What we’ve been seeing:
We have seen a lot of good fishing since my last report. Flows have been ideal on most rivers, with the Andro fishing best as of this writing. Hatches of Hendricksons and tan caddis have been in full swing with some golden stones in the mix as well.
This landlocked salmon gave us a run for our money! We weren’t as lucky when the next big fish ran straight up a rapid and broke us off!
Over the past few weeks we’ve been guiding both the upper and lower andro and the fishing has been good to great. Bite windows have been typically 8am to about 11am and 2pm to 4 or 5pm. On low pressure days the bite windows seem to turn on and off more randomly with good fishing most of the day. We have seen a couple of good dry fly windows on cloudy days. We had a good Hendrickson hatch on the lower river last saturday and a good tan caddis hatch on the upper river yesterday. Fishing a comparadun size 14 in a rusty cream worked well on the Hendricksons and a size 16 tan X caddis got it done for the caddis. We fish this fly on a dead drift with some wiggle and a swing at the end to mimic the emerging bugs. We should see these hatches last another week or so before the Alders and stones become more predominant.
A fine holdover brown taken on a stonefly nymph.
We’ve also been doing very well nymphing a variety of bugs. Our biggest fish yesterday were taken on a Thomson’s double bead stone which does a good job of imitating an Alderfly nymph. We’ve done very well with size 12-14 pheasant tails and large golden stones. Interestingly the fish didn’t seem to want the smaller tan caddis nymphs yesterday but those should also produce at times.
Fish have been spread out in the system with some rising in slower water and eating nymphs in the fast drop offs, runs and riffles. We have been throwing dries when we see fish rising and nymphing when we don’t. While you can still catch fish on nymphs when they are rising I prefer to take the opportunity to get them on dries when they are willing to eat off the surface. We had a blast watching fish slowly rise through the water column to inspect and sometimes eat our dries yesterday.
We’ve been getting some very strong fighting wild rainbows in the upper and lower river. Rainbows are definitely the dominant species in the system and seem to be the best at reproducing in the river. We’ve also been getting some very healthy landlocked salmon and brook trout up north with some browns in the mix as well. We got into a couple very nice holdover browns in the lower river as well the other day. It seems like the browns are holding over a bit more than in the past, perhaps due to the stocking of a better strain of brown trout.
Jared caught the two biggest trout of his life last Saturday. These wild bows put on quite a show!
Looking forward:
It seems we are in for a heat wave starting saturday and going through next week. This will mean early will be best on the andro for the end of may and start of June. Evenings will probably also produce but we prefer to fish in the mornings when the water is colder and the fish are more comfortable.
We are hoping that the next few cold nights keep water temps in the 60’s next week but if things get too warm we will run some trips on the Connecticut river where the tailwater dams provide colder water temps on warm days. We expect the Connecticut to fish very well next week as warm days spur good caddis hatches over there this time of the year.
Beyond next week it looks like a prolonged stretch of more seasonable weather with highs in the 60’s and overnight lows in the 40’s. This should make for some great prime time June fishing on the Saco and Andro.
Availability and Summer Fishing:
If you are looking to book with us this season we are booking through June but still have dates available July through October. July is probably our best month for wade fishing as the smaller rivers are still cold and hatches are prolific. Dry fly fishing small water is one of our favorite ways to fish and we look forward to sight fishing in the gin clear streams of the Whites this summer.
If you prefer to float we have good dry fly and nymph fishing opportunities on the Connecticut river through July and sometimes into August. This river is a bug factory and the hopper fishing can be great as well when flows are up and fish are pushed to the banks. To keep things interesting we will be offering smallmouth trips in late July through August. These fish are eager to rise to frog, dragonfly and damselfly patterns through the dog days of summer and put up a heart pounding fight on the fly rod.
We are looking forward to seeing many of you this season. Give us a shout if you want to get on our calendar.
Tight lines,
Nate