I certainly haven’t been blogging regularly—for that I apologize. My excuse is that I have been prioritizing finishing my fourth book and other writing projects. My new book, “I’ll be home for dinner unless there’s a hatch” will be available in a few months. At the end of this post, I will include an excerpt.

I have also made it a priority to visit my local streams. They mostly hold stocked trout, but holdovers are caught, and smaller wild trout are part of the mix. I just enjoy wandering along these small waters and immersing myself in our natural world—before the biting bugs emerge!

Some of these waters, such as Collyer Brook, I have fished for forty years. Others, just for a few years. How do you find fun local waters to fish? I have several suggestions. (1) Read my book, Flyfisher’s Guide to New England. (2) Study the State of Maine Stocking Report. (3) Spend some time with either the old-fashioned maps like DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer, or the digital navigation apps and find the blue lines. (4) join local fly-fishing organizations and ask the members for good spots to try.

The following videos and photos are of my local spots: Collyer Brook, Red Brook, the Little Androscoggin, Mill Brook, Otter Pond, Chaffin Pond, Panther Run, Pleasant River, etc. But regardless of where you hang your hat, I am sure you have undiscovered gems near you.

Short notice I know, but I am giving a video presentation at the Maine Fly Co shop on February 19th, Wednesday evening at 7 pm. It is an adventure travel presentation where I show vignettes and talk about the ins and outs of fly-fishing travel to Patagonia, New Zealand, British Columbia, Alberta, a float of the Middle Fork of the Snake River, and the Golden Trout Wilderness. Go to www.maineflyco.com website and click on classes tab to sign up. It is free even though it might ask you for credit card information.

The last six weeks have been a throwback to the Maine winters I remember several decades ago. Below freezing during the day and near or below zero at night with at least small snowstorms every few days. The skiing has been excellent and all water surfaces are frozen, given ice fishers free rein for the first time in several years.

I haven’t gotten out too much for all sorts of reasons but did break down and purchase an electric auger. What a pleasure. I did have a good day on Panther Pond with the pickerel and big bass hitting with regularity.

November continued the warm and dry weather. In fact, in many parts of southern Maine and the rest of the northeast we did not experience a rainstorm of at least one inch of rain from the first week in August to the last week of November. three and a half months without a significant rainstorm is almost impossible to believe. Obviously, rivers and streams ran extremely low in most areas with October and November stockings cancelled in many places.

Because the weather stayed so warm, fishing remained quite pleasant. I caught my last trout, a brownie, on the Little Androscoggin River in early November and then just stopped fishing local waters and put the rods away. I had been fishing constantly since April and was ready for a break. Writing assignments that had been stacking up for six months needed to be completed.

I did get to fish a private fishing club in mid-November on Lake Mitchell near Norwich, Vermont. What a magnificent old lodge and beautiful little pond. I didn’t hook up with any of the sporadically rising rainbows – the hot fly was a yellow Woolly Bugger, who knew? But still enjoyed the quiet evening.

During my Connecticut presentation jaunt, I had an afternoon to explore the Farmington River and surrounding area. I didn’t fish but watched rising browns and watched angler nymph up some trout up to twenty inches. These fish are educated and one angler I watched talked about 7x tippets and tiny Perdigon nymphs. Yikes. I also checked out “The Legends” lodge on the river and the Upcountry Sportfishing fly shop. Next year I plan to go back and catch my first Farmington brown trout. Interestingly enough, I lived in Avon, CT as a kid and fished the Farmington River frequently. Back then, the bottom release dam had just been completed and coldwater fish had not made their way down that way so all I caught on my lures and worms were sunfish, crappie, and eels. Click on link below for video of a brown trout coming to net on the Farmington

https://youtube.com/shorts/YNvc3sej9Tc?feature=share

My next presentation will be Friday, January 17th at the Flyfishing Show in Marlborough. I will be talking about how best to flyfish ponds for trout and salmon and how to find the best locations.

Finally, I had the latest productive vegetable garden I ever had with the warmth and sunshine. Even at the end of November I was picking radishes, lettuce, beets, carrots, swiss chard, brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, and leeks. I used some plastic on colder nights but mostly the cause was sunny afternoons well up into the 50s and many nights above freezing. Quite ridiculous.

For those who live in Connecticut and want to hear me give a presentation, I will be giving a video and photo talk on how to catch trophy brook trout and my top fly fishing spots in New England on Wednesday, November 6th for NPTU (the local chapter of Trout Unlimited) at the Beacon Falls Sr Center 57 North Main Street Beacon Falls CT 06403 at 6:30. and Thursday, Nov. 7th at the Housatonic Flyfishing Club at Wallingford Recreation Department, 6 Fairfield Blvd, Wallingford, CT 06492 at 7 pm.

For the seventh time in ten years, October so far has been far warmer than normal. Daily temperature records are being broken by 5 degrees or more. In central Maine, we have had one frost and one frost only as I write this. Of course, it has been very dry as well with only a few rainstorms in the last several months. Some small streams are very low. It would be much worse if it was still the growing season.

For lakes, ponds, and rivers with adequate flow, the fishing has been very good with water temperatures staying above 50 degrees. I have seen more rising trout this month than I saw in May. My son-in-law and I have caught rainbows, browns, brook trout, and landlocks on streamers, nymphs, and dries. The fish have been new stockers, holdovers from the spring, wild, and multiyear holdovers.

I have been neglecting other priorities to go fishing. I keep saying, ” I have to go fishing today because it is sunny and 70 degrees. Then the next day dawns with the identical weather so I go fishing again, and so on. Not only has the weather been stellar, but the foliage colors have been stunning this year after a few off years, and the leaves have stayed on the trees a long time because of the lack of rain or strong wind.

Of course, for us gardeners the warm weather has meant ridiculously late harvests. This week I picked cucumbers and beans alongside cold weather crops like swiss chard, radishes, carrots, cabbage, and leeks.

August presented few fly-fishing opportunities for cold-water fish given the extremely hot July. Lindsey and I did take half a day and fish Cupsuptic Stream, a river that stays cold no matter what the season. The trout, while on the small side , are beautifully colored and usually willing.

September brought the same kind of fall we seem to get now – a continuation of August. The month was warmer than normal throughout New England and the rest of the United States. Rainfall amounts varied dramatically depending on where you live. Most of Maine set a record for driest first three weeks of September with zero rainfall and the summer was dry. But Vermont received plenty, if not excessive rainfall.

In Maine, river fishing was tough. Rivers like Kennebago and the Roach River, just to name two that are representative of many, had low and warm water. Remember, July was the warmest on record for Maine. A few fish moved into the rivers here and there, but they didn’t stay long and moved into cooler tribs.

I ran into a fisheries biologist who was tracking tagged fish with radar, and she said her tracking fish were scattered throughout the Rangeley area river systems, but I saw only a few fresh larger fish the last week of September. Plenty of smaller fish though.

During the last week of September, I was amazed to see only a few anglers fishing the lower Kennebago River (except for Steep Bank Pool.) I think the fishing has been so tough (and crowded) the last half dozen years that anglers are becoming discouraged. I know that many who own camps on Kennebago Lake and used to fish the river every September, don’t anymore.

The key to success was to find where the fish were stacked up, waiting to migrate upstream. I know of one lake where the fish stage in an old river channel, and anglers in the know caught brook trout on almost every cast.

Most of my success came on fishing small stuff – tiny wet flies such as the Shakey Bealy, or unweighted size 20 princes, or size 18 or 20 foam caddis. I did have a wonderful last morning. I got up at 0-dark-thirty to claim my favorite pool, was mesmerized by peak colors of red, orange, and yellow, and caught a substantial landlocked salmon on a size 20 wet fly swinging in the current. A satisfying way to end the season.

The three-month gap between this blog post and my last is the longest hiatus I have taken since I started this blog years ago. That is what occurs when I have a new granddaughter living ten minutes away and my daughter needs grandparent daycare help as she tries to be a new mom and run her own business (reclaimedmaineco.com). I also came down with Covid for the first time and I was battling it for the entire month of May. Not fun. Whatever energy I had went to fishing, not writing.

Well, we will see if we can’t catch up a bit. Due to the warm winter, early ice-out, and warm spring, the seasonal timing of plant and insect emergence, spawning cycle and water temps ran several weeks early. The current hot weather will probably start to send the fish into deeper water and river and stream fish into their colder water refugia

As an example, the Kennebago Lake brown drake hatch historically runs from about June 23 to end of the month. This year it started June 11th and is already winding down. Still, I got out on the lake on the 13th had the hatch practically to myselfh

Despite battling Covid, I went after a wide variety of species with my fly rod. In one ten-day period, I caught pike, smallmouth, largemouth, black crappie, sunfish, brookies, brown trout, rainbows, and stripers. Here are a few videos of the action. I will post several blogs soon to catch up.

My go-to fly for pike so far is a white and red streamer that moves erratically in the water when stripped. I use a type of snap swivel and a wire tippet to prevent the pike from slicing my line and for ease in fly change. Pike are not leader shy.

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To get you through the last few weeks before fishing season opens, here are a few more videos of my trip to British Columbia last September on the Bow River, Livingston Creek, and the Crowsnest River. Also, a quick morning on the Little Red River in Arkansas while on tagging along a conference trip with my wife, Lindsey.

Late 2023 and early 2024 will go down in history as the year with no winter. In many parts of New England, we only experienced a few snowstorms and rain melted that snow quickly. In southern Maine, we only had snow cover for a few weeks. Temperatures stayed between the 20s and the 50s most of the time. I feel like I suddenly moved to Seattle.

I fished on January 1st from my kayak and then during the first week of March when the Presumpscot River was running at fishable levels with water temps in the low 40s. With no snowpack, the higher sun angle will heat the soil quickly and also the water. The official fishing season needs to start earlier and end later. Maine winters used to be four to five months long, and now it is closer to two to three months.

Ice fishing season started in mid-January and ended for many places by end of February if the pond or lake froze at all. Avid ice anglers had to travel to the northern half of Maine. I don’t know when to claim ice out on Dundee Pond or North Gorham Pond because neither pond ever completely froze.

My crocuses are up, other early bulbs are poking their heads through the earth, and today after the rain, my driveway was covered with worms. I have planted my early greens, radishes, and spinach. Nature is telling us that even though the calendar says early March, the landscape is saying it is mid-April. I am sure we will get at least one more snowstorm or stretch of cold weather, but onceI the thaw commences and flora and fauna emerge, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

I suggest you finish tying the rest of the flies you need, and make sure your gear is in working order because the season is starting now!