Playing tour guide

I spent yesterday on the White with a local friend, playing tour guide and showing him some new spots.  I must have done the job well, because I put him on more fish than I touched.  We met at 1:00 on a breezy, partly sunny day.

We met in Bethel at Peavine Park, but we had no plans to fish that heavily pressured water yesterday.  I love the stream right there by the park.  It gets plenty of pressure, but it's still one of my favorite spots for both browns and rainbows.  Once the stockies get fished out, it's a really fun stretch.  But, my friend already knew that spot, so we headed upriver.  We drove a few miles on Rt. 107 to a well known hole just upstream from Cleveland Brook.  I'm not "spot burning" here, given the fact that the turnout to access this spot seems to have cars in it every weekend.

We'd had a strange weekend a week before.  Saturday had seen consistent trico hatches and rising fish.  Sunday, the fish had been down, they were in shallower water than normal for this time of year, especially considering the low water conditions, and they seemed to be keying in on soft hackles on the swing.

I gave James the choice of two stretches at the first hole, and he picked well.  He hit the top of a riffle leading into a medium-deep stretch of water.  I worked the riffles running into the main pool, just 100 yards downstream or so.

It didn't take long for me to hear James yell that he had a fish on.  Regretfully, I looked upstream just in time to see the fish jump and throw the hook.  I had been keying on a decent fish that was working the surface a bit, but I couldn't get the fish to take anything, and eventually, the fish must have gotten tired of my flies or fly line and it just stopped rising.

After I'd fished through three different riffles, I headed up to see how James was doing.  He caught a small wild rainbow just as I got to him.  He'd been getting consistent action on soft hackles and made some room for me to slide into the hole with him.  I had a few strikes at the top of the hole and then finally caught one decent wild fish downstream from him.  I think he got 2-3 fish out of that hole - all wild.  We were in the special regulations section, and I rarely see stocked fish this far up, and every fish we landed was smaller than the cookie cutter stockies.

The later season this year has been fairly productive, with fish every time out, despite some of the lowest water conditions I've ever seen on the White.  We've had some late season hatches - mostly BWOs and tricos, and I've taken more fish on dries late this season than any other year I can remember on the White.  Yesterday, with the partly cloudy conditions and consistent breeze, bugs were rare and only a few fish came to the surface, and even those fish were rising very intermittently.

After working the one productive stretch pretty hard, we headed downstream.  We picked a place that I know doesn't get much pressure, and where there are three distinct large holes.  I opted for the middle hole of the three, after losing a decent brown there a week ago.  James started at the bottom of the upper hole, but I could soon see that he'd moved to the top of that stretch, where riffles lead into the first part of the hole.

I got shut out completely in my stretch, but James had a number of strikes and even hooked one good fish.  He lost that one, but caught two more in the two hours we fished there.  I didn't get a strike.

So, James got 4 or 5 fish in some water he'd never seen before. I got one fish and missed a couple others.

We are getting to that time of the year where leaves in the water can slide down your fly line and leader, and make you think you have a strike, and you have to be vigilant to keep your fly line clean.

I'm out of town next weekend.  The weekend after that, if the weather holds, I'm going to try a late season trip to the Otter Creek.  There is one little secret that results in great fishing on one part of the Otter at this time of year - a particular fly that the fish can't seem to resist - rainbows or browns.  So, I'm hoping to make that trip yet this year.

After Halloween, I'll be focused on ski season, most likely, and less likely to get out fishing.  I am not a year round fisherman like some I know.

Due to my surgery in June, and recovery into July, I only fished about half as many days as a normal year this year, and I missed some of the most productive weeks of fishing.  And, I caught about 50% of the trout that I normally catch.  I lost my two biggest fish of the year - browns on the White River.

My biggest fish came from the Andro and my second biggest fish came from the Dog.  I added two new rivers this year - the Battenkill and the Andro.  I didn't make it to the New Haven this year.  I didn't fish the Winooski or the Mad either.  The most fish I got in a day was on a float trip on the Andro, and that day saw probably over a third of the fish I caught all year

I caught more fish on dries that wet flies this year - a rarity for me.

And, as usual, I enjoyed every single day out there. 

I'm not quite calling it a season, but we are close to the end.  Of course, that means it's soon time to ski, so I'm looking forward to that.  I have a new job at Sugarbush this winter, and I'm looking forward to the changes there.