Hi Folks, The recent rain has really been a game changer for our rivers and brooks. It is nice to see a charge of water in the river beds. Yesterday I guided a wade trip with spin gear in the morning and floated the Lamoille in the afternoon. Not seeing any sign of people fishing on the water. Water levels were slightly above the season average and dropping. The Winooski tributary in the morning was 61 degrees and the Lamoille was 65 in the afternoon. The best fishing times currently are either early in the morning or late in the day. All of the rising fish yesterday afternoon happened in the last hour of light. The bass fishing in the morning was fairly slow. We landed one fish and missed another half a dozen. Very subtle takes. We had to slow down our approach and use a 3" watermelon black magic Senko slowly dead drifted. Casting plugs did not result in any interest. I did not see any fish chase an actively moved lure. I attribute the quiet morning to water still being up and a little cool. All of the fish we had eat were holding in the slower parts of a pool or in a big back eddy. The fishing on the Lamoille was pretty good yesterday once the sun got low in the sky. The first part of the afternoon was slow while the sun was still on the water. We saw #16 dark bodied caddis hatching, a few #8 Stone Flies coming off, and a few #16/#18 Sukphurs right at dark. We got rainbows to eat a #16 foam bodied elk hair winged caddis and a #10 orange bodied stimulator. The fish we located rising seemed fairly agreeable to eating the dry fly. We did hook a big fish at the end of the float that we never saw and broke us off. The rise form by the fish was big and it made a loud chomping noise as it ate. My guest got it to eat and it instantly bent over the rod and buried itself in the river under some debris and it was game over. Really fun casting to surface feeding fish. All about making a good cast accurate cast and a drag free drift. I m off to bass fish today in the morning and afternoon. Remember to clean your gear and keep the non-native species at home. have fun, Willy
