JT's Fly Shop

Just think 2 weeks ago we were fishing in 70 degree sunshine to rising trout and hatching little black stones. now it has not really broken the 65 degree mark in 10 days, has been dry as a bone and I am hearing that the Hendricksons hatch is starting to slow on the western Connecticut tail waters. I have not seen or heard of anyone seeing any on the willimantic , but they may have snuck out in 2 or 3 days when no one was looking. There have been some Blue winged Olives and small grey caddis hatching with the odd trout actually rising to it. These are the years when the hatches will be hard to judge, But we will have to see. I was on the DEEP web site today and found that they have updated their trout stocking maps to include most all of the major and some of the minor streams that they stock. While i don’t really care were they actually stock it is a great reference for access point on those rivers. I have printed them out and have them in a folder in my guide box. I have also saved them to the computer so I can send them to my I phone the day of a trip to have it even more handy. Speaking of handy things Passin thru ( Jim E) our shop IT wizard has set up some real nice report portals on the shops main web page.
Shop happenings:
this weekend is the 5th annual spring fling and tag sale. this is one of my favorite weekends at the shop, customer old and new stop buy and we are able to chat about the upcoming season and what went down over late fall winter. we will have many of our tackle vendor there and lots of stuff to try.
MAY 5th is the first new England spey clave up on the farmington. I will be there with stuff from the shop and will also be tying some salmon and steel-head spey flies.
Next Saturday is the opening day for the Connecticut regular trout season to may this is a traditional day of gathering with family and friends for some fishing and good times. we will be open extra hours so stop by and say hey to Jt and all of the shop rats.

Steve

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Went to the Willimantic again sunday for a few hours. Got there about 1 put on waders and rigged up my 10′ 4wt. and found scotty and Matt were already hitting the water hard. I dropped in just below them and started to nymph while watching the water for signs of active fish. wind stopped air fills up with stoneflies, wind blows again they all end up on the surface, instantly trout start to rise. You don’t have to hit me hard to get me to change when there is action like that. I put on a size 16 stimulator with a dark body greay wing and sparse dun hackle. second cast a nice brown come up and follows if for about a foot or so just when I think o’h boy he is refusing it he jolts forward and hooks himself. the rest of the afternoon was a repeat of that. Nice mix of rianbows and browns. largest a nice hard bodied 14″ brown that put up a real nice fight. the final fish came about
5:15 and was a spastic 13″ rainbow that thought it was a steelhead it jump several times and twice ran line off the reel. That bring to mind something I always tell my beginning classes and guide clients. Don’t play the fish with you hand, get them on the reel. unless you can see it is a small one. I made the mistake back in the late 80′s fishing out west, I hooked what at first I thought was a small fish but relised it was a large brown too late save it from breaking be off due to so much line at my feet. ever since I put every fish, unless I know it is small, on the reel, let the reel do it’s thing. all in all another nice day. still can not believe we are getting fry fly fishing in March on the Willi. Just remember alway be flexible and don’t try to force feed fish.

steve

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I got out for a few hours Sunday 3/11/12 with one of the shop rats Carl, We fished the Willimantic river TMA and just hammered the trout. We fished from 1-until about 5 we lost count of the number of fish we got. Just one of those magical ealry season days. the fish came on a mix of nymphs wets and dries. I fished a czech nymph with a pheasant tail dropper about 18-20 up from the point fly. Carl was fishing a stimulator with a dropper. he got quite a few to take the dry. there were a lot of small brown stone flies laying eggs and some of the trout were keying on them. remember that those little stones like their larger relatives crawl out of the water to hatch and come back a day or so later to lay their eggs. those fluttering stones are dropping egg clusters. There was also a good blue winged olive hatch going on, size 22. that is why the pheasant tail was working so good at that mid depth. the water was very clear and flows were at 185 CFS, water temp was 42 degrees. the trout were a mix of stockers, hold over, and the usual wild browns that seem to be gaining numbers. All in all a good start to the season.
steve

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If we can’t laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at.

Found this little video clip about all the stuff fisherman say and we had a good laugh with it and thought we would share it.  Enjoy!

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Jim, Jim, and myself went to the willi for a sun filled day of fishing. The day started off slow with a hit here and a hit there until one of the jim’s had to go back to work , sorry to hear that. One of the Jims and myself went to the bridge pool below 84 and thats when things started happen. We got into a couple nice fish I worked my way down to the bend and started to use a stimulator with a spilt shot to get it wet and then banggg a really hard hit and a big brown which I played for some time until he took me into the brush down stream and said goodbye. I was using 4x tippet he was just to big and to many trees down stream. But the best part was jim and myself  didn’t have to work .

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We still have a good selection of 2011 Rods and reels at clearance prices. Review the list here: http://jtsflyshop.com/2011clearancesale.html.

Contact the shop for more information.

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HARTFORD, CT (WFSB) -

State Department of Environmental officials said they took advantage of the mild winter conditions and began the 2012 spring stocking season early by releasing more than 12,300 brook, brown and rainbow trout into a number of rivers.

Officials said this month thousands of fish were stocked in the Salmon, Yantic, Moosup,  Hockanum, Willimantic, Hammonasset, Naugatuck, Sleeping Giant and Mianus rivers.

Copyright 2012 WFSB (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.wfsb trout stocking reportwfsb trout stocking report

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