Upper Connecticut River Fishing Report: 7/10

Beautiful picture of an early morning on the Trophy Stretch – thanks to TTL Fishing Guide Mickey Cunliffe for his image.

It’s back to the river, as the Hexagenia hatch on Back Lake has largely gone by, sadly. Actually, the river is a pretty good place to be these days, as the water is still cold and the fish are there in numbers.

The Trophy Stretch of the Connecticut River has been providing some excitement for anglers recently, and it is probably the stretch with the most fish. It has been stocked heavily and recently by NH Fish & Game, so there’s no excuse to not catch fish …

But, there is an excuse. There’s a fair number of like minded souls that will be out there doing the same thing. Arrive early and move around to explore new water if you have to, and always be courteous. The worst thing in fishing is getting attitude out there on the water.

The flies? It still sounds like nymph rigs are doing the most damage, and the possibilities are endless here – keep switching it up until you find what they like. Small is better too, and now might be the time to move from 5X to an even lighter tippet. The flow is the same – 155 CFS, pretty easy wading in most spots.

The water is colder below Murphy, but we’re hitting the sweet spot as the temp nears 50 degrees. The water flow is still at 300 CFS, which is a bit low. We are still below average for rainfall this season, so we badly need rain to freshen things up. Looks like we’ll be getting some over the next four or five days.

It’s a Wrap …

The Back Lake hex hatch lasted the prescribed two weeks or so at Back Lake, from about June 21 to July 5 or so. There are still a few stragglers around, but the heavy hatching activity is done now.

The first week of the hatch was pretty good – the weather was nice, and there seemed to be more trout near the surface. The second week of the hatch brought lots of unsettled weather that discouraged anglers from getting out on the water every night – the uncertainty of fishing in northern New England during late June and early July, our thunderstorm season.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a large caddis that has been hatching on Back Lake at about the same time as the hexes were. Well, they’re still coming off, and much like the hex, they are large (nearly the same size) and seem to come off in numbers as darkness takes over.

We are still efforting to find out what kind of caddis it is, but it appears to be a favorite of our Back Lake trout. Cindy picked up a couple of nice rainbows the other night, throwing hex emerger patterns (Bachmann’s Hex Emerger, Sparrow, Wood Duck Heron) in much the same way as during the hex hatch, but with a difference.

Caddis are much more active on the water prior to taking off, usually skittering around before lifting off in to the air. Hexes usually lift off right away after emergence, only moving when they are having trouble getting out of the shuck. Therefore, she put a lot more movement in to her fly, stripping it in quickly, like a caddis moving across the water and that seemed to do the trick.

How long will this hatch last? Who knows, but I’ll devote a little more time to the lake to investigate it.