Fly Fishing

As the story (perhaps apocryphal) goes, someone once asked the British scientist J.B.S. Haldane what we could infer about the Creator from studying nature, and Haldane replied, “I’m not sure, but he has an inordinate fondness for beetles.” Haldan’s point was that beetles make up some 40% of known insects. And since trout eat insects, it’s only logical that trout share this inordinate fondness for such readily available sources of protein. Earlier this summer, we featured a. . .

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The water levels in Vermont’s flooded rivers have gone down, but there is a lot of work to be done to repair roads, bridges and homes. If you would like to help Vermonters impacted by Hurricane Irene, please make a donation  to the Vermont-New Hampshire Chapter of The American Red Cross at  https://www.redcrossvtnhuv.org.

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Atlanta is hot in August, so striped bass seek thermal refuge in cool rivers. This 15-pounder probably lives most of its life in West Point Lake, 60 miles south of town, but it was caught smack dab in the middle of Atlanta on the Chattahoochee. The best way to fight these fish is from a canoe, so they can give you a sleigh ride! photo by Zach Matthews

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Scott McEnaney, Orvis Eastern ELOG Director, sent me this picture of a trout he found on his neighbor’s lawn as the floodwaters receded yesterday in Bennington, Vermont. This gorgeous little wild brown trout would be a trophy from the small mountain stream it came from. Unfortunately, it got swept out of the stream and then stranded on land. photo by Scott McEnaney

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As you surely know by now, Vermont has suffered historic flash flooding in the wake of Hurricane Irene, which passed through yesterday. The problems here were not caused by high winds or storm surge, but by massive amounts of rainfall over a short time. I live a couple miles uphill from the Battenkill and route 313, which runs alongside the river, and that meant that we were stranded all day yesterday because the river had jumped the banks in both directions. When the road became passable. . .

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Editor’s note: Given the conditions that anglers on the East Coast will be facing over the weekend, I figured it was time to repost Peter Kutzer’s video lesson on casting in the wind. This does not mean that you should venture out into the heart of Irene with a fly rod in hand, of course. But if you do get on the water ahead of or behind the storm, you’ll find these tips useful.

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Being surprised by a giant fish where you didn’t expect one is always a blast. photo by Joe Phillips

I was fishing a local river with my friend Joe, trying to catch big fall brown trout on streamers and nymphs. The river in question (which shall remain nameless) definitely holds some beasties in the 25-inch range, but we mostly catch browns in the 16- to 20-inch class, which is still good-size for northern New England. What we don’t catch are rainbows. So imagine my surprise when I laid into something heavy in a deep pool under a highway bridge, only to see a slab of green, pink, and white when the fish rolled near the surface. After a few long runs, the fish came to hand. Based on the health of the fish and its perfectly formed fins, we concluded that it was, in fact, a wild fish. Where it came from, we couldn’t even guess.

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Orvis retail inventory planner Mike Healy shares the bow with Hoback the chocolate Lab on the Gray Reef stretch of the North Platte near Caspar, Wyoming. photo by Phil Monahan

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