Hi Folks, It has been a few very good days in a row of fishing. I have been guiding trout in streams and using my motorboat to tug on big bass. Nice to see the rain Monday. Maybe got a 1/4" in Stowe. Every bit counts and certainly helped to raise river levels. Water temperatures are dropping slowly but surely. The Winooski trib. I have been guiding was 60 degrees and clear. The lake I guided yesterday was between 67 and 70 degrees on the surface and the water was off color. Nice overcast day on the water with a slight south wind that shifted to the northwest by day's end. We had the entire lake to ourselves. Pretty spectacular as we landed 15 bass. The color of the day was fire tiger and orange. Pretty consistent colors this time of the year for lures and flies when pursuing bass and pike. We landed 2 smallmouth in the 18" to just over 19" class. Really strong fish that took drag and liked to go airborne. No small fish yesterday. Most of the smallmouth and largemouth were in the 2lb. to 2.5lb class. It would have been a helluva a bag of bass if we were competitive anglers, but I'm not. We covered a lot of water and we would find pods of feeding fish. Certain stretches were very quiet and then it would be boom boom boom with bass eating our presentations. All of the fish were holding onn sharp drop offs where the depth went from 7' to 15'. Had one good pike crush a popper as we were looking away and one other small northern come up and kiss a lure. The largest fish of the day ate a #8 fire tiger popper. Love the topwater bite! The trout fishing the previous two days was pretty darn good. Catching fat healthy looking wild brown trout. Found fish eating #22 Tricos mid morning subtly and you could see fish that were nynphing. There were a few #18 BWOs hatching, a few #12 Isonychia spinners landing, and a few #18 tan caddis hatching. The clear water really is nice for watching trout behavior. A #18 pheasant tail nymph under a #14 foam flying ant was the ticket. Interestingly, giving the nymph some movement is what prompted the trout to eat the fly. Counter intuitive to typical trout fishing where we are generally working to make perfect drag free drifts. Really nice to see cool water as the fish fight pretty darn hard when the temperatures are in the fifties and low sixties. Looks like a nice weather pattern coming up for fishing. I will be chasing small stream brown trout today. Remember to clean your gear and keep the non-native species at home. Have Fun, Willy
