Connecticut River Fishing Report: St. Patty’s Day Edition

Top o’ the morning to those of you of the Irish lineage, or pretending to be today. Yesterday was probably just like fishing in Ireland: rainy, cold, occasionally blustery, but also with a few breaks in between.

Sit down, pour yourself a Guinness, and read my tale of woe …

It all began with good friend and guest Mickey Cunliffe making the journey to Pittsburg to fish for a couple of days. He had some action on Thursday, but hadn’t been able to land any trout that day. He came out with me yesterday, with the aforementioned weather pattern of wet, cold, and generally miserable. While we initially saw a few fish coming to the top, the action slowed down once the rain would come down harder. We moved around a couple of times and finally settled on a pool where we saw one gigantic fish swirl near the tail end of the pool, and which had recently been vacated by a couple of other anglers. I switched to nymphing with a Pat’s Rubber Legs (appropriate for today’s holiday) and Goomie Worm dropper near the top end of the pool, and Mickey plied the tail of the pool with the floating smelt.

A few minutes later I had something BIG on – a leviathan of the deep, and our give and take took somewhere between 10 – 15 minutes. Every time I’d get him anywhere near me, he’d take off again down river, a couple of times down to the backing. Finally, we had to follow him down river and Mickey, upon seeing the fish from the bank above, commented that we may need a bigger net (remember JAWS?).

He was coming in funny though, and we realized why upon netting him – he was foul hooked in the tail with the Rubber Legs. Bittersweet, but still he was amazing – 24.5″ brown, somewhere in the 6.5 – 7 lb. range and very colorful. Why isn’t he pictured here? It was so rainy that I didn’t want to risk the good camera being exposed to the elements and my new underwater camera should be here in another week. Hopefully, that won’t be the only time I meet up with a trout or salmon that big.

Scattered Blue Wings were out yesterday and there should be more coming off this week as the weather gets better. Smelt imitations are still probably best right now, but nymphs should be good too – another rainbow also came in via the Rubber Legs yesterday afternoon. Should be a good weather week, and I’ll have the camera with me this time.

May all of your rainbows end with a pot of gold that’s 24.5 inches long with fins and spots!