The Famed Battenkill

I mentioned on Facebook recently that I have lived in VT for 18+ years now, and I've never fished the Battenkill.

A friend told me that was unacceptable, and offered to spend a day showing me around the river.  We had to change our first planned date, and then our second planned date, but despite almost 2" of rain on Sunday, we finally went yesterday, on Labor Day.  Flows had been so low that even after all of that rain, the river was in fine shape and cool at 56F.

My companion for the day, let's call him Ron, is a former fly fishing guide, but he has never been a guide on the Battenkill itself.  Nonetheless, he's a very good fisherman, and I learned a lot just watching him work the river yesterday.

Our first stop was in Sunderland.  As we stepped into the river, Ron gave me first choice of a spot to fish.  I opted for a somewhat deep section right in front of me.  The water was off color a bit, but I could see some rocks that would provide nice cover for fish.  I started with a yellow sulphur spinner up top and a juju baetis dropper.  I hadn't seen any yellow sulphurs, but they do exist on this river, so I took a chance with that fly.

Ron moved downstream, and I think it was only his second or third cast when he hooked into a brookie.  I got skunked in my hole, so I started following him down the river.  Some fishy looking water yielded nothing, but I did notice a sporadic caddis hatch coming off the water, so I changed from the sulphur to a size 16 olive body elk hair caddis as my dry fly in my dry/dropper configuration.

Eventually, we ran into a deep slow section, so we headed back upstream.  I found a slow pool where the brookies seemed to like my juju baetis.  In 15 minutes, I turned one fish, hooked another, and finally landed one.  The takes were subtle, but with such a small dry fly up top, they were noticeable.  Ron worked up the other side of the stream, and a beautiful long upstream cast yielded a young wild brown.

Eventually, we had fished this entire stretch, so we moved to a second site. As we arrived there, I realized that I had lost my net at the previous site.  So, I headed back to look for my net, while Ron started fishing.  This spot was a lot muddier than our previous spot, and by the time I'd found my net and returned, I think Ron had had enough.  The mud made wading difficult, any movement kicked up more mud, clouding the water, and despite a few sporadic rises, we couldn't entice any fish to our flies.

I fished for maybe 15 minutes, and we headed out.  We had started the day with a plan to hit 3 specific sites, and figured we'd explore beyond that.  We'd now fished 2 of the sites, so we did some exploring and found a nice fishy looking spot.  Again, nothing.

So, we headed to the third designated spot, miles downstream in Arlington.  Here, we found some beautiful water, great structure, deep holes, riffles, and some rising fish.  Over the next couple hours, I changed flies more often than I often do in an entire day.  Nothing seemed to work.  The fish seemed to be eating small midges or tricos, but even the two size 22 tricos that I tried were bigger than the bugs on the surface.  Eventually, one fish did take a shot at an Angel Wing Spinner, but I didn't hook him.  It could easily have just been a tail bat at the fly rather than an actual take.  I was left wishing I had some size 26 or smaller flies with me, and some 7x tippet.  I rarely use 7x and I had some in the car, but not with me.

Ron had been fishing downstream of me, and he also went through a number of flies with no luck.

It was closing in on 5:00 p.m. by now, so we were running low on time.  We decided to try to find some smaller water in the Manchester area, and we found another great looking stretch of water.  I went back to my elk hair caddis with a baetis dropper, and had a couple tepid hits on the caddis fly, but no hookups.  Ron had no luck at all.

Finally, it was approaching dark, and we called it a day.  Only three fish to the net, and very little action after our first spot.  There are many stretches on the Battenkill where it is a slow, brown meandering river.  At the right times, those might be great spots for dry fly fishing, but we found very few fish working the surface in those spots.  None of the rises seemed consistent or predictable.  In places where rises were plentiful, I got the impression that they were all small fish.

There are also many stretches of more classic trout structure, and we simply struck out on those.  In the next month or so, the browns will be spawning and then trying to fatten up for the winter.  I may wait until the end of the month and then give the river another try.

It took me 18+ years to get here the first time.  It won't take that long for the second try.