CT River Rainbow

A beauty of a rainbow trout, caught and released last Tuesday (the final day of February) by Mickey Cunliffe. Mickey will be guiding Tall Timber’s anglers on the Connecticut River this spring, summer and fall, and he’s been sharpening up his fishing skills this winter!

This one ate a Soft Hackle Streamer (mostly gray with some purple thrown in too), one of Chuck Degray’s most effective patterns for fishing the Connecticut River, and a “go to” fly any time of year for some of us.

This fatty apparently couldn’t help itself from gobbling down Mickey’s lazily presented offering. In all honesty, it looked like this rainbow had been eating very well all winter long, and a slow presentation is what worked (they’re not moving much at this time of year, so a dead drift presentation is where it’s at).

Tuesday was truly spectacular for its temperature and scenery (sunshine, little wind, and even a bald eagle flying overhead in search of its next meal – yes, that’s a great day out there as far as I’m concerned) – but left something to be desired for fishing for myself and a few others. The water’s still mighty cold (and colder today as I write this).

Another warm up is on the way this week, and it’s only a matter of time now before we’re out there even more. Winter, after this weekend, will slowly be releasing its icy grip on our area, and while our wintertime guests aren’t too enthused with this development, there’s probably a few of our fishermen out there looking forward to it.