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