Fly Fishing NH's Connecticut Lakes Region

The “Broken Clock” Principle

You’ve heard that maxim that “a broken clock is right twice a day”? That was the case yesterday on our drift down the Connecticut River with Chuck Degray of North Country Fly Shop & Guide Service, as we managed to hook and land two beautiful brown trout, among a myriad of other fish.

drift-june-6-1The weather was not with us, at least early on – scattered rain and cool temperatures delayed insect hatches from coming off until later in the afternoon. With the lack of surface activity, nymphs and streamers were our method of attack to begin with, and we managed to boat quite a few small browns and a small rainbow before 2 PM.

Colors of flies tend to be pretty important when streamer fishing, and there seem to be certain colors that work better on particular rivers, or even stretches of those rivers. We’ve noticed that gray and white are great colors when using streamers below Pittsburg’s tailwater dams, probably as a result of the occasional presence of smelt in these areas. Well, it seems that yellow and olive streamers work particularly well when fishing further south on the Connecticut River. Perhaps it is the presence of other bait fish (i.e. sculpins?) and crayfish in these areas that make these colors more desirable to the trout? Whatever it is, this is something that Chuck has noticed over his years of fishing these areas, so I’ll go with his good judgment here.

drift-june-6-2Our afternoon session saw quite a few rising fish that seemed to be taking caddis and some small BWO’s. While the surface activity was steady, we could only assume it would have been better had the temperatures ever warmed up. They were your typical sippers however – errant casts put the fish down quickly.

As far as the two bruisers went, one was hooked on Chuck’s Olive Soft Hackle Streamer (quickly becoming one of my “go to” flies), and the other was taken on an articulated Olive Circus Peanut, hand tied by Nik Patalano. Both fish hit them like a ton of bricks, as they were in full feed bag mode, fighting hard all the way to the net.

Hopefully we hook up with them again someday – yes, they were Caught and Released!

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