Hi Folks, Guided an epic full day yesterday with spin anglers for river smallmouth bass. Thursday I ran my boat for bass in the afternoon and Thursday morning was some small stream magic. Been hot out there but luckily yesterday we had nice steady breeze to keep things pleasant and Thursday afternoon the cloud cover and showers mad for some decent lake fishing. The small stream trout fishing has been good but challenging. Low clear water always makes it challenging. The water temperature in the brook we fished was 62 degrees, the surface of the lake was 75 degrees and the lower Lamoille was 74 to 76 degrees. With the low water, wading the big river for bass fishing is pretty easy for getting to spots that are not generally easily accessed. However, the walking around is tough with all of the rocks, boulders, and slippery terrain. Really need to pay attention or you will get hurt. Small steaming we fished a #14 foam green grasshopper pattern. We landed several very nice 10" plus brook trout. Matter of fat we caught an old fish that was easily 13" and looked to be a bit beat up with a torn up tail and dorsal. However, it did fight pretty well and crushed a sry fly. The other larger broke was stellar looking with a giant type. We missed a large brown trout that came from under a rock to eat the hopper. After missing it we spooked the brownie when we landed a smaller fish. Pretty impressive watching it swim off. On the lake front we caught 6 smallmouths on 5" goby colored Senkos with red hooks. We had several fish come up on a blue/silver floating rapala and we simply missed them. The smallmouth were holding in 18' to 25' of water and we had to really make sure our presentations got down to them. All off sharp drop offs from the shore line. Yesterday, was absolutely epic as we landed 69 smallmouth bass. A new single day record for Catamount Fishing Adventures. However, for clarification, the old record was set by single angler as yesterday was 4 anglers. All the same, the fishing was ridiculous. We did catch a few and miss a few on the gold/black Rapala, but the artificial of the day was a 4" dark green pumpkin Senko on a red hook dead drifted and reeled back after the drift all took fish. As the sun got up over head we had to focus on getting the rubber down into the zone. Always a trick figuring out the drift in a river and where to land your presentation in order to have it down to the fish. Many of the bass were holding in and around large structure in the river which happens to be boulders and rocks. We caught a lot of really nice 1.5lb to 2.25lb smallmouth. Strong hard fighting fish. The large pools were the most productive without question. Silly good. I have guided just about every day for the last 6 weeks and I really relished yesterday. Not all the time that the fishing is that good. I tip my hat to my Ohio fancy pants beer drinking anglers (they partly come to Vermont to drink and buy our beer) as they put on clinic yesterday and made me look good. Fine work!!! For hatching bugs lately, I have been seeing #18/20 black caddis in the morning, #22/#24 Tricos, a few #6/#8 stone flies and lots of terrestrials with hoppers dominating the seen. I am off to chase river bass with the fly this morning. Remember to clean your gear and keep the non-native species at home.
