Hi Folks, Ran up north with a couple fly fishing friends yesterday to chase landlocked salmon. The foliage is darn close to peak in the northern part of Vermont. Beautiful day that started out pretty cool. Water temperature was 56 degrees and the flow was up. This particular river has one of the best runs of large of landlocked salmon in New England. The rain from last week puffed up the river and the flows currently are ideal for moving fish. Between 3 of us we hooked a dozen large adult salmon. The largest fish of the day was 27" with lots of salmon in the 18" to 22" range. The fish were all over streamers yesterday. We swung a variety of smelt patterns and attractor streamers like a Mickey Finn and an Orange Blossom. It turned out that the smaller patterns in dark colors were the must productive. I did well with a black and green feather wing streamer and a black marabou streamer with a gold body. We did swing a few nymphs as there was a good number of #14/#16 caddis hatching throughout the morning. I lost a couple of salmon on a #16 olive wire caddis. One break off and one tossed fly. 4x tippet is too light on these big fish. We were using 1x and 2x with the streamers so you could put the mustard to these strong jumping salmon. I don't think there was a salmon that did not jump at least half dozen times when hooked. The funniest fish of the day was the apple bobber salmon. I was fishing a hole with a big eddy and in it was what appeared to be a apple spinning around. However, when I hooked it by accident, low and behold there was a 2' salmon attached below that proceeded to jump and fight. I lost the fish at the bank, but did recover the flies, including the 1 in its mouth and the bobber. Pretty wild. We also recovered some broken line that had 4 flies attached with lead weight. Very illegal and looked like a snagging rig to me. Let me tell you, every fish we hooked yesterday ate the fly!!!!!! No need to snag and foul hook these beautiful creatures. Tight line swinging the fly was the method and the takes were solid. So, I will be trout fishing and chasing salmon for the next few weeks. Season ends October 31. Remember to clean your gear and keep the non-native species at home. Have Fun, Willy
