When you live and recreate in northern New England, you look forward to the sun coming out. It seems like there’s some months when it rarely, if ever, makes an appearance, so when it’s out you tend to take advantage of those occasions. If you’re an angler though, the sun can be a hindrance to your fishing pursuits. It usually results in wary fish, afraid to be discovered by predators, both aerial and on two legs.

In our case, too much sun could mean a lowering of the watershed too – rivers and streams, even lakes, start to lower without regular rain to replenish them. That is the kind of weather pattern we find ourselves in lately, and it looks like all of next week as well.

The good news is that the water is still cold – in the mid 50’s in the Connecticut River, so at least the fish have cold water to lie in, just not a lot of it. As for the fishing, there have been mixed reports from the Trophy Stretch, even though it has been stocked twice in the last six days (once by the Pittsburg Anglers Association, and also by NH Fish & Game).

Wonderful weather to take some casts on the river lately, and it looks like this weather pattern will continue …

Some anglers are picking up fish here and there, but quite a few have struggled to hook fish, which begs the question “why?”. Likely too much pressure for the new arrivals to the Trophy – right from early this week, it was literally a conveyer belt of anglers hitting the water, and that, combined with the water flow (135 CFS in the Trophy Stretch) has made for some very wary trout.

The story isn’t much different to the south, as the flow out of Murphy Dam at Lake Francis is only 300 CFS at this time. Pretty easy to get around if you’re wade fishing, but this low water results in spooky fish. Covering a lot of water and fishing areas that are new to you are my recommendations when conditions are like this.

As for what to use, I haven’t heard too much about dries, but nymphs and streamers might be the ticket at the moment. Streamers should be fished deep, if possible, and there are a couple of recommendations regarding nymphs. If you like to imitate actual caddis and mayflies, smaller patterns might be better at this point (i.e. Perdigon, Caddis Pupa, even Midge patterns) on 6X tippet. Attractor patterns like San Juan Worms, Goomie Worm and Mops can also be used to fool the stockies.