Well, there’s varying reports out there right now on the fishing – some good, some not so good, but everyone having a good time trying. The synopsis is that parts of the Connecticut River have been on the slow side, while some of our lakes and ponds have been pretty good. Here it is in a nutshell:

“Hot as a pistol”:  Back Lake, Little Diamond Pond, Lake Francis Inlet

Back Lake today was smoking for several of our guests – the golden demon, “88” and harris special on top were the go-to flies today. At Little Diamond, two of our guests caught 70 – 80 rainbows this morning on the harris special. Yup, that’s pretty good. OMR has been taking his guiding clients down to the Inlet at Lake Francis lately, with great results – lots of healthy salmon and rainbows mostly on nymphs. Your preferred set up should be a heavily weighted nymph up front (prince, BH PT, etc.), followed by an emerger of some kind (BWO emerger, PT soft hackle, hatching pupa, etc.), from a boat – that’s the important part.

Maple syrup going uphill in January : Round Pond, the Trophy Stretch (in places), the Androscoggin River

Not to say that there aren’t fish in these places, but it’s been tough the last few days. In fact, the Trophy Stretch will turn on if the flow drops from 500 CFS, and there was even a report today that salmon were being taken at the Bridge Pool. In other words, it’s worth a look when you’re here this weekend, especially if the flow drops. The Andro was on the slow side today from the limited reports that I had. The flow here is pretty good, but it seems as though the fish just haven’t turned on here yet. Give it a little time on the Andro should be back to normal, and the alder fly hatch is only a couple of weeks away …

Stop in if you’re up here this weekend – we’ve got the flies and some good advice to point you in the right direction.