September Report: Cooling waters mean float trip time!

We had a fun summer of chasing trout on our smaller streams with dry flies! Over the past week we have seen water temps drop over 10 degrees on our larger rivers. This means float fishing on the Andro and Connecticut rivers has been very productive as of late! While many of our rivers are very low as of this writing the Androscoggin river is running at 1000cfs in Errol and 1200 cfs in Gorham. These are ideal flows for chasing trout and salmon as they key in on fall hatches that have been firing with the cooler water temps!

Small Streams:

Wild Brook trout from a recent small stream trip.

Flows are low and fish are spooky but willing to take a well presented dry fly. We are still seeing some black caddis and small grey stoneflies on most days with October Caddis and flying ants working as well. Small attractors like the Royal PMX are also still getting interest. Fishing has been best in steeper sections of these streams where pools are deeper, flows are faster and fish are less spooky. It’s been amazing to see how spooky the fish are in some of the slower runs. I’ve had fish spook with one wave of the fly rod or even when stripping out line to get ready to cast. Even if the fish do spook the may still eat a well presented fly so it is important not to loose all hope when you see the trout darting around. In these slower pools if you can get one fish out of the dozens that spook you should consider it a success. Fortunately the faster heads of pools offer less spooky targets that more willingly eat dry flies. We’ve done best fishing from the bottom up and targeting the heads of pools with accurate casts to the best water to intercept the most aggressive and usually largest trout first.

Ellis River:

With the low flows your best bet on the Ellis is to hit the bigger pools early or late in the day or cover a lot of water with a size 12-14 Orange Stimulator, small grey Elk Hair Caddis or small jig style parr pattern. The fish will be spread out in the lower river and you will do better to cover water as the brook trout will be moving around a lot over the next few weeks as water temps cool and they begin to move towards spawning locations.

Saco River:

The Saco has been tough lately with low flows and fish spread out in the bigger pools. We recommend covering a lot of water or focusing on sight fishing to cruising fish in the evenings. Midges and BWO’s can be the ticket to warry trout on the Saco this time of the year. A good rainstorm would be the ticket to wake up some of the larger Saco browns before the season closes Oct 15th.

Androscoggin River:

The Androscoggin River is fishing very well right now, probably better than any other water in the state as of this writing. With flows at 1000cfs it has more water than any other river in the state at the moment. The Andro fishes very well at these low average flows. Water temps in Errol were at 64 F on sunday and should remain in the trouts comfort zone through the fall. We are seeing a good amount of Rhyacophila caddis, smaller tan caddis and black caddis hatching in the mornings with Isonychia mayflies comming off from 2 to 5pm. At dusk expect to see Isonychia spinner falls as well as October Caddis and Golden Stoneflies popping off. Most of our success as of late has been nymphing with prince nymphs( size 14-8), golden stonefly nymphs (size 8), Purple pheasant tail nymphs (size 14-10), and Thompsons Double Bead nymph (a large olive caddis larva). We have been catching a good mix of wild and stocked bows along with a few browns and landlocked salmon in the mix. We haven’t seen many brook trout yet but expect to see more as waters continue to cool and they migrate back from the tribs.

Double from a recent float trip on the Androscoggin River.

Connecticut River (Float Sections):

The Connecticut has been very low for the last month but is fishing well in the faster and deeper runs. We have used the strategy of covering lots of water but only fishing the best looking water while moving quickly through less fishy slow sections. Water temps are generally in the low 50’s to mid 60’s from Indian Stream down to Lemmington. From Lemmington south water temps are highly variable depending on time of day and air temps. This stretch, from Lemmington to North Stratford is too low to float at the moment and will need a few inches of rain to become a float option this fall. We’ve done well with both nymphs and dries on the Connecticut depending on the day. A size 16 olive perdigon nymph off of a light bobber rig on 6X has done well as have size 16 and 14 frenchy style pheasant tails. Bwo’s continue to hatch sporadically throughout the day and the fish are often feeding on either the nymphs or dries. Small tan and black caddis have also been in the mix and a size 16-18 tan caddis pupae off a tag has been very effective. We’ve also done well on warmer days with Ants, and hoppers although those bites have been less consistent.

Mike with Grandson Cory and a healthy wild Connecticut River Rainbow caught on a recent float trip!

Looking Forward:

Fall is in the air and we anticipate solid float fishing from here through October. If water stays low the Andro will remain the best option going forward with plenty of fish looking to fatten up for winter. We exepect the nymph bite to remain strong into late September with dry fly opportunities increasing by mid-September and streamer fishing turning on as water temps fall. If we do get some rain expect more options to open up on more sections of the Connecticut and Saco. We have dates available through most of September with a couple dates left from early to mid October so let us know asap if you want to get out this fall! The time is now!

Tight Lines,

Nate

Early July Report

It was a busy spring here in the Whites. We had a ton of successfull float trips on the Androscoggin and Connecticut Rivers in May and June. This has been our best year for trout landed over 20”. We’ve had over 30 20”+ fish hit the net this season so far with many days of multiple fish over 22” and a few at 24”, of both browns and rainbows. We attribute the number of big fish to the high water of this spring and the past few years. The more water in our rivers the more food the fish have to eat, and the more habitat they have to grow and hide from predators. Now that water levels are down to average flows we can still get these fish when temps and flows are conducive.

Browns like this 21” male were very common this May and June!

Connecticut River:

In general the Connecticut has had water temps in the 50’s and 60’s on most trout sections with some sections going above 70 degrees but only on the hottest days. We’ve had some great fishing lately when flows have bumped from recent thunderstorms. Fish will take advantage of higher flows and colder water temps whenever they can this time of the year. We see some of our most productive fishing for both numbers and size of trout when we get cold summer rains. Recently we’ve done well with “creature” style mop flies in tan and brown, goodspeed’s Evolved Sparkle Pupae, size 12-18 pheasant tail nymphs, tan and peacock cdc X caddis, tan foam back CDC caddis emergers. Expect BWO’s and Pale duns to also be important in the comming weeks. The terrestrail bite hasn’t turned on that much yet but hopper season is right around the corner!

It was hard to beat the brown trout fishing of this past spring! Client Matt with one of two fish over 22” he landed in early June!

One of many fine wild rainbows we saw on the Androcoggin River this June.

Androscoggin River:

The Androscoggin River is currently too warm to target trout with water temps running consistently over 70 degrees. Head up tributaries if you want to find suitable trout water. It will take a few days of air temps in the 40’s to 60’s to get andro temps down enough.

Saco River:

Saco river water temps have been in the low 60’s to upper sixties for most days. On days over 85 degrees be sure to temp the river as you fish and avoid fishing when water temps exceed 70 degrees. This is usually after 1pm on most hot days so you still have a good window of fishing early in the day. Look for midges and BWO’s as we get into summer flows. Some evenings may still produce gray drake hatches although those will be winding down. On cooler days yellow sallies, grey and black caddis can be important with streamers still the ticket any time we get high water from thunderstorms. Expect ants, beetles and hoppers to become more and more important as we move into the middle of July. I like fishing a size 8 hopper as a searching pattern and if I find fish that get too smart to eat the bigger fly I’ll switch to a smaller ant, beetle or bwo pattern to dial in the picky fish.

Mountain streams:

Mountain streams have been fishing very well as of late. We’ve seen a good amount of caddis activity on most streams with a good mix of wild and stocked trout around on the more productive stretches of water. We have noticed that some streams have changed a lot over the past few seasons of high water events. It is a good idea to cover a lot of water if you aren’t finding fish as habitat has changed and places where you might have found fish in seasons past could be devoid due to changes in habitat. We’ve found that if you keep moving you will find new pools and runs that hold fish better now than in seasons past. We’ve been doing well with mostly dry flies as of late with tan and black caddis working best in the bigger slower pools and royal PMX dries taking fish out of the faster runs. Ants and hoppers have also been working .

A brown trout from the lower Androscoggin River caught during high flows this spring!

Looking Ahead:

It’s looking like this heat wave is taken over by a cold front starting tomorrow with waves of low pressure in the mix leading into nexts weeekend. It should be a good time to keep an eye on the hydrograph and chase water bumps that will have fish in a feeding fenzy wherever and whenever they occur. We have this coming friday and saturday (July 11th and 12th) open, if anyone want to get in on the action, give us a shout! As summer progresses we just have to keep hoping for a little rain here and there to keep the fish excited. Small streams and the connecticut river will likely offer the most reliable fishing through the dog days of summer. We have dates available from July through October so please let us know if you would like to get on our calendar!

Tight Lines,

Nate

May is big fish month!

Hi all, we are back from the warm state of Florida and have already had a great week of guiding since we returned! Rivers are running at average to high flows for this time of the year with water temps running from the mid 40’s to low 50’s on most days. Fishing has been good to great on the Saco and Connecticut rivers while the Andro is high and tough to fish at the moment. On all rivers we have mostly been seeing browns as the rainbows are in spawn mode and water temps haven’t warmed up enough for brookies to get active. Looking forward we should start seeing a good number of Landlocked Atlantic Salmon, and Wild brookies in the Upper Andro as soon as the river drops to fishable flows. We will also be seeing more wild and holdover rainbows in the mix as they should be done spawning within a week or so.

Saco

The Saco has been fishing better than we have seen in a few years. As the Saco has a low density mostly wild browns, we are happy to have landed browns on all of our Saco floats so far this season. On our better days we have been landing four and seeing six or seven. We have found the streamer bite is best when flows are on the drop without too much rain water flushing an abundance of food into the water. On days with lots of rain water finding the right water to fish slower and deeper with squirmy worms, mops, and jig style streamers is the ticket.

Client Chris Johnson caught this beautiful wild brown on the Saco. His first wild brown on this River!

Andro

The Andro is currently running at 6k cfs out of Errol and up to 8k cfs in Gorham. Once flows drop below 3k in Errol fishing will improve dramatically. If you do fish the Andro hunt the slow edges of pools and slower sections of the river with large nymphs like mops, squirmy worms and stoneflies.Throwing streamers like olive buggers, circus peanuts, and the like should also produce.

Connecticut

The Connecticut was running from 2k to 4k this weekend from Colebrook south. These were ideal flows for throwing olive, yellow, tan and white, circus peanuts and sex dungeons and drunk and disorderly streamers. Nymph fishing with large food items like mops, jig style baitfish, and crayfish was also very effective. Flows went up Sunday night but have already been dropping in the upper river the river may bump again with tonights rain but should moderate again by this coming weekend. As long as you can find water with at least a couple feet of clarity you should be able to find some fish. We prefer throwing brighter streamers like a gold and copper Kreelix to find fish in the dirtier flows. We have been very impressed with the size quality of browns on the Connecticut so far this season. Many of the browns we saw over the past few days were over 17” with a few in the 22-24” class. The meat bite will continue until water temps consistently stay in the mid-fifties and caddis and mayfly hatches begin to distract fish to those food items. This should happen around the third week of May this year and will result in some of the best dry fly fishing of the season for large trout.

A healthy holdover brown caught by client Matt Mitchell this past Saturday.

Client Chris Chrisifides with his second biggest brown of the day.

Client Christian Mitchell had one heck of a first day fly fishing! He landed many browns including two at 22”!

Client Chris Chrisifides landed this 24” brown with a 14” girth. The biggest trout of our season so far!

Small Streams:

With the fishing so good on our larger rivers we have not been out on our smaller streams yet this spring. That being said, this recent rain should have wild brook trout moving from their winter holding water to their prime time feeding lies. If you decide to explore small water here in the whites look for deeper slow pools where these fish will spend more time as they move up the streams. Be prepared to cover a lot of water fishing a dace or baby trout pattern to get any trout around to move to a sizeable meal.

In Summary and availability:

May is a dynamic month on our rivers changing flows and water temps will have fish feeding heavily at times and so stuffed at other times that you will have to grind to get them to eat. As long as you stay patient and have confidence that the fish are there the rewards can be worth any slow hours you encounter! As the month progresses the fish will shift their feeding habits more to bugs and start feeding higher in the water column. We love the month of May for the big fish we find and the variety of ways in which we catch them. As of this writing Nate has May 12, 13, 22 open, and Kevin is wide open until May 18th, with some dates available through June as well. Please let us know asap if you want to get out this May or June and we will do our best to get you on the calendar!

Tight Lines,

Nate

New Year Report: Welcome 2025!

Happy New Years! It was a pleasure guiding many of you in 2024. Here is a little timeline of what we were up to last season.

April: We started off the season targeting lake run rainbows and salmon in the lakes region. Numbers of both salmon and rainbows were up from past years. We saw more first and second year salmon which is a good sign for this coming spring. There was also a good year class of 2nd and 3rd year rainbows which were much more chrome in color than in the past and fought like wild fish! We look forward to seeing how big these fish will be in 2025. Later in April we began guiding the northern rivers with both nymphs and streamers targeting mostly large browns as the rainbows went through their spawning ritual. The jig and streamer fishing was on fire as water temps neared 50 degrees!

May

The brown trout fishing continued to be productive through mid-May. We landed over 20 trout on many outings with the average fish over two pounds with many in the 4-5 pound range including one monster that taped at 24.5” As water levels dropped in May our tactics shifted from fishing streamers and baitfish jigs to caddis and mayfly nymphs and dries. As the rainbows finished spawning by the second week of May we began seeing more of them in the mix as they fed voraciously after the spawn. The caddis hatches on the Connecticut and Adroscoggin were in full swing by about May 18th and we had some exceptional dry fly fishing on both rivers landing large browns, bows and landlocked salmon on these size 16 tan bugs. By the third week of May flows on the Andro were ideal and we had some unreal days landing over 30 fish, most of which were wild brookies, rainbows and holdover salmon.

June: The Andro continued to fish well in June specifically on the cooler days. The alder fly hatch started early, on June 10th. We landed some good sized browns and bows on size 10 to 12 olive stimulators, grey cdc caddis and X caddis. On days when air and water temps rose we headed to the Connecticut where we continued to have fun chasing large browns and bows on all stages of tan caddis, both nymphs and dries.

July: In July we had a couple of epic dry fly days after thunderstorms made for some high water on the Connecticut. Unfortunately a mega rainstorm blew out the river mid-month and forced us to give the fish a break, until road work and dropping water temps allowed our return in late September. Fortunately the small streams in the White Mountains fished very well through july as larger fish from the bigger rivers pushed up into the tributaires to take advantage of the cool runnoff from the mountains. We even found some decent salmon miles up from the Androscoggin! The dry dropper fishing produced well into August.

August:

In August we found some great fishing on the Saco earlier in the month. Mornings saw the coolest water temps and consistent midge hatches which were about as productive as you could as for as long as you could detect the subtle eats on small indicators. Later in the month we did some guiding on the upper Connecticut as water temps began to drop in the upper float sections. We found some decent sized wild brookies and native whitefish up there as well as some big wild rainbows. The fishing was so good that Kevin and I decided to hit it on a day off. We managed some more wild rainbows as well as a handsome 20” wild brown that ate a 4” white streamer and coughed up a 10” sucker boatside!

September:

The float fishing improved as soon as water temps dropped into the mid 60’s in late August but bite windows were early and late in the day on sunny days through the 3rd week in September. Still we caught some good sized wild bows on most days by griding through the slow periods and trusting the process. By late in the month water temps had stabilized into the low 60’s and the nymph bite windows lengthened. We had some good days for big wild bows on both the Andro and Connecticut with some very large fish from 16” to 23” making it to the net.

October:

The fishing in October was on fire this past year. With water temps dropping into the low 50’s the streamer bite was constistent for most of the month. While the upper Andro closed on October 15th we re-gained access to one of our favorite lower river stretches which produced some quality bows and browns into early November. While the trout fishing was productive we couldn’t help but shift some of our focus to pike fishing. Water temps dropped into the 40’s by mid month and the pike bite turned on as expected. We were able to land some quality fish over 30”s with some exciting topwater eats which gave us more confidence in fishing higher in the water column during this time period.

November: The pike bite continued to improve in November and we began to notice a pattern of which zones fished best on cloudy days and which zones were better on sunny days. Our theory, the clearer the water the better it is in the clouds, the darker the water the more sun you can get away with. Our last day of pike fishing was cold with an east wind. After a promising eat on our first drift we saw nothing for the next three hours. Finally after switching to a jig style streamer tied by the late Johnny Z, I made a cast and felt the line go slack as a 31” pike inhaled my offering. Knowing this might be my last fish before the ice came I stripped earnestly until the fish slid thrashing into the net. Two days later a cold front hit locking up the pike water until spring. It was a fitting end to a productive year.

We thank all of you who shared time on the water with us this past season. We are looking forward to another productive year in 2025. I’ve transitioned from guiding the flowing water to instructing on the frozen water. You can find me supervising the kids ski school at Attitash mountain this winter. Its been a cold one as of late and snowmaking has been cranking out new trails every week. Hopefully the jet stream shifts north and we can get in on this snowy pattern that the southeast is seeing today!

Our rates page has been updated for 2025:

Full day floats are $550, half day floats $425, Full day wades $500 and half day wades $350.

If you are looking to book a day in 2025 hit us up asap. We are about 50% booked for June and 25% booked for May. We highly recommend getting out with us in April to early May this year as we see some of our largest fish this time of the year. That being said I’ll be away on Vacation from April 19th to April 28th but our guide Kevin will be available if you want to get out during that time frame.

I look forward to seeing many of you this coming season. I hope you all stay healthy and warm this winter.

Tight Lines,

Nate