"The Vermont Experience"

I woke up just in time to catch the sunrise at one of my favorite spots on the way to Vermont.

No alarm needed. The addiction was burning, and my brain was craving for what I call "the Vermont experience". Every fall over the past few years, since I discovered some of its amazing fishing locations, I tried to get at least one day of fishing there. I am still discovering new spots, but still enjoying some of the old ones. What is so special about Vermont? Well, on some of its rivers you get as close to the inner peace as you could ever be. Everything narrows down to the fly on the water and nothing else matters. And in the exact moment a fish hits your fly, the time stops and all the worries are gone....If you are a fly fisherman, you know exactly what I'm talking about, if not, well......it's not too late yet.....

  I came for the wild fish that breed  in those waters. Prepared with nymphs, especially in the cool October morning....

But little I knew....BWOs were in full hatch and the very first cast brought the first fish to the net...on a dry.

The rest of the day was just as good as I expected. Vermont is one of those special places where the beauty of the landscape is only matched by the beauty of its fish. I am already dreaming about next fall....

Bitter sweet

A lot of action once salmon season started and the final sections of the rivers opened. Despite the nice fish caught in a little over an hour early in the morning, the season opener left me disgusted. A lot of fish in the river and a lot of fishermen. I got there at 5:30 AM just in time to see the first fish being pulled out of the water. Haven't seen another fly fisherman until my friend Dwayne came over. Shallow water and high fish density was matched by high density of fishermen. I think I saw 50-60 fish killed that morning in just one spot. Released? 2 + the 4 I caught. What worked for me that morning was a pink streamer that tricked the 4 fish, including the beauty below, probably 22-23 inch of pure energy. I hope she learned her lesson and went straight back tot the lake.

 It was a cold morning, and that reminded me why sometimes graphite reels are preferable to aluminum ones. My aluminum hardy kept freezing and getting stuck on me. Also had to clean my guides a few times. "Definitely not a good time to bring your little girl fishing, especially if she is not into fishing at all. But if this will justify some extra rods, why not, more food for the family. At least don't try to convince her that she caught the fish you just killed because she didn't touch the rod, she wasn't even looking at the river, because she was too busy shivering." I know the guy these thoughts are addressed to is less likely to read my post but I jut had to let it out.

 

The remaining of the day and the rest of the week went really well for fishing, except the fact that the water levels kept dropping. Salmon and rainbows were everywhere, hitting streamers like crazy and gorging on the nymphs.

Two friends, 2 simultaneous hook ups, one net is enough:

 

Dwayne was the king of the rainbows on the 1st, this old fat being the biggest rainbow I've seen that day.

 The biggest ones I've caught came later in the week.

Romanian readers, if you see the next one in a fishing magazine don't be surprised :))

Some fight pictures:

 And some releases:

Amazing fishing so far  this season, but I've seen a lot of fish being killed. I heard different reasons: "I 've got a fish fry this weekend and I'm supposed to bring the salmon", or  "I've only kept 2 so far" (it's only 6:30 AM in the first day of the season you idiot!!!!!) and so on, every reason more brilliant then others. What makes it even worse is that there are fly fishermen among them. Now I can't wait for the same people to complain about the lack of fish in NH waters. They actually got another month or so, to clean the freshly stocked rivers.

And the good thing: I got checked twice so far by Fish and Game, so they are out watching, hope they nail some poachers!

Spring!

We had a winter that was out of the ordinary this year. Good news is that fishing was incredible in the first two and a half months of the year. Bad news is that the snow is almost gone and the water levels are ridiculously low, I haven't seen them that low in May or June in other years. So unless we gonna get a lot of rain during the spring (which doesn't look like that yet), the salmon and trout seasons will be extremely short and we'll probably witness high mortality of the fish in the rivers over summer.

The last 2 weeks were really dynamic, with temperatures way bellow freezing, a snow storm, but also tanning temperatures today. The fish were present and ready to fight:















The salmon started to show up also, although we have to wait another 2 weeks until their season starts.