Vermont can be a fly-fisherman’s paradise. Just ask these anglers.
By David Barker ’06
Jake Kuipers ’06 was smiling as he pulled the van into Adirondack Circle on a Friday in late April. His thesis was done, and ahead of him lay two days of fly-fishing in southern Vermont. There were three of us—myself, Bart DiFiore ’09, and Alex Gart ’09—waiting at the curb, and we piled into the van, already swapping fish stories.
The trip was the first in three years for the College fly-fishing club, MiddFly. Founded in 1999 by two first-year roommates—Brian McCurdy ’03 and Brendan Bechtel ’03 —MiddFly has slowly evolved into an active organization for anglers of all levels. Casting clinics, lectures, and this year’s April trip have been part of the spring revival. “Rather than being just equipment rental, the club has become an organization for those who know how to fish and who want to learn,” said Kuipers, MiddFly’s president.
The club was revived for good reason. From the Voter lawn, the site of the casting clinics, some of the best fly-fishing in Vermont awaits within a 20-minute drive. The Otter Creek watershed boasts streams like the New Haven River that cuts through Bristol and the Middlebury River that surges down from the Green Mountains through Ripton.
Taking into account local creeks and lakes, you could pick a new body of water for each day of the week. “At most colleges, you can’t do that,” said McCurdy. “The promise of spring fishing makes a tough winter worth it for a lot of people.”
The April trip would take us from Otter Creek as we knew it in Middlebury to a narrower version of the river near its headwaters north of Manchester, Vermont. We hoped that a migration 90 minutes south would bring us warmer waters and a Hendrickson mayfly hatch. Usually at this time of year, fly-fishers spend tedious hours casting subsurface wet flies known as nymphs and streamers. A Hendrickson hatch would allow us to cast dry flies that drift on the surface of the water and attract rising fish.
Before hitting the river, we sought out local expertise. “We haven’t seen any Hendrickson’s yet,” said Walt, the owner of Northshire Outfitters in Manchester. Walt’s fishing report sank our hopes of using dry flies, but he gave us a hand-drawn map of a few promising holes on the Battenkill River, which he thought would be the best bet for Friday-evening fishing before heading to Otter Creek on Saturday.
Walt’s map took us to a pull-off with a sign that read: “Fishermen and hunters only.” When we saw the mowed path along the river, we felt even more welcome. We hastily became fishermen, throwing on vests, waders, and felt-bottom wading shoes; guesswork led us to choose a combination of wet flies to imitate insects in their nymphal and emerging stages.
Whatever we chose, it wouldn’t have made a difference. The Battenkill gave us hints of its potential, with its deep holes shaded by fir trees, but the water was too cold. We left at dusk, blaming the previous night’s frost, which had kept water temperatures around a chilly 40 degrees. With fly-fishing, the fishing proves far better than the catching sometimes. “[The setting] was too perfect,” said Gart.
But the perfect moments keep fly-fishers coming back. Perhaps Thoreau was right: many people fish their whole lives without realizing it is not fish they are after. After being awoken by camouflage-clad turkey hunters walking through our campsite north of Manchester, we suited up at an access point along the “trophy waters” of Otter Creek. Just a week before, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife had stocked the stretch of river with two-year-old trout.
The clear water revealed a mostly sandy bottom, which contrasted with the freestone foundation of the Battenkill. Two hours of fishing using nymphs and streamers yielded nothing, until Gart appeared through the trees from downstream. “I got one,” he shouted, thrusting out his hand and revealing the smell of what he claimed was an 18-inch rainbow trout. (He had released the fish.)
We immediately turned downstream in search of Gart’s hole. He had caught the fish from a bank that dropped off into a pool 30 feet long and eight feet deep. Glare-reducing polarized sunglasses revealed four trout circling in the pool. Thick brush in back of us made a roll cast the only option. Gart demonstrated the 12-to-2- o’clock motion masterfully; soon he had a take from a brown trout. The fish fought for more than a minute, racing to each end of the pool before landing in the black mesh of Gart’s net. Unfortunately, the other trout seemed to be more discriminating. We headed downstream, the three of us envying Gart’s two beauties.
Downstream, the river continued its slithering progression north. Just short of a railroad bridge, DiFiore halted us with his hand. He had found the perfect hole. Six sizable fish held in a sandy pool between a submerged rock and tree, creating a pocket that ensured the fish had little place to escape if spooked. DiFiore’s spotting of the fish entitled him to the first cast. The Gloucester, Massachusetts, native quickly had his first freshwater fish on a fly. The 19-inch rainbow trout, taken on a Copper John nymph, gleamed silver in the early afternoon sun.
As with the fish in the upstream hole, the frenzy of DiFiore’s fight caused the other fish to become pickier. Kuipers crossed the river to make long casts above the pool, hoping to take the largest rainbow trout we had seen that day. His nymph and neon-green strike indicator would slowly drift down until the fly literally touched the 20-inch fish. A moment of suspense lingered each time the strike indicator passed over the fish. Twice it jerked to a stop, indicating a take. Each time, the fish managed to break loose. Kuipers was exhausting his supply of nymphs trying to find the right fly to land the fish.
“I’m going to try one more fly, and if that doesn’t work . . . ,” said Kuipers, ready to give up. The green indicator slowly drifted down on the glassy surface of the water.
“There it is!” Kuipers yelled as the indicator halted and plunged under. “Is it the big one?”
“Yeah!” Gart replied.
Seconds later, Kuipers’s bent-double rod sprang back to vertical. The fish had taken the fly and kept it. Kuipers pulled up a fishless line. A few moments later, he would land his first fish of the day, a 17-inch brown trout, but, as we left for the car, we turned our backs on the biggest fish in the pool, its upper lip still pierced by the fly.
The Otter had yielded us four large trout under a cloudless sky, and we started our return to Middlebury along Route 7, a road that follows Otter Creek. The river loomed out of the right-side window.
When not wading through Vermont trout streams, David Barker ’06 likes nothing more than a good fight with a salmon in his native Pacific Northwest.