Last Wednesday, I landed in Burlington, VT around noon, had my rental car by 12:30, and beat a path across Vermont and into the northern tip of New Hampshire as quickly as the Green Mountains and the winding, picturesque roads would permit (which was about 4 hours). After checking in to our cabin at Lopstick Lodge, I left a note for my buddy March and drove off to try my luck on the "Trophy Stretch" of the upper Connecticut River, all of half a mile away.
A beautiful piece of water, but boy, was I out of my element. Near its source, the Connecticut flows through several natural lakes that have been "enhanced" by dams. The trophy water begins below the second-lowest of these lakes, and bursts out of the dam as a jet of whitewater. For two or three miles, it races over boulders and rock ledges, roaring and frothing all the way. My friend had made reference to several good pools near the dam, but I saw nothing that resembled what I think of as a pool, a still, deep pocket of water, often filled with brush or slinking beneath an overhanging bank. A pool on the Connecticut is just a spot where the current is temporarily broken by a rock, or a boiling soup-bowl beneath a waterfall.
On the first night, I took an 11" brookie from a dark bankside pocket on an olive wooly bugger. I tried other nymphs and streamers, but had no more hits.
The next morning, my friend and I got on the water about 6. Working nymphs and streamers, we picked up a couple trout apiece in the stretch just below the dam, all about 10-12". We tried some lower reaches of the trophy water later in the morning with no results.
After an excessive lunch, we fished the Connecticut below the next lake down, and my friend caught a 13" brown. I caught about 7 or 8 very small brook trout--we had actually seen a hatchery truck in the area that morning, and I may well have been introducing the stockers to the harsh realities of life in the wild. Around 3, we went back to the upper trophy stretch, where things were heating up.
My friend caught two or three nice trout at the first pool we tried, then a couple more in pockets just below. I had plenty of action too, but couldn't get a solid hookup. We were fishing big stimulators with small nymphs or dries on a hopper. I had several fish smack the stimulator or flash at nymphs suspended below it, but when I struck I got nothing but air. We worked a quarter mile or so down, without any more hits. With an hour of daylight remaining, we decided to wade back up and try the honey hole one more time.
March generously allowed me first crack at the water, and also reccomended a small caddis pattern for the dropper. Within a few casts, that little caddis had fooled a couple rainbows of about 10." A cast to a seam just below a waterfall put a 16" rainbow on my line, which dragged me around the pool, then knocked me on my can when I tripped over a rock chasing him into the pocket water downstream. There I sat, butt-down in the current with a large trout on my line, and unable to stand up without putting down the rod to hoist myself onto some rocks. Ever the quick thinker, March released my net from its velcro loop, walked downstream, and scooped up my prize. Not the most graceful catch of my angling career, but a very satisfying way to cap the afternoon.
I don't know if I'd run back there solely for trout fishing--the best fishing seems confined to relatively few spots, and I understand that in the summer the crowds get pretty thick. But I did appreciate the chance to learn a new kind of water, and certainly the chance to spend some time with a good friend. If we'd caught nothing, a day wading among granite cascades beneath a canopy of blazing red and yellow would have been no less memorable.
I had to head down to the conference in Vermont that night, and I didn't get to fish in Vermont on Sunday as I'd hoped. But the days at the conference were also productive in their way. I'll report on those soon.
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