Thursday, August 21, 2014

not dialed in, but lots of ants

Hi folks, Weird last two days guiding as I ran my boat yesterday afternoon and did two river trips today.  Things have certainly cooled off with the lake surface temperature reading 71 degrees, the Lamoille was 66 this morning at 8:00am and this afternoon river temp. was 63 degrees.  Bright and humid yesterday with heavy air.  I thought for sure the bass bite would be on.  We worked hard for 4 bites and landed one smallmouth bass.  Nice calm conditions with an abundance of #14 flying ants landing on the water.  Most of the surface action we saw was from perch and pumpkin seed gulping ants.  The smallmouth we caught was on a #6 fire tiger crease fly.  We fished a shallow lake that is no deeper than 30" and holds smallmouth. largemouth, and pike.  The fish were just not on.  This morning on the Lamoille we caught 4 rainbows with 3 being stocked and 1 nice 12" wild trout.  Pretty funny when one off my clients noted that the wild fish really pulled much harder than the stocked fish.  However, the 3 stocked trout we landed had been caught previously.  Love catch and release fishing! There we lots of #12/#14 Isonychia shucks on rocks.  A #12 pheasant tail will work great as a nymph and #12 Grey Wulff or #12/#14 Adams parachute are good dry fly options.  We found sporadic rising to drowned ants.  There were also some #18/#20 micro caddis hatching.  This afternoon the fishing was dreadful.  great over cast conditions with drizzle.  We went river fishing for smallmouth and it was not happening.  We had 3 smallmouth chase a #8 olive cone head bunny bugger and that was that.  The fish were not feeding on the river we visited.  Lots of fly changing and tactic adjustments without getting them to eat the damn fly.  Oh well, always moving forward and never backwards.  Remember to clean your gear and leave the non native species at home.  Have Fun, Willy