 This book is called Collateral Troutin. Half the stories in here are true and half are fiction. And so this is a true story called Code of the West. Code of the West. That was our group's catchphrase for everything. It had developed on a certain trip into Montana's Beartooths in the summer of 1988. The summer of the big Yellowstone fires. The quip had multiple layers of meaning for us. A four-pack of anglers from New England. The phrase had nearly a universal application. It might be used for an answer for anything as why it was your turn to bear bag, why it was this way and not that way, or why something unpleasant needed to be undertaken. It carried a whiff of the macho with it. A subtext of John Wayne saying, suck it up, pilgrim. The phrase could be used as an answer to everything that needed explaining. To this day, I regret that explanation for not reporting a grim and puzzling discovery. Some of the fires were already ongoing when we hiked deep into the Beartooth wilderness, planting a 10-day foray in quest of golden trout. Fishing for these elusive fish in the Flood Creek Basin, we had enjoyed a miraculous day. Looking like a scene from an apocalyptic Bible movie, the sky had darkened from the ongoing fires just south of us in the park. However, any disconcert we had from this, or from the fact that ash was dropping from the sky on our heads, was totally eclipsed by some of the best fishing of a lifetime. In an amazing 10 or 12 hours of daytime twilight, the trout went nuts taking everything we threw at them. The following day, we were on our way for a long climb to Lightning Lake, reputed to be one of Montana's premier lakes for goldens. We also knew that this high-evaluation lake would give us access to a great view of what was going on with the wildfire. These plans were soon shortcut by our encounter with a Forest Service officer who ordered us out of the wilderness and back to the trailhead. In an ironic turn of geography, we headed into Yellowstone Park. As large parts of the park were still open, had not been evacuated. Staying in one of the open campgrounds, we made plans to fish the Yellowstone River. We followed the Blacktail Deer Creek Trail, that's east of Mammoth Hot Springs, about three miles downstream and a thousand feet downhill to the Yellowstone River. Our thoughts were that the hike in the 2,000 feet of up and down would cut out the angling crowd, which in Yellowstone is legion in number. Once on the river, we crossed in on a suspension bridge and hiked upstream more than a mile before we sent in to fish. We figured that we would find a stretch of river that was not heavily pounded by other anglers. There was no real weight in the big water that characterizes this reach, but its edges had fish aplenty for us and the speed and roughness of the water was enough to camouflage my sloppy casts. Using stimulators, wolves and other large flies we took plenty of cutthroats in the 15 inch range in some larger. After five hours of fishing, we were ready to head home and assembled for the trek back to the suspension bridge and the 1,000 foot climb up to the trailhead. As we side-hilled at 100 feet or so above the right bank of the river, a shining glint caught the eye of one of our party. Check this out. We gathered around a small object he held in his hand. It was a human tooth, along with a tiny piece of jawbone. Now, none of us were specialists in distinguishing dental differences in man versus beast, but this was a pretty easy call. The tooth had dental fillings in it and there is no animal that we know that goes to a dentist. The tooth was weathered and not a recent addition to the landscape. What do we do? We huddled and debated the course of action. Should we bring it to the authorities? We planned one more day of fishing before we headed back to Boseman and this little discovery could screw that up with questions and maybe even a return trip to the river and not for fishing. After some animated debate, our trout posse decided we were going to leave it just where we found it for another park visitor to find. Why? Code of the West. This is a true story and I have huge regrets that we didn't follow up on it. Now, I mean, there's some big mystery out there and I don't know what it is but sort of kicking myself in the butt for going along. I don't know if anybody else has regrets but it probably would have been an extra day of fooling around with the authorities and so on. As it is, I don't know. I don't know what has ever happened if that thing is still there, if somebody would find it or whatever. Gee, I only milked that for five minutes. Bob, come and save me. I'm going to give you one more story here. Let's see. I'm hoping I'm not going to repeat. Have any of you been to any of my book presentations? Oh, good. Oh, you have. All right, well I might, maybe I hit something you've already or familiar with. All right. We'll go local with this one. This was a trip up near Wheeler Pond in the Northeast Kingdom. This is called Ducking at Duck. The trip started out quite routine. Routine like the last meal served to a condemned prisoner. Since we had a late summer backpacking trip to Idaho's Big Horn Crags Plant, four of us took it to mind to do a bit of a shakedown cruise. Our destination was among a cluster of backwards ponds in the town of Sutton, Vermont. None of this had been made a previous visit. We'd stuff those backpacks, those 4500 cubic inch packs as if we were going for 10 days, and then take a roundabout hike into the pond for an overnight fishing. The theory was to build up a little endurance for the Idaho trip. As to where we would put our rods to use and our heads to the pillow, we decided on Duck Pond. To make for a longer hike, we would start from Big Wheeler Pond about two miles north of Duck and take the serpentine trail that was indicated on our maps. This would give us about an eight mile round trip over the 24 hour period. We arrived at Big Wheeler around noon. It was late July, sweltering hot and humid. In addition to what we would actually need, each of our packs was filled with enough ballast to weigh 60 to 70 pounds. Depending on who was carrying it. I was the little guy. I would get the 60 pound packs. They felt murderously heavy as we showed to them. Locked the cars and headed in. The rough trail snaked through a lush green forest with much open floor. The high emerald canopy was beautiful and provided just enough shade to spare us heat stroke. This being the first power hike of the season for all of us, nobody was singing trail songs as we zigzagged our way to Duck in the heat of a breezy summer afternoon. It felt like we had done about ten miles when we dropped our packs at Blake Pond. Like French legionnaires in a B movie, we immediately stripped and plunged screaming into the pond. The cool water, a hefty snack, and about an hour's passage were enough to revive us for the last quarter mile to Duck Pond. We put our burdens down in a large clearing at the south end of Duck Pond. Our horizon was a nice view of the leeward side of Mount Whore on the horizon at the far end of the pond. Beautiful. We made camp and cooked a hasty supper on the MSR stoves. We were four whooped puppies. It was pretty close to six o'clock when I strung up my rod and began fishing. With nearly three hours of fishing left and even with the encouragement of a ten-inch brookie that I soon caught and released, I knew that I was not going to make the magic fishing hour. Early crashing up with the birds. Now that sounded like a plan. I was not at all alone in these ruminations. Indeed, I was the only one who had bothered to put a rod together. It was not yet seven o'clock when open talk began about hitting the sack. In minutes we were getting things in order to head for the bags. We were about to wipe the bevy with the sedentary 40-somethings, as you could imagine. Oh, to be a 40-something again. Suddenly we heard what sounded like a lawnmower bawling in the distance. The sound grew louder, and then in an instant a beat-up VW beetle sped into camp with a hundred feet of more of clearing to select from it parked abruptly 15 feet from one of our pitched tents. It immediately discouraged two campers, Leroy and Roy. Excuse me, Leon and Roy. Yes, they had prominent tattoos of skulls, blood-dripping daggers, and an old girlfriend's name that had resisted eradication, but they were congenial enough. They immediately came up to introduce themselves and check us out. They assumed, they assured us, they personally had fished out the pond last May, warned us about the bears, and offered detailed directions on how we might drive our cars and the next time we came. They then proceeded to break into one of two cases of beer they had brought along, offering us a six-pack with genuine hospitality. We declined politely. Our thoughts about immediately betting down had evaporated. Even if we could have overcome the embarrassment of going to bed at seven o'clock at night on a sunny July evening, the incessant banner and arguing in which the two were constantly engaged would have made sleep impossible. They argued about everything, how to pitch the tarp, where to build a fire, who owed who money for beer and gas, and where was the best place to lay a bullet into a charging beer and so on. When all was said and done, they pitched their tarp right off the VW, extending their territorial claim with eight feet of our tents. We found this especially remarkable because the clearing was very large and offered several alternative sites. Though all of this was characterized by a completely affable demeanor, it was more disconcerting than flattering. Moments before, we were blissfully tired, ready for bed and being serenaded by a chorus of thrush in a spectacular natural setting. The transformation was as profound and as instantaneous as switching channels on TV. Well, that's enough of PBS's nature. Let's watch Channel 11. Freddy Krueger and his minions go camping. Then the sure reality absolutely blossomed as they began to build their fire. They made a beeline for an abandoned culvert and proceeded to break off two and three inch thick slabs of this obsidian-like tar coating. In a very short time, they had enmasked 50 pounds of this stuff. They threw about 40 pounds of it into a hastily scraped fire ring and a couple of pieces of wood as a garnish and set the black mass ablaze. The resulting fire was an eerie replica of the oil field fires of the Gulf War. The thick black smoke billowed skyward as they broke out a gaggle of chicken parts and laid them on a grill they had taken along for the task. Leon, the barbecue master, barked directions at Roy as to how to position the grill precisely so that the chicken lay in the exact plane where the Halloween orange flames gave birth to the dense inky fumes of the tar smoke. The forest exchanged fur-to-glances and bit our lips bloody. The generosity of these two tattooed waves cannot be hardly overstated. No sooner was the chicken warm than it was pulled from the fire. The dish looked very similar to Louisiana black and cuisine except these had an attractive rainbow shimmer when they caught the light just right. Select pieces of these semi-raw ebony carcasses were offered to us. We declined and by now we're appearing to be rather of a steamy as old farts to this devil-may-care duo. As Leon and Roy worked through the chicken and beer the adrenaline that their advent had stirred in us began to wear off. As the 12th empty can of beer joined the others in the flaming tar pit I was again realizing just how bushed I was glancing at the remaining 36 full cans now amassed in Napoleonic formation at the water's edge and seeing a pile of extra batteries for the boombox radio that now emerged from the limitless volleys of the VW I began to think that things could hardly be worse. Quite simply I was dead wrong. More visitors. With little to herald their coming two pickup trucks pulled into the clearing. They were filled with laughing, drinking, shrieking, frisbee throwing but bandana dog owning students from Lyndon State College or so we had guessed. The new crowd was co-ed a number of the dozen or so everybody waved at everybody of course because Leon and Roy camped right on top of us the new arrivals certainly thought we were all together and that Leon was our leader because he never let up on barking orders telling Roy what to do. The newly arrived troop branched out with the coordination of a South American army ants and very quickly denuded the entire compound of any downed wood. Then out came the axes, handsaws and even a chainsaw as they continued to amass fuel for what was going to be the mother of all bomb fires. As soon as Leon and Roy saw the chainsaw they became socially ignited. They struck up a conversation with the students and complimented them on their preparedness. Of course Leon and Roy usually bring a chainsaw when they go camping but they were coming here and they knew there would be plenty of culvert tar and they wouldn't need much wood. The students returned the preparedness compliments by referencing the three dozen beers that were now at the ready in the shallow water and expressing their own concern that they might not have they might have to send out one of the trucks to the store. We were in a state of mental collapse. As we pondered our respective mind movies of what the evening would hold for us was that a conga drum in the back of the truck? Time passed. The college crowd eventually figured out that Leon and Roy were not out with us on a father's and son's fishing trip. Once they had done that the social fabric of the acampment quickly developed into us and them. Leon and Roy abandoned the smoldering tar pit and took up their seats at the bonfire near some of the coeds hoping against hope that somehow the gods of love would favor them with a miracle. This darkness began to gather and the bonfires spewed sparks 20 feet into the air their talk turned again to bear. Then the guns came out. The college crowd bragged a 22 carbine a 410 single shot and a small 22 revolver. Leon had a 12 gauge a 12 gauge shotgun with a pistol grip invented barrel. Roy had an army surplus 45. They were passing these freely around slapping each other on the back and brandishing them toward the far edge of the clearing. We were at our physical limits and the coming and night was all we needed. We gave them a good night and headed for the bags. We knew that there was going to be a few hours of rowdy drinking but we felt pushed enough to hope for sleep noise or no noise. Again, dead wrong. Apparently we had been the parental authority figures in this encampment. So as soon as we were tucked in and out of sight the festivities intensified to bacchanalian proportions. Over the next hour or so to a musical score of ear splitting heavy metal rock the scene escalated from shotgunning beers to shotgunning shotguns. If there was ever a bevy of accidents waiting to happen this assemblage was it. Here they were shithouse drunk passing around loaded guns swallowing additional mass quantities of beer and shooting off rounds towards the other end of the lake. Were there any bears sneaking up on the bonfire from that end of the lake they were put on notice by a hail of gunfire that Leon and company were putting out in that direction. At each report of a 22 our stomachs cramped with fear. When either the 410 or the 12 gauge went off we would thrash into the air an inch or two off our sleeping pads like cardiac patients being jolted with electric paddles. We were literally getting hit in our faces with each blast. Our geodesic dome tents were tautly pitched and their coated ripstop nylon skins produced tympanic action to the actual air blast into our face in concert with each fired round. The occurrence of shots were completely unpredictable. Rapid volleys were followed by internal minutes of waiting. We just lay there with stomachs nodded and funny tasting mouths running bloody movies of one kind or another. Several times one of us would mutter something about going out and ripping the guns out of their hands and keeping them all covered while the rest were disarmed but each time the suggestion was made it was thought better of and we just cowered low. The waiting was the worst. Kaboom! Sometime around 2 in the morning the last beer was drank and the last cartridge fired. They had run out of both. Leanne and Roy retired to their tent being within 10 feet of them. We each had the full benefit of their anatomical descriptions of each co-ed along with one or two improbable reasons as to why they hadn't brought them to bed. Around 3 a.m. we fell asleep only reasonably confident that we would live to see another day. At 7 in the morning our confidence was badly shaken as Leanne and Roy made their departure. These boys must have been less than half human. A scant four hours ago drunker than skunks they had crawled under their tarp and passed out. Now they were up and at them of course still pissed drunk. With places to go and people to see they packed up their gear in less than 15 minutes hopped into the VW bug and tried to start the car. I sat up just in time to view the process through the drawstring screening of the tent's window. If I've neglected so far to mention the 10 to 15 degree slope that interposed the scant distance between our tent and the VW it was because until that moment it seemed of little significance. As the VW failed to start rolling three feet at us in the venture it became apparent that the bug was an emergency brake or worse Roy was just too drunk to notice. There we were ground zero in the flight path of the VW another turn of the key in the car rolled towards us with its starter whining like the Banshee another four feet in the accelerating roll and Roy hit the brakes and held the car fast. Taking courage in the fact that Leanne and Roy were out of ammunition one of our party yelled at the tent at them no sweat buddy Leanne yelled back Roy I'll get the son of a bitch next try well Leanne was right Roy did it in the next try he might have even had a couple of feet to spare as the engine roared to life demonstrating consummate and clearly instinctive driving skill he jammed on the brakes instantly slammed it into reverse and surged the car back up the incline blasting the tent with sand and gravel the VW disappeared behind a cloud of notches blue smoke along with Leanne and Roy was out of our lives I remember nothing at all of the rest of the trip but I suppose that we beat it out of their post-haste that morning you know I can't think of another place in Vermont from which I've taken a 10 inch brookie and not pay to return visit Duck pond will always be the exception well the design on this was not to have you help you find the river by way of a map because you've got those in your pocket or on the dashboard of your car but to show you the river network and the rivers that we selected here to include are rivers that meet certain criteria it's the main stem or major tribs but beyond that it's waters that are technically called B1 waters it sounds like a weird thing but it is a technical classification different basins it's also aggravating that different basins call them different things it's quality water here good pushing water there water that is considered to be B1 or maybe approved to be one or B1 it's all the same it's good fishing waters this is what B1 waters waters with abundant wild sustaining salminated populations supporting multiple age classes identified as very good or class B1 waters for recreational fishing these waters support multiple age classes of trout totaling a minimum of a thousand trout per mile 200 trout per mile over 6 inches long so this is the criteria that if you find a stream in here other than I say the main stem and some of the main branches that we're going to put those in obviously but this is why the streams were selected because it's all good quality water well let me just show you what good quality water would look like this is the black branch of the Nalhegan river and you can see that you know it's got a nice bottom there's rocks there's forests up to the edge that produces shade at certain times of the year insects are falling in there's all kinds of good stuff going along the banks and let me show you a river that's not so hot and this is the Otakouichi and you can see why this is not such a great place because it's effectively it's a it's a desert for trout there there's either side there's like there's there's no riparian buffer there's only a little bit of cover there at the top and basically for insect life temperature is going to go up there it's not a good trout river so that is kind of the quality that we talked about in the book and let me just ask if you see the these little red paint on top of these right there does anybody know the significance of that anybody go out west fishing you see a lot of that out west and that is basically private property no trespassing that's what that means and I think we might be looking over Ted Turner's buffalo ranch here this is the Ruby River in the background the Ruby you can drive along for it for 30 miles nearby the big hole is nearby and you can drive 40 or 50 miles of that river without finding a place where you can get in and fish fishing is great in Montana don't get me wrong but sometimes access is very weird and very hard we in Vermont are so fortunate to have the great access because basically if it's not posted you can just fish it you get your four wheels off the highway or you can get down into a stream you can even go through private property this is built into our Vermont Constitution the colonists that were here had just were fresh off of being in England with the class society and the lords and the ladies having a great hunting places to hunt and fish and so on it was all private property you can't you can't fish it so actually built into the Vermont Constitution is the right for you to fish on waters that are otherwise not posted or if they're navigable and believe me that can be some pretty small streams you can be in that stream bed and going up and down this stream bed is perfectly legal one of the other aspects that's included in this book is access and I put this up I don't know if many of you don't know my history but I've had a long standing interest in access for those who are physically challenged and so on and part of this we decided to include in this was in the state if there are access points that a wheelchair user can go and fish they're in there and in fact I'm sorry to report there's only three of those in Vermont we do better on the lakes and ponds we've got a dozen or so there should be scores more but it's it's very challenging and expensive to make things like this this is a wonderful place at the at the juncture of the Posamsik River and the Moose River you couldn't pick a better hole to have that and if that's not crowded by a wheelchair user or somebody else that is physically challenged well anybody can go up there and fish as well I'm going to mention a resource that you might if you're computer savvy and have got some patience the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources has this really cool program and if you look up ATLAS ANR ATLAS Light LITE and why they have a regular ATLAS why I'm saying light is the the light is clunky enough the loading and having the data from the full-blown version is going to slow most computers down so at any rate there's all kinds of different features you can do in this and what I used it for was to identify the the access points and right along in here this is the the Barton River we're about 200 feet from from Crystal Lake and just about immediately you can't see it too well but there's a little green strip here highlighted on the map that is publicly owned and so it's an interesting fact that back in the 60s somehow the fish and wildlife came up with a pot of money and were able to purchase access to a bunch of different stream beds in the stream side most of it there's some down around the Baton Kill a lot occurred down there but most of it occurred in the northeast kingdom probably because of the poverty farmers didn't have money so when they were offered some money for access they took it so the result is that when you look at the black and I'm not the black river in the north not the one down in Cavendish but the black the Clyde, the Barton including the Willoughby the river is 60 miles of stream side public access on those and all that public access Bob and I have described in the book so I will mention one thing it's a meets and bounds description kind of like oh it's 100 feet from the bridge or as you tell here and I did not put down in there we talked about it but did not put down the I didn't want to get in trouble because some of this access nearly all of the access I would say that qualifies as this has never been public before so you're not going to find signage something but I didn't want somebody waving our book and a GPS at some farmer and says I have a right to be here because some of the farmers might not even know that they you know three owners before back in the 60s that they yielded rights to the access of the river by those by the way at least the minimum length that is 16 and a half feet one rod not a fly rod though a 16 and a half footer might have some use there but anyhow a 16 and a half foot swath show another slide here was any of that recorded in town records no the only place I really could find it was on the maps the ANR Atlas light and I was able to identify those those areas by using that resource as far as the regulation states for mott waters are accessible to within that British rod length of the high water mark of the river so when the state I served on the fish and wildlife board and when the state had acquired a bunch of this land back then it was in combination with the intent to allow access but not with the intent of walk through my yard so a lot of it's not to Peter's point it's not published but if you stay within the meats and bounds of that British rod length of the high water mark and you gain access to the river you are within the legal fishing access of the river and then stay in either in the river or below the high water mark correct and then at least you know you're legal because I did have an encounter to Peter's point with a landowner who had transferred title and rather than get into an open dialogue I said look and I'm going to have the game warden come by and explain it to you and she was fine after that but she her comment excuse me would you get off my yard and I said well I can't because the bank is too steep to go into the water here so I'm just going to stay in the right way and I'll get back in the river when I get below the property and she's like well you're on my land and I said actually I'm not but I don't want to get into it right now I'll let somebody else tell you we would recommend I think if you encounter something like that you're going to find some detailed directions in this and if you encounter a situation I would say Bob had a great idea let the game warden sort it out for you but you'll find it you'll be in the right with it because this is public, lots of public land this is another type where they have other larger tracks that they have purchased different places this happens to be this is also on the Barton but it gives you an idea that some of these have an extent so that's like a piece of public land that they've acquired that it's just it's not that narrow one rod with and sometimes there's directions because sometimes it will hop from one side to the river or another you'll be oh okay at a certain point public access is gone on this side it picks up on the other side it's very interesting but there's some detailed picture detailed descriptions of that in the book stocking not a lot of Vermont streams is stock if I were we do the calculation of I think on in our book here there's a 150 just about 150 trout streams are covered I think northern card of graphics excuse me 450 are covered in this book northern card of graphics I think did 16 1500 streams back in 85 but a lot of them are not really relevant like here's the place I'm going to fish it just they exist but not we've selected that but of those say if we use that 1500 as like a baseline figure say there's at least 1500 trout streams in Vermont there are more less than one half of 1% receive any stocking so it's very limited stocking when you look at the big picture and the other good news to talk about stocking is as of this year brook trout that are stocked are going to be triploid brook trout that is to say they've got an extra chromosome and they can never reproduce so from here on going forward all the native strains and brook trout will be preserved there'll be no interbreeding between anything that is stocked now browns and rainbows are a different thing but those aren't native fish here but the native fish it's a great thing they'll have those those strains will remain pure so for stocking information on anything that has been stocked we reviewed at least six years of records at a minimum and then characterized what this general stocking was over six years and there's a lot of numbers involved so we did some rounding you know 1,015 fish were put in in this place close enough to say 1,000 I'm going to drive you nuts enough with the numbers in there without like nick picking or if they measure trout to the tenth of an inch we were rounding those off to half inch and quarter inches or something like that to just a little more make it easier reading but in general there's a if any stream had been stocked there's a characterization in there of the stocking pattern for at least the last six years and on the stocking there are also there's special programs that there are eight rivers in the state that receive special stockings of two year fish and these are highlighted in the book as well these are these are put in rivers where they're not going to likely be able to hold over for another year although there's a couple of holdovers that actually do have some holdovers but there are places that really can't aren't geared to support trout all by themselves and they're also geographically spread around the state so the only place that's really missing any of that is the northeast kingdom because white screw around with something that's that good but anyhow here's some of the rivers are this is the freight train hole this is the river in Cavendish beautiful river by the way there's trophy rivers as they call them are meadow cut and so there's a certain character to that that's different this is not a meadow cut river this is like this is freestone it's got nice runs and rocks it's just like a classic trout stream so if you get an opportunity to go down to Cavendish there's all kinds of parking too along the way this is East Creek in Rutland one of the more interesting rivers in that this is the start just be up above there's like a little dam there's an outflow from it so this is the first part you go to the other side of the bridge that I'm kind of standing on there it goes through a golf course for a while then leaves from the golf course it goes into like a suburban area characterized by ranch houses and then goes into another area that's industrial with warehouses and then finally empties into the Castleton River but they have wonderful brown trout in there and actually there's one there's places where they're catching trout that are holding over that exceed well over 20 inches so it's a neat place to fish so that goes into the Castleton River or the Otter Creek? excuse me, Otter Creek, you're correct, thank you yeah this is the Missusquoie that's the upper part of the Missusquoie River it goes down a couple of miles from there these are just to give you some illustration this is Fairfax a trophy section and I've fished this for years but I don't like fishing this area because it's very crowded if you go down the road a mile or so or half a mile down the road you'll find nice stretches of river where you might see somebody fishing off a few hundred yards but you can get a nice stretch of river to yourself this is just up the road here I was telling another presentation here for the first time this this summer I learned how to fish water like this another guide on the Connecticut River that I went with basically he was talking about fishing this kind of water it is just the trick is to fish it really slow and he had just like he was using these little number 12 nymphs he gave his flies at the beginning of the day each one, don't lose them he had just tied them up this morning in the morning for us and that's all he had and they were working but the trick was just like the slow hand twist retrieve just bringing the nymph in very slow he doesn't use indicators or anything like that but he would watch the line so we had quite a bit of success like that so I'm not so intimidated by water like that when I see it anymore so now we'll talk about the tips and tactics I'm going to sit for a minute so on the tips and tactics we got together with some local guides that helped to share some of their information so for each region or major watershed somebody from that area said jeez you know I fish down here a lot and we recruited them so if you read through the book how many of you guys have it yet? four so as you go through the chapters there's going to be the local angle and those people are going to provide you with the information they fish on that water these are the fly patterns these are the secret places you know that we like to access the river there's no spot burning involved here though there's no spray paint on a rock stand here cast there, catch a fish, go home so you still have to put in the effort what I tried to do after having owned the fly rod shop for the last 20 years and prior to that having a guide service so this is my 38th year is to take some of the stuff that I've learned over the last 38 years that I have to do to try to get people on to fish and in order to do that especially in Vermont trout waters I've been very fortunate to guide in different areas so I run trips or hosted trips to Labrador British Columbia Alberta I used to live in Jackson Hall, Wyoming down in the Caribbean islands which is looking pretty nice after today's weather alright work with me a little bit here guys but the snow's coming so the Caribbean's looking a lot nicer so what I did is I said okay we're going to take the four seasons for fishing because Vermont has open year round trout water and I want to try to give people information on how to catch flies during the four seasons because during the the gravy grabbing months of the year when most anglers go out which is June, July and August and that's when fish are actively feeding they're more likely to chase food they're super aggressive I don't want to say everybody can catch a fish then but that's the time of year that people go out put the effort in and they're typically very successful when it comes to spring, summer, winter fall the challenge becomes how do I catch fish during these less active feeding cycles so what happened is I said let me take some of the stuff that I've learned from all the different places where I've either guided or fished and take those tips and tactics and apply them to the fishing experience in Vermont so what we did is we wrote chapters on fishermen spring summer winter and fall so if you're going to approach fishing in Vermont trout waters during those months these are the methods that you want to use these are the fly patterns that are tested, proven, successful in fishermen spring the slides are going to be a little bit tough so I'll just summarize them and then you're just going to have to read the book but what you're dealing with in fishermen spring is the water temperature ranges of typically less than 50 degrees water column is to fish successfully try to cover the middle and bottom water columns which for fly fishermen I will tell you in spite of your level of experience most people don't know how to do that or don't do it well enough to consistently catch fish and then lastly the time of day I get people every spring that come in the shop and they're in their waiters and boots the store opens at 9 o'clock and they're like well I was out this morning at the crack of dawn and I didn't have any luck catching anything and I said well I'm going to leave it 11 and I'm going to fish till about 3 because as the water temperature heats up the fish will be more active so you're going home and I'm just starting so a lot of people don't understand the relationship between water temperature and how fish feed or the food reacts so I've been teaching of course at Johnson State College for over 30 years fly fishing if you need a half credit to graduate see me after this presentation the fly fishing class we sane the river collect the bugs put them in a tray in the spring of one of those classes about a decade ago we collected a huge cluster of Hendrickson nymphs we put them in the tray it was a sunny day the water temperature was about 46 degrees and as I was doing my class the water temperature heated up in the tray and the bugs hatched so we created the artificial temperature range for those bugs to hatch and the kids got to see it so the temperature is so critical to not just the fish feeding cycles or the fish movement cycle but the food corresponds so now let's go to the next slide in the spring we've got your terminal tackle so we cover in the book this is really critical because if you're set up right you're set up for success if you're set up wrong it won't work so leader construction is probably one of the things that most people are intimidated by but it's truly the answer to succeeding so we cover rod lengths leader tippet fly patterns that are recommended and all of these are in the in the chapter the only reason I don't want to dwell on this is I'll send you these slides if you email me which the last presentation Peter and I did I actually got three or four people and we sent them off but it's in the book I'll show you are the rods set up to do it this way and show and tell is better than trying to read it or envision it you know from the book next slide Peter this is an example of the floating line with a nymphing system attached again the leader formula is on the slide I'll send it to you the leader formula is not in the book it talks about using a strike indicator leader system so as a special bonus here tonight I'm sending you the slide so that you can have that formula next I'm going to show it to you in a minute next slide Peter this is a floating line with a sink tip so both of these systems the indicator system for nymphing and the sink tip system are the two systems that'll get you into the middle and bottom water column ok that's your spring setup next slide fisherman's summer water temperature typical range 60 to 70 degrees water column to fish is typically top and middle everyone's a hero that time of year typically you don't need a sink tip leader or nymphing rig but by having that in the back of your head if all else fails you can go to those systems and still catch a trout and I'll explain to you one of my days on the river where that saved the day fishing time completely switches now so now the guides at the fly rod shop are meeting you guys at 5.30 in the morning and we're back to the shop by 10 am the cooling off effect of the water from the previous day or the low sunlight level at the end of the day will vary the water temperature 1 or 2 degrees and be enough to trigger a feeding cycle for fish at night fortunately for us in Vermont the temperatures cool off this was one of the best summers I've seen in decades literally for fishing consistently throughout the summer one of the best things that happened is we had the cooling nights plus Vermont has a lot of the rivers that Peter and I covered that have cold discharge tributaries that help to cool that water during the evening so if you do your exploring you take a stream thermometer or if you're wearing a pair of shorts and waiting as you walk up and down the river you'll feel those cold pockets and that's where you want to focus your attention provided the habitats there to hold fish but at this time of year your leader tip of construction is typically going to be on a floating line you don't need a sink tip leader you don't need strike indicators unless you're nipping and you want to have a little bit more success on not missing the strikes fly color patterns in the spring so you come in the fly you buy a box full of flies you've got hundreds you haven't organized them yet you haven't spent a lot of time in the winter kind of sorting thrones spending those nights kind of getting ready so the flies are all mixed up so in the summer when the cooling effect triggers the hatch what color flies should you use white tan cream so the cooling effect of the water in the summertime triggers the light shaded patterns to hatch so the names of the flies will help you figure that out like Cahill cream variant pale morning done pale fly morning hatch done as a dry fly wow it must come off at night so the flies a lot of the flies are actually going to give you the tip of when to fish them or what the colors are by name and when to use them in the springtime when the water temperatures average below 50 degrees the darker colored nymphs hatch in the spring and fall so the shades of the flies are typically dark the Hendrickson nymph the black catus so if you literally take your fly boxes after tonight because you're going to run home after this presentation and probably be up all night organizing your fly box you can set them up by spring summer and fall shades and now your flies are all organized as the seasons change you know when to grab what fly fisherman's fall we're in it you want to fish top middle and bottom water column best time to fish again is mid day water temperature average is between 40 and 60 degrees so just in the last couple of days the water temperature has dropped below the 60 degree mark and now it's down into that hovering 50 degree range we've had beautiful sunny days so the water temperature heats up during the day so we've been catching fish on blow winged olives during the middle of the day that have hatched so our dry fly fishing on grasshoppers, ants beetles, blowing dollars icinica all those flies are catching fish literally from about 11 to 3 in the afternoon we had a full day trip 2 days ago we started the trip in the morning with a sink tip leader fishing streamer flies caught a couple of fish as the day progressed we switched to dry flies and then the last hour of the trip we went back to nymphing with an indicator system and caught a fish on a nymph and that person in a full day of guiding experienced all three water columns of how to fish because the time of the year they were here warranted that we cover those techniques so that was an awesome day on the water for not only the guide but for the customer catch your formulas recommended streamer flies nymphing flies, terrestrials typically you're using lighter leaders in the summertime so are you guys familiar with the X number system on a leader as the X number goes up the leader gets smaller in size when the water is low, clear in the summer months fish are obviously pressured more and fishing much lighter setups so 5X, 6X, even 7X leader next slide fisherman's winter the most enjoyable time of the year to fly fish in Vermont the Winooski river all the rivers we covered in the book talk about the sections of Vermont rivers that are open for year-round angling so for those of you out there be sure to buy your license on January 1st and experience the new year with the fishing experience on Vermont's drought streams it's the most challenging technical fishing time weather you can't fall in if you do, you have to go home the one thing I want to give you a tip on that's outside the fishing methods is now that Vermont regulations allow boats to be worn in Vermont again don't wear them in the winter if you haven't done it, go for it just because you want to experience it so you step in the water the felt gets wet, you step out of the water the felt begins to freeze and as you walk to your car you will grow a foot and a half in height because the snow on the bottom of the boots will collect and continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger as you walk to your car and by the time you get back to your vehicle you'll have to take the boots off to drive home because you won't be able to push on the gas pedal you won't get it off either I mean it will freeze solid so the fisherman's winter, you're only going to be fishing in the lowest water column I had steel head guided from, I leave Monday I come back Thanksgiving, I used to stay there through many of the winter months into the spring I grew up just outside of Rome, New York and guide on the Salmon River in Pulaski and that winter steel head fishing is unbelievable but the water temperatures are 34 degrees on a hot day 33 degrees on a cold day and the fish will bite but you have to get the fly to the bottom so I guided there and then took those techniques when Vermont opened its year-round waters and applied them to my winter fishing here in Vermont and that's how you catch fish and I'll go through it here in a minute this is your leader construction it's in the book again okay, so the last slide is the day that Peter and I went out on the river to take all this stuff that we had done over a year plus 14 months year and a half and we said well let's go out and do a little bit of research so we met at my shop Parker came with us we went down to a secret location in Stowe and I spent the morning netting Peter's fish for him, it was awesome so that was the best I don't want to say the best part but that was one of the more enjoyable parts of putting this book together was having to put the research into it at the end so there's the last slide so at this point what I'd like to do if I can take another 10 minutes of your time I want to show you how to set these leader systems up so can you guys flick the lights back up okay so after 30 years of guiding instead of having a vest I finally went to a fanny pack some guys like the sling packs chest packs but if I had to go out and fish winter spring summer fall right now everything I need to cover all three four seasons of fishing is right here so this is a leader wallet it has my floating leaders in it so those would be my standard trout leader 7.5 feet, 9 feet it has all of my sink tip leaders okay so what I do is I take this line that's called T14 T10 T8 and that stands for tungsten weight so it's a leader that has a tungsten core and depending on the tungsten weight that tells you what the sink rate of the line is so T14 is heavier than T8 so as you go up the tungsten chart I cut those in 3 foot 5 foot and 7.5 foot lengths and they're covered in the book I put a perfection loop at both ends of those so when I take my floating fly line that now comes manufactured with a loop connector on the end I can take my sink tip leader pass it through the loop of my floating line and back out the other end does that make sense okay then attached to that this is the mistake that most fishermen make is they buy a 7.5 foot 3x leader 3x being fairly heavy maybe 8 pound test and they attach a woolly bugger to it and what happens is that as the tungsten weight is falling into the water column the monofilament does what it floats so the tungsten weight is going here and the sink tip to the fly is riding high so now at the end of the shift the leader system pulls tight in the current and the fly snaps down to the proper depth and it's too late you might grab one because the fish gods are always with us they always bite once in a while because that's why we go back but I want to catch them all so I take that T14 head and I attach about an 18 inch 24 inch piece of straight monofilament called a tippet and I pick a straight piece of mono between 6 and 10 pound test and I cut it at that 2 to 3 1.5 to 2 foot, 3 foot maximum length so now that whole thing is sinking together so consistently the fly travels with the sinking tip leader system which does two things it allows me to control the depth of the fly because I can gauge the sink tip leader sink rate and how the current is pulling it through the water and I can adjust it to mend it and create a deeper run a deeper drift so I'm taking you guys on the trip I did the other day for the full day so on that sink tip leader system I said to the client the first thing he did is he stood facing upriver and he casted the sink tip leader system upstream and what happened it fell to the bottom of the river bed and he broke off the fly because he couldn't control the speed of the drift and this tungsten head just sank to the bottom so then I repositioned him and had him cast it down in a cross river and now the current grabs the line as it hits the water and as the fly is drifting it's sinking and he took the rod tip and he put a few twitches on it so he made the fly look like a darting minnow and I said well that's getting down there but it's not deep enough on the next cast I want you to cast it down and across and then flip the line upstream and that's called a flip mend because we're very technical so we used the flip mend took the pressure off the leader and the fly started to immediately sink deeper in the water column and as it went across the current he started twitching it and he caught a fish so the difference between those two drifts wasn't the fly it was the depth the fly traveled okay and another drift take the line cast it across stream and as it's drifting down mend it downstream and what does that do it grabs the fly line and it makes it accelerate in speed and now the fly travels at a faster speed so why do fish bite? they bite by sight by smell and vibration and movement so when we're fly fishing we're not letting them smell it so we've eliminated that sense so it better look good and it better move right because the vibration and movement is what triggers the fish to react so we're making it hard on ourselves because we want to fly fish we want to make it hard but if you learn how to control the speed of the fly and know how to pick the right colors all of a sudden we start catching way more fish so on that sink tip leader system this rod has a woolly bugger on it because everybody in here hopefully knows a woolly bugger fly because we got 30 of those in our box and then attached to it is our sink tip leader which is a different color and then our short section of monofilament ok and then I'm going to pass this around so you guys can look at that while I'm showing you the next setup so Peter if you click the up arrow until we get to the indicator leader and it's the one that had all the little next one alright do you guys ever use strike indicators anybody yeah alright so a strike indicator there's one ok if you're going to be fishing the bottom water column that's fine that's alright I'll keep going so this is this is a strike indicator it sounds cool what is it it's a bobber so the bobber tells you what that the fish ate the fly it goes it moves it twitches you lift the rod tip up you set the hook according to field testing data I don't know who did it but I've seen it published a lot 75% of the strikes that you have on a leader system that does not have an indicator is a missed bite upwards of 75% of the takes you don't feel and you miss so if you're trying to nymphish deeper water levels without a bite indicator you're missing takes I do it all the time because I don't care if I catch the fish I just like the challenge but it requires you to be super attentive to your leader drift so that when that thing moves or twitches you can react and set the hook so at least for a while to prove the science try these a bite indicator so the way they work they make them in different types this one's got a little gasket on it and you make a loop through your leader wrap it around the gasket slide it up or down to adjust it this one has a little plastic cap on it in a slot now do these ever spook the fish? I don't know I don't think so I'm not catching less fish I think because of it I will tell you I've had fish eat that so I missed that one nice was it smoking camels that day or Paul Mauls it was Marlboro it was Marlboro alright so they are smokers but you know some of them aren't which is good so the strike indicator is just what it says where do you put a strike indicator on your leader when you're nymph fishing the science formula is to put it at one and a half times the depth you think you're fishing so if you're in a three foot run carrying the drift through a run that's about three feet deep you slide the indicator up to about four and a half feet so that when it floats towards the bottom it can move through the current and that leader can kind of travel with the water and get you closer to the lower later here's the problem if you're not carrying enough weight when you cast it the fly hits here it starts to travel down it gets to the bottom you're mending your line to control your drift it travels a couple of feet and then it swings back up now for many summer fishermen they'll come in the shop and they'll say man I do a lot of nymph fishing but I catch a ton of fish when it swings why? because the fish sees it moving so that's not the way if you're going to be fishing that method take the bobber off and fish a tight line swing through the water give the fish the movement it wants the fish are more aggressive in the summer you don't have to necessarily go to the bottom to catch them one of my preferred methods of fishing in Vermont in the summer is to fish a soft hackle fly meaning an emerging insect that looks like it's traveling up through the water column on a tight line drift so the fish sees it and here's why when they grab it they set the hook it's deadly my hook to land ratio goes way up if I hook 8 fish I land 6 tight lines hit on a tight on a slack line dead drift the fish grabs it spits it out I react and I'm like oh I just missed that guy so you miss more fish that way so a lot of people say well I'm catching them on the swing okay in the summer you can get away with that in the fall you can get away with it but once you get into the winter months the fish's metabolism is much slower and the fish won't chase the food so now you have to dead drift so here's your goal I want to cast the fly here hopefully it goes to the bottom crease this is my bottom layer isn't that nice the way that she did that so here's my middle water column and here's my upper water column the fish are here the food falls into this bottom layer and then it travels as far as it can in that lower water column and then at the end of the drift you can't manage it anymore and it swings out but instead of having this distance of opportunity I've now increased it to this distance of opportunity how do you do that you have to use a super heavy weighted leader system so the float that you use has to be something that will carry the weight so it's not a strike indicator now it's literally a bobber so the bobber in this case is shaped like a teardrop the black marking tells you that the float is traveling at the proper depth the white mark is the water mark so when you slack the line pressure the float should pop upright and it should float right at the white mark if you see a lot of black you haven't added enough weight yet the orange is so that we can see it so it goes back to this float color the bite indicator a lot of people like orange because it shows up in the water now these come in four different sizes they make them in football floats teardrop floats this one happens to be called a raven float so they're all different shapes and they're meant to carry weight so I did a trip with a guy set him up with this see how the weight is spread out through the leader the reason we use a chain of weight instead of an individual split shot is because the chain of weight when you mend the line the chain falls in a straight line a chain of weight falls super fast an individual split shot will travel so this is a very abrupt boom the flies in the zone now as the bobber travels past me I keep throwing what's called a stack mend so I'm stacking the line upstream of the bobber so that every time I throw that little flip or stack out it takes the pressure off the float and the float continues to travel at a natural dead drift attached to the end is a piece of tippet about 18 inches the last weight is here and the flies here so if I go back to the water column theory I gauge the float depth so the weight lands at this line and the fly travels in this column of water that's where the fish are so as it travels through there the fish that sees that fly can just go grab it and move back to its spot so it's still a very technical way of fishing but at least I know on every drift I'm in the zone okay so here's my job I leave for New York tomorrow Monday I'm going to guide for the next 30 days the water temperatures are dropping we're going to be using that indicator system to fish every day no more dry flies it's over maybe a sink tip leader let the fly swing deep catch a hot fish on that boom, he bites it but I know if I go to this method I'm in the game on every drift I'm in the lower water column so for the next month every day I'm guiding I'm getting paid to teach you how to mend it properly but more importantly I'm getting paid really well hold the rod for me right here I'm getting paid really well to do this wow that was great Bob you're incredible I never would have done that I know wait a second you didn't catch one let's try it again oh wow alright try it again boom fish on how come we found them okay now I adjusted too high and as the float's traveling down river it keeps going tick tick tick tick that means the last split shot on that chain is dragging so now I go wow you're amazing that'll be $390 like Peter said when he learned how to fish with with Osprey right Kenny Hastings getting back to the Winooski fish the fly super slow the fish want to eat but when you're looking at a super slow river it's like fishing in a pond how do you know where to fish you don't so you have to cover it all so you create a grid pattern mathematically you cut that grid pattern through the river and you take a systematic casting approach so not only do I move the bobber but I go one step further and I say Byron good job take a step down river wow that's incredible try it again five drifts later Byron you're doing great take another step down river unbelievable because here's what everyone does they anchor in they cast here they cast there they cast there and they go home and mow the grass so here's what I do I say cast here let out three feet of line cast again let out three feet of line cast again I can't cast it any further than that I can't either don't worry about it take a step cast drift take a step cast drift now ten minutes later we're at the tail out of the run come on back up let me see the fly try that one we go through twenty minutes later we didn't catch any let's go to another spot so here's the deal I'm not catching fish all day I'm not catching them on every drift but I'm fishing a very systematic method of covering water I go big fly small fly deep middle top move go to the next spot so if I fish a run and I've spent an hour in it it's maybe not the day but I covered it so I've got the Dave Washburn carpenter's method of fly fishing I just pull another tool out of my tool bag and I try something different okay so I have not just a framing hammer but I've got a skill saw a table saw a coping a sawzall because I make mistakes and all of a sudden now I've taken four tools through the run and I've covered it I didn't cover it maybe well enough but I'll move to another spot because I know if I go someplace else I'll find a fish that bites so I'm going to end this on a story that happened to me so I went up to the upper Connecticut River and I fished in above Canaan in Beecher Falls I hiked out to an island and I carried three rods so I saw you guys writing notes so the first thing to success is you have to buy three rods from the Fly Rod Shop begin in the morning begin in the morning awesome I got to take it so I've got three rods set up one has a dry fly set up one has a sink tip set up and one has this indicator set up I went to the upper Connecticut instead of going the river and re-rigging everything because that's a little complicated to make that set up I carried them in and I set two rods on the island I fished down through the run with a catastrophic dry fly and a soft tackle and merger just exactly the way I told you to do it made a pass it took me 25-30 minutes nothing went back grabbed my sink tip system went back through the run nothing grabbed the indicator went down through the run and caught over a dozen fish didn't make it all the way went back grabbed my dry fly rod and said they've got to be biting they turned on went back through finished out the pass zero so now I'm going wow that's pretty interesting let me grab the sink tip and try that nothing went back through with the indicator system and caught three more fish and said okay they're only feeding on the bottom and that was in the month of September so this system saved the day most fly fisherman on the first pass a catastrophic dry fly and the soft tackle would have said well they're not biting today I guess I'll go home so don't give up change tactics okay if you become very comfortable with tying knots switching from one system to the other is not as painful as you think and the biggest comment I get from people that I guide is that after the trips over they say what you learn the most is you're constantly changing your tactics and at the end of the day if something worked and they said you either here's what I do I have a net that has a handle and the net comes up to here because then I go like this and I lean on it and I say take a step because it's a very active sport for me so I lean out a little longer and I say take another step so while they're not catching a fish after a while I say you know what and I grab one of the other rods and I change it and I say I walk over and say here try this go back through and fish it again lean on the net go through the same thing take a few steps it doesn't work switch it to something else so I have confidence that you guys that don't fish a lot haven't had the opportunity or I've been very fortunate to do this for my whole life so I'm very confident I don't get up in the morning and say man I hope I catch one today I get up in the morning and I say man I hope I catch a bunch of them today this is going to be great if I go out there and I'm like holy crap I hope I catch one today that's a bad day so I'm going out there ready to get them now my job is how am I going to figure out how to make them bite and if you come up with a system with covering the water depth as your priority and confidently saying I want to fish this far at a certain level when I get a bite I don't go wow how did that happen I go wow the fish was three feet down that's kind of cool I wonder if there's another one there so every drift has a purpose and when you read this book and you learn about those seasons and those terminal tackle systems and then read the local angle from the guides a lot of the stuff they put in there we didn't coach them what to do we said you guys know what you do we want you to cover some recommended fly patterns time of year and the methods you use to catch the fish and we got the stuff back from these guys we were like wow this is going to be awesome so the person that came in the book about two weeks ago I mentioned this to Peter said to me I was looking at the book for inspiration or for information and I read the book and found inspiration I'm going to a spot that I read about because the spot on the Posamsik river guide wrote the info on sounded great I can't wait to go up there and try that spot so that's as far as I'm concerned the book did it's job so it's going to sit on your coffee table and hopefully all winter long you'll be inspired alright so thank you if you have any questions let me know leader formulas will email them and you guys know everything because you've already been to all my seminars you yourself have said you know your students have to hear it three or four times and since I was a teacher all my life I know that Bob when you were describing the sinking leader setup the sinking leader is coming off the fly line and then you said there's a length of monofilament correct it's just tip it it's just tip it it's just your tip oh so the tip it really just comes right from the sinking leader well the leader has a loop connector yeah so you can either fix the tip it to that loop by using a fisherman's knot or perfection loop what I here's what I do I take this it's on my bag it's on my waist and I'm using a sink tip leader so I grab the pound test I want and I pull it to here okay that's what's the length in the book we said 24 to 36 inches when I'm on the river it's that much what is it 22 so if I'm fishing with different leader setups I go this this and it's that those are my three measurements what's the email address bob at fly rod shop but to your point you're fishing in muddy water with a woolly bugger the fish is going to hit it hard go with 8 pound 3x don't worry about tapered leader tapered line the fish isn't going to be leader shy he's going to grab it thank you folks