Went trout fishing again to the Farmington. Stayed with Paul Rossman again and fished with the same two fellows I fished with the last time and Denise.

Went way down river the fist day and had a very good time fishing for trout in the middle of July in the daytime and there were no lack of trout. The water was cool even so far downstream fro the trout management area and there was more than enough water flowing to make it interesting and fun. I had thought of fishing the rips at Watch hill this weekend in my boat but decided to take a bus-man’s holiday and enjoy the woods and sweet water and I had a new rod I designed and wanted to try it out and see what it could do. I designed it to be able to cast down to a three weight so I could offer a Salmo Sax in a lighter version that would be suitable for trout and a few other things and it is that and more.

I wanted to see how it would fare as a nymph rod as it is ten and a half feet and has the length and flex to handle long lines and cast to the far side of the river if needed. It casts short and medium and long and loads with a three weight line to boot! It also handles a nine wt line with ease and holds it high in the air with no effort and I have been catching stripers with it for about three weeks. This was its debut with trout and deep nymphing techniques. I am very pleased and am going to do a bit of tweaking but I won’t have to do much. Change a guide here and there and redesign a new reel seat for the fresh water version. I won’t have it ready to sell for a while maybe close to a year but hopefully less. The other thing it does is handle line beyond my hopes and if you have to make a long cast in glass water with a tiny dry it does it with very little effort at all. Long leaders straighten right out. The range is amazing and it also fishes short. I am a bit excited about it.

So, enough about that rod. Except for this. A three to a nine and effortless with both ends and everything in between. 

Where we fished was rocky and cold and slippery as one can imagine. Tough wading and greased cannonballs everywhere and long hikes but well worth the effort. No people either where we fished the first day or that is no small thing. What a great trout river the Farmington actually is over its whole length or at least as far down stream from the management area that I have seen. That is about twenty five miles down maybe a little less. What a gem.

Last night we fished into the darkness up above the management area for fussy trout in glassy water. They were rising in good numbers and were on something that I never discovered but I have a few ideas. I had two nudges and one take but I was dozing and never struck. There were Light Cahill’s hatching and Denise was watching the cedar wax wings eat every one as they left the surface and the swallows were homing in on them both in the air and on the surface. She rescued a couple and walked them to the shore and placed them on the leaves of trees and wished them luck.

I love the not knowing that comes with trout fishing and the challenge of wanting to come back and figure it out the next day or the next week or the next month and I wish that, that river ran through my back yard. I have met a few people that moved there so that it would run through their back yard and I envy them. For many years now I have been saying that I was not old enough yet to enjoy trout fishing the way I would like to do it and have stuck mostly to the salt for about twenty of those years. I am old enough now and I am happy I am still around to savor the real fishing challenges that it offers.
Fly fishing for trout is a perfect way to fly fish.

I am so grateful to may dad for initiating me into it at such a young age. I am also grateful to Denise for the Beaverkill the Esopus, the West branch and the East Branch of the Delaware and the Housatonic and the Willowemoc and the Farmington and soon the Ausable and the upper Conn. 

And, I hope I have enough years left to add many more incredible rivers to this list.

The Farmington River and the, “Other”, Farmington River. 

Connecticut is amazing to me. Have lived next to it all my life and never gave it a second thought. Not even a first thought most of the time as far as Trout Rivers go. Rhode Island is flat and is lowland for the most part. Connecticut is not the Rocky Mountains but it has elevation and some fairly big rivers. Long ones too.

The Farmington is one of those and I discovered that it is a very interesting place to fish both in its upper reaches where it is pristine and beautiful and woody and forested and quite large and wadable to its lower regions where it changes and becomes quite brawny and rocky and full of chutes and runs and great big trout. The river has many faces indeed and I like all the ones I have seen and I like the caliber of the fishermen I met while I was there.

I fished there once before, last year on a long weekend when the river was very low and at a reduced flow and I liked it and the water was cold and there were trout rising through out the day and into the evening and it was restful and sweet and I saw a lot of places on the upper river, that section from Ovation pool above the bridge in New Hartford up to the Riverton area which is where most people fish. There were lots of people and I would say that it was a bit crowded on that excursion. This time was different.
I had local help. 

I stayed at Paul Rossman’s bed and breakfast not knowing him at all and to my pleasure I met one of the most creative and innovative fly tiers around. Salmon flies, trout flies, caddies, mayflies, pupa, CDC duns and dries and spinners and all sorts of state of the art trout flies I had never seen before or even conceived of and this guy was fluent in that language. We talked for hours each evening after I came back from fishing and he was a wealth of great insight and information about trout and flies and presentation and we did that evening talk for three days. His place, the Pine Meadow House, was just a few doors up the road from the Upcountry Fly Shop where each morning I met the folks who took me fishing that day. It was easy. There was no heavy lifting involved. I was taken care of wonderfully by everyone. 

Joe Klinger who fishes with me in R.I. for stripers on Tuesday nights had e-mailed me asking if I would like to fish with him and his friend Gary who had also come to the Tuesday night fishing several times and I said yes. They met me on Wednesday morning and took me out to breakfast and then on a long car ride down river past several towns and through a maze of turns and highways and back roads to what was to be a series of secret spots but ended up being one spot that we never left. 
The river was big, full of rocks and drop offs and the rocks were tough to navigate around and over in waders. I found out the necessity of having a wading staff that day as I had to move very slowly and cautiously and was restricted in my movements due to the treacherous footing but I can’t wait to go back. There were no paths along the river. No one fishes there and the banks are wild and overgrown with bull briers and rose thorns and downed trees and impassible blow downs and rubble from past floods and all sorts of things to hinder ones progress but… I can’t wait to go back.

Gary had been telling me tales about afternoons and evenings there during the Hendrickson hatch in the recent past and I was smiling to myself as they sounded unbelievable. Twenty, thirty fish over sixteen inches and many over 18” with a few twenty plus thrown in a few hours fishing every time out, browns and rainbows all fat as footballs and no pressure on them from anglers. I was smiling at these fish stories as I said. This is New England not Montana or Alaska after all and what did I know. Nothing, it turned out.

Gary rigged me up with a furled leader and gave me some tips and told me how he fishes with it and then he and Joe went out into the river chasing some trout that were rising to caddis flies. He told me about the deep sections and how to wade to get across and up the pool. I told them that I would be along shortly and they left me by myself to get a feel for things. I took off my gear and got a little net and chased some bugs and poked around here and there and finally got into the water and headed downstream by myself.

I fished here and there without too much enthusiasm and saw one fish rise one time.
I came back up about two hours later and Joe was still chasing the risers in the pool but Gary was nowhere to be seen. Joe called down to me and told me that Gary was upriver around the bend and that he had found some fish feeding. I headed up river through the woods and met the briars and brambles and blow downs and ravines and rocks and took a left to some higher ground and a pine forest with easy walking and headed to where I thought I might find the river. It must have taken me a half hour to get to where I could hear the river again and I headed toward it and I found it on the other side of more brambles and briars and blow downs and holes and when I found it, it was fast and steep and looked like a mountain river tumbling down a gorge and Gary was no where to be seen but across the way there was a spin fisherman casting a spinner. Hummmm? I wondered how he got there and I was thinking I must have missed Gary somewhere below and I was not going to attempt to bushwhack my way further upstream and there was this spin fisherman guy there and then I heard a voice call out, “Joe”, and I headed for it. I found him just above where the spin fisherman was standing on the far bank.

“This is the place where I had that great fishing on the Hendrickson’s “, he said and then he said, “I have been catching them all along this stretch”, and pointed down stream to a raging torrent, (you have to keep in mind I am a lowland river guy and I have not fished in this kind of water except perhaps for stripers in the surf). “Really,” I said.

I showed him my fly and he said, “I think it is a bit too dark. Try one of these”, and he gave me a GR Hares ear wet fly. NOT a modern one but the old fashioned one from the Stone Age and I was very pleased as I am from the Stone Age and feel comfortable being immersed in it when it comes to trout fishing. 

He was using a two fly rig with the dropper tied into the hook bend and he gave me a little explanation of how he fishes it. He had a caddis larvae as the head fly and the little Hares Ear hanging off it. I had on 3 .5 lb tippet and asked him if it was heavy enough for this water and he told me he was using 2 lb. “Oh”! I thought. (I think twenty pound is a bit light for most of the fishing I do but I was there to learn something and I asked him if he thought it would be all right to use what I had on.
“Sure”, 
I asked him what kind of a knot the used and he said a five turn clinch knot.
“How about tying this on for me”? 
“Sure”. 
And he did.

“How do you fish it? I asked looking helpless. 
I wanted to get everything I could out of this time with him. 
Gracious man. 
He then rigged me up with a BB split shot about eighteen inches up from the fly and gave me an explanation of how to cast the rig on a short line upstream into the chute (not quite a water fall) where this gusher of water was spilling down from a pool. 
“ Cast up and let it drift down, almost tight and when it comes abreast tighten and let the fly come up like a caddis rising from the bottom. Watch the end of the furled leader and if it hesitates or stops it is a fish and they are hitting it as it rises for the most part. I don’t like using strike indicators and the furled leader is easier to see than regular mono. 
I prefer it”. 

I made my first cast and a fish took it. That is how the rest of the day went.
A cast, a fish, he cast, a fish and on and on and then I realized that these fish were kind of big. Some times they weren’t but most of the time they were. Damn big.

His net was 18” long and most of them were longer and they came, and came, and we took pictures just because I know no one would believe this without pictures, and I do not like to convince people I am telling the truth. 
I like to enjoy telling a story without having to swear on the bible. 
We took pictures. 
Denise had to see the pictures to be convinced.
They were beautiful fish deeply colored and the big ones were all browns fat as footballs. They were everywhere feeding beneath the surface in those fast flows on emerging and rising caddis.
Thanks Gary and Joe for showing me your Farmington. 
No crowds, no paths, no named pools, no people except a lone spin fisherman who left to be replaced by another. 
I asked Gary about that. He told me that bait fishermen walk in from the highway and make a few casts and they leave but they can’t get across as the water is too deep and the river doesn’t fish well from that side.
He also told me that the river fishes well all summer and the fish move into the pocket water in the rapids and there is plenty of deep holding water and that they are well fed and unmolested for the most part. I asked him about the rest of the river and he told me that the whole river is full of fish and that most people only fish above the New Hartford area and that is fine with him. 
It is fine with me too. 
He then told me a few secrets about fishing the upper reaches and I put them in my memory box to be taken out for use at a later date.

Then I went and gave my little tying and slide presentation at the Farmington Rivers angling association and had a great time. 
Good people.

Then I went back and spent a few hours learning about flies and pools from Paul.

The next morning I met Steve, “The Fisherman,” from the boards.
He showed me his flies and his rig and a new secret spot which again was down river.

He fishes with a puff ball strike indicator that is quite ingenious and can be moved up and down the leader at will to control the depth that your flies are fishing. He uses two flies the top one was a Golden something or other as an attractor and the bottom one was a bead head PT. Pheasant Tail size 16. He rigged me up and gave me instructions and then I sat and watched him for a while. He hooked a fish in short order in a fast run and gave me a running commentary on what he was doing. 
He is a bold wader, 6’, 2” tall and sure footed and less than fifty years old. 
Watching him jump around made me feel like I was about two hundred 

Same drill, short cast upstream, tip pointed at the fly, mends to keep the line straight, slipping line into the drift to fish further downstream and a single BB shot about 18” above the fly. 
He puts the indicator about one and one half time the depth of the water to keep his flies in the zone and adjusts the length as conditions change. 
“Move the indicator first before you change flies, depth control is more important than pattern for the most part”. 
Good advice.

After we had fished a while and I had managed to catch a fish and scare a couple of more we left there and went to the upper river to the lower Ovation pool. 
Picnic Benches it is called. 
He started fishing in the same way and I managed to almost hook a fish and then we left as he had to leave at 2 P.M and wanted to show me the upper Ovation pool. 
Lunker heaven as it is known to some. 
Too me too, as it turned out.

I was very fortunate to fish with both Steve and with Gary as they are masters of the techniques they showed me. I was lucky enough to catch fish with both these deep nymphing approaches by mimicking their methods as closely as I could while I was with them. That is the fast way to learn by the way. 
You already know what you already know. 
So when you get the chance to fish with someone who fishes perhaps a different way than you do put what you know in the trunk of your car or the back seat of your SUV and 
get the most you can in the time you have with them. 
Young guys are always trying to prove themselves and show what they know to be equal to others - insecurity - to be able to feel comfortable. 
All I can tell young guys is this. 
Get over it as soon as you can and keep your mouth shut and absorb.
You already know what you know; you can’t lose that by learning more.
You can miss the opportunity to learn by trying to prove yourself.
.It takes humility and self control to learn new things from others.
That is maturity. 

The Ovation Pool?
That is another story but it is Paul’s favorite pool on the river and I know why.

I am going back and I will be staying at Paul’s. 

I am bringing Denise.
I have a wading staff now, so does she.

I was going to go to Scotland today with a friend so he could hang out and see the country as his son is going to go to school there but his son wanted to go with him so I bowed out. Fathers and sons should be uninterrupted if they get a chance to spend this kind of time together. I wish I would have had the chance to travel to Europe or anyplace with salmon in it with my dad. I just got to go striper fishing and trout fishing and blue fishing and Bass fishing and fluke fishing and tautaug fishing and had a boat with him and a canoe and tied flies and had a beach house and fished about five times a week with him for my entire youth until I discovered girls and left him flat.

Yesterday I took a girl fishing. We went in a canoe and the river was high and really moving. No risers at all and she likes risers and she likes to fish downstream. I did a lot of back paddling and grabbing onto branches. It was dark and rainy and she asked me where the fish were. She is a good fisherwoman and can handle a rod really well and get it were she wants it and she much prefers her bamboo to any graphite - hands down.

I do not blame her they are so sweet to use and they are alive in the hand. High water and nymphs with heavy wire hooks and no takers. No risers and no takers and she wanted to know where the fish were. It wasn’t working out and we almost turned around and headed up stream to take out the boat but we didn’t.

We picked up and headed downstream to a pool We could fish in our waders.

There was a fish there rising inside a fallen tree.

She graciously told me to try for him and I did what I was told and promptly lost a nice fly to that tree and gave up. I waded sown a bit and fished a little glide and lost another fly in short order. Then I remembered what everybody knows and re-rigged a bit heavier and decided to try a new fly for me.

To me a new fly is a Muddler minnow and I only started to use that fly in the semi-recent past so I thought I would try another new fly for me. A black wooly bugger. Up stream I could hear muttered anglerette curses (similar to angler curses but sweeter in pitch) as the sunken tree kept eating her flies and I tried to be helpful by keeping my mouth shut and not getting in her way.

I was sick of tying on a tippet in the damp and grayness with my waterlogged fingers and my imperfect eyes so I tied on a loop and looped to looped a tippet of about 4.5 lb test. Made a little flick and landed the fly across stream dn started to play wit it and let it drift and then swung it a few times here and there and remembered Ray Bergman and spinners with spinning rods for high water ad make anther cast a little down and across and started a swing while letting some line slip to keep the fly down and I got a hit.

Oh! You got him! I was very proud of myself when she noticed I must say. “He looks like a good one,” and indeed he did fight very strongly and owned the pool fighting deep and then heading up and turning back down and I could not get a look at him. I started to think maybe a twenty inch brown Maybe bigger?

So I quieted myself and started to work at it. He was tough and strong and felt heavy. So we kept at it a while and he came close and his tail broke the water a few times and I asked my lady friend to get the net and she did. She was upstream and told me that she had better get below me if we were going to net the thing and she was right an she did and she did net it It was a coal black rainbow of modest proportions that was deep and dark and strong and fat as a pumpkin. I was impressed and we released him and she put on her favorite wooly bugger and that tree of hers ate it in short order.

I went back down stream and there was a big log jam sitting there all mean looking and dangerous and I let the fly ease down to the a little past the lip right in between a beer can and a soda bottle that were awash in froth and bang. I put it to him right away and yanked him right out of there as hard as I could and he came and I was full of glee. He did not fight nearly as hard and I had him in hand in a minute or less and he was brighter and longer and it was getting dark and we got in the canoe and headed up the river went out to dinner in East Greenwich a t a place called the Post Office Café which I highly recommend and I am glad I left my dad flat for girls. We both got over it. I am going trout fishing by myself this afternoon on the Blackstone for a few hours and then I am picking up my friend who netted my trout and we are going striper fishing tonight. Her idea. I think my dad would have approved of her big time. Her name is Denise.

Today is a grey day. A little damp, wet but bright. Good day to think about flies. 
Friend of mine just called he was standing in a trout stream fishing. He had just flushed a turkey and there were trout rising in front of him, beside him and behind him. 
The 21 century is amazing and it has just started. The cell phone is the tricorder of Capt Kirk.
Think I will tie some trout flies to celebrate the new order. 
No trustworthy color, sizzle and glitz. 
Just a touch, of sparse glitz maybe some dampening muted semi veiling with a bit of wildness. 
Punk rock hip-hop nymphs with nose rings and rhinestone tattoos. 
Gotta make em look alive.
Flight or fight flies. 

I will give them a try this afternoon.
You gotta have fun and there are no rules.