Bill's River Blog
Good afternoon folks, I hope all is well and this latest bout of hot weather hasn't discourage many of you from getting out on the water. After all what a better place to be. Weather hot or not the fishing still IS.....No matter what your definition of IS is.
Our water flows as of right now are still about the same as what we've had in the past week.
1st lake dam 100 c.f.s.
2nd lake dam 60 c.f.s.
Murphy dam 109 c.f.s.
Androscoggin river 1557 c.f.s.
So not much has changed recently in the water flow department. The fishing up in our neck of the woods is still wonderful. We had some overcast days earlier in the week and as of late it's been high bright and sunny. You would think that with the sun and all, the fishing wouldn't be very good, but we've been fortunate. On the float trips the warm temps have brought out the flying ants and the fish will feed on them all day long. Size 16 or 18 cinnamon ants are irresistible to these trout. It's amazing how some big browns and rainbows will sacrifice themselves for seemingly such a small meal. Thank goodness, it make for some awesome mid day fishing.To see a 16 inch beautiful brown sip an ant in the middle of the river, is absolutely spectacular. Also just more recently again because of the warm weather were are just starting to get some hopper and terrestrial fishing, which is often explosive.
Although the mercury outside is climbing the best way to beat it is to wet wade. Just throw on a pair of shorts a long sleeve light shirt (for sun and bug protection) a pair of wading shoes, and life is grand. We've been doing a lot of this recently, it makes you wish the summer would never end. We're taking full advantage of the fact that when it's hot people leave the river mid day. The fishing is still fantastic, also with no one else on the river you can have your favorite fishing spot to yourself. I have been guiding everyday, all day for the past four days and have literally seen 13 people in all the miles of water we've covered and didn't fish close to anyone.
Our evening hatches also morning and mid day hatches have been as varied as the section of water you've been fishing. On the floats we've had cinnamon ants, bwo's, caddis and sulphers often two or three in one day. On our sections of river between the lakes we've had stonflies, caddis, bwo's, sulphers and size 24 tricos which at dark is maddening but also very challenging. We've also fished the sulphers with an emerger dropper right into the darkness. Fishing by moonlight and by sound only. It's not for the faint of heart but its fun and you can hook(not necessarily land) some really nice fish.
Some people have been reporting some not so favorable catch ratios. The fish are here and there hungry. We figure out what there eating and cover water, keep moving. I guided three folks last Monday. Just in the morning (4 hours) we figured we caught and released 18 fish, never mind the ones we missed and the others we lost. The evening was just as impressive and the majority of the fish caught we on elk hair caddis.
We've been having a blast. There is suppose to be some weather coming in this weekend. For the lakes we could use some rain. As I've said before it would be nice if they released a little more water down the river. But we work with what we got.
We hope to see you all up here soon, and remember please be kind and courteous to your fellow anglers.
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PEACE, BILL
