Decided to head out to one of my favorite local waters the Natchaug River today. I had a guide trip there two Fridays ago and then took my 3 girls there the following Sunday. The two guys I guided did very well as did my 3 daughters. Met my Buddy Carl at 10:30 head through the hollow over to Eastford, closer to the river we got the harder it rained. When we got to the spot we were going to fish it was raining like mad and thunder and lightning was close by. We put waders and rain gear on and the rain slowed enough and the T&L stopped so we rigged up and headed in to the first deep run, water was clear but there was a lot of leave litter and buds floating just under the surface. so my idea of a dry and dropper was out. I rigged up a couple of nymphs and started to drift the outside seam and let Carl fish the inside seam. It took all of 3 casts to hook a big rock and break off both nymphs. I had on 6x as this spot if one of the now infamous state of Connecticut trout parks, they stock once a week thru Memorial Day. It gets stocked on Wednesday or Thursday most weeks so by the weekend the fish have been pounded. It also has a decent amount of larger holdover fish but they seem to be more than a bit tippet shy. Well the next hour and a half was a repeat of this, a few casts hung up on something pull it free. Half the time I would have to retie one or both flies on. I kept moving down the run but still the same thing. Then I noticed as I was lifting to make a roll cast a trout followed the nymphs right up to the surface. I moved to the head of the run above Carl and started to swing a yellow caddis pupa and a sparkle pupa. On about my 4 or 5 swing I hooked a small rainbow and landed it quikly. That was the only fish for almost two hours, so we moved a few pools down river to a deep pool with a good side channel and back eddy with a back wash flowing into it. I fished the same two flies for a while with not fish, then I noticed a flash about 20 feet across from me just above the tail out. I changed my bottom fly to a Tung Head green rock worm, third cast line stops I set the hook into a good fish after a good showing I landed a beautiful holdover Bow of about 16" it's body width all but filled my hand. I release this fish and watched the spot again saw another flash a little farther upstream. Made bad cast but was able to throw a couple of big mends into it and hooked another Bow this one was only about 12" but it had tons of spots on it's back and really big fins just a pretty fish. I got one more small bow from this spot and noticed fish were still flashing. So I put Carl in there because he only had a little while longer to fish. He tried for about 20 minutes and hooked two but they came unbuttoned right away. He had to go so I decided to work my way into the next pool . Saw some olives hatching but no fish rising so I put on a beatis biot emerger and a bead head pheasant tail below it. I fished into the deeper most part of the pool and as it was starting to come up off the bottom a fish took. It was another bow about 12" ,over the next hour and a half I hooked another 7 fish landed 4 of them.I lost two with bad hook sets and one took me into some brush. all of the trout were bows except the last one it was fat 13" brown trout. It started slow but ended up to be a good day, some fish and great company.
Steve
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