most productive flies at the end. 

As you will see in the video the still water trout fishing has been good.  I've been out on two ponds, neither of which  I had ever fished before and gotten into good numbers of stocked rainbows and brookies both times.  While also getting pickerel, suckers, and perch to the net.  The big challenge has been finding the fish and both times out on these new ponds it took an hour or so until we found the fish and got things dialed in.  I'll leave the rest of the still water info out of this report as you can just watch the video to learn all you'll need.

On the river front things have been slow which is normal for this time of year especially considering how cold it's been.  I've been just a few  times and have managed to land wild rainbows and brook trout.  I actually caught my first ever fish on opening day of VT trout season.  Usually I am still busy with maple sugaring, but since we finished early I was able to find a bit of time to fish and ended up with a single wild brook trout that ate a micro streamer.  Since then all of the river fish I have caught have been on 12 to 16 attractor nymphs with mostly floro orange tag or collars.  Now that things look to warm up I will be spending a bit more time on the rivers.  I have seen midges, early dark stoneflies, very small baetis, and a couple bigger flies from a distance that I could not identify.  We will soon see our first larger mayflies and caddis flies popping and you should be prepared with more natural nymphs to imitate bwo's, blue quills, quill gordons,  hendricksons, grannom caddis, as well as maybe a few dry flies or emergers.  I actually saw a fish rise on opening day, and have seen fish rising on the ponds, so it pays to be prepared.  Your best bet will be to fish in the warmest part of the day on the warmest days if you have the flexibility. If not get out there and don't be discouraged if you get skunked, you may well catch the biggest fish of the year. I'll get another report in as things start to heat up. 

The US Fly Fishing National Championship was supposed to start today in Basalt, CO, obviously that didn't happen.  Quite a bummer as I have a lot into this tournament and going in ranked 10th in the US was hoping for a good finish to make Fly Fishing Team USA.  Hopefully it can be rescheduled sometime this year, I guess on the bright side I will have more time to train.