Connecticut River & Back Lake Fishing Report: 6/27

Smile Bruce! You just caught yourself a beauty!

Good friend Bruce Pilch caught and released this beautiful lunker of a rainbow last week during his annual pilgrimage to the Connecticut River. Actually, it doesn’t matter what body of water this trout is from, it’s a trophy anyway you cut it.

Lots of rain this week everybody (which we really did need, but sometimes it’s hard to convince ourselves of this as we’re getting soaked to the bone), but the Powers That Be are holding river flows steady, though I imagine that may change at some point.

The trout and salmon are still there though, taking caddis (elkhairs and x caddis have been best) and some mayflies (light cahills, sulphurs, BWOs in particular this week) on top when the opportunity presents itself, and definitely nymphs and soft hackle wets under the surface. Don’t forget your egg patterns and various San Juan Worm patterns as well – those did very well for me yesterday afternoon in the pouring rain. Need I even mention Woolybuggers? Yup, lots of big brookies have fallen victim to the bugger the last couple of weeks.

Looks like we might have some better weather on the horizon, so maybe things will get a little more comfortable for us fishermen …

Back Lake Hex Hatch Update:

Hexes are still coming off very well when the weather permits (windy and very rainy last night), but we had a change to the hatch due to last week’s hot temps that we had. Prior to last Wednesday and Thursday, lots of trout and bass were coming up to take hexes on top, but after our 90 degree weather moved through, it was primarily bass that were coming up. Our educated opinion is that the surface temp rose too quickly and kept the trout down for the most part (surface temp was 75 degrees at one point last week), that is until we started getting our rain over the weekend and early this week. Perhaps it helped cool off that surface temp a bit, but Monday’s trout fishing was better for our people than it had been in a few days.  We think it has everything to do with the rain that we received.

All the usual hex dun patterns have still been working (don’t worry, we have plenty of all of them at the lodge), but the best emerger pattern lately has been the Sparrow, replacing my beloved Woodduck Heron. Who knows why they do what they do, but use the Sparrow if you’re up here over the next week.

By the way, Mr. Hex may be packing his bags up soon for another year, as we suspect that the hatch may be winding down a bit – get up here in the next week if you want to catch this hatch before it’s over.  We still have a few openings over the coming week, so give us a call at 1-800-835-6343 if you can break away from life for awhile.