Day 4: Woodstock, Vermont

Day Four: Fly Fishing

On the final day at Woodstock, we drove to the farm and I did a little fishing.  I caught a few brookies but my mom arranged for me to go fishing with a fly fishing guide. The guide’s name was, Jon.  If you are looking for a great fly fishing guide for a day trip, I would recommend him. Click here to find his website. Jon and I made a plan to go to a river called the Black River first.  Our target was large brown and rainbow trout. After that, we would go to a river called the silver river (sorry it is a secret) and target some brookies and browns. But since we had a ton of time, we decided to try and discover some small brook trout streams on our way to the Black River.  We noticed a tiny stream in a small gulley on the side of the road. There were no buildings, houses, or anything anywhere close to this stream and that's what they need to flourish because they are very sensitive to pollution.  They need clean, cold mountain water. We parked the car on the side of the road and found a way to get down the steep slope. We saw a small waterfall and a large area wear the water pooled up. We first threw a little nymph fly and almost immediately hooked up a small brook trout, my first fish on the fly of the trip. I did not manage to get a photo of this fish. We worked our way up stream and we tied on a dry fly. If you do not know what a dry fly is, it’s a completely weightless fly that floats on the surface and imitates an insect that fell in the water. We casted into this small pool and one brookie hit my fly twice but I did not get him. I was disappointed, but I had just found my love for dry fly fishing.  Some smaller Brook Trout went for the fly but did not hook any of them, so we decided to go to the Black River. We were fishing the Black River but after a little we concluded that the stream was just too warm and the trout would be inactive. We headed to the secret river next. We drove for a little while before we finally arrived the river. It was much smaller than the Black River but still larger than the river at the horse farm. We worked our way up and found this one spot that looked really good. I casted out the fly and let it drift for a few second and all the sudden a nice sized wild brown trout shot up and ate the fly. We tried the rest of the stream and found one deep hole that was full of brook trout, but they did not want to eat anything. We went up a little bit farther up, and I caught another brown on the dry fly. After fishing for almost 12 hours straight, we called it a day.  Overall my trip was amazing. I cannot wait to come back next year when my mom has her horse competition again.