Early March held some cold days on the White River this winter. I had a two day trip with two return clients. One of them had a new video camera along and took some footage through the first day. We had fair fishing that day, but it started out warmer and turned colder by noon. Both anglers caught a nice brown, several good rainbows, and we even had some doubles. They were kind to send me the raw footage to play with, and I came up with this little video showcasing some winter solitude on an otherwise busy stretch of tailwater. Enjoy!

© 2013, Scott Branyan

Since most folks don’t get to see me fish on guide trips, they often ask if I ever get to fish. I always find it an amusing question of any guide, but perhaps it’s not obvious as most people only see me rowing, coaching, and getting my charges onto fish.

I had an unscheduled day in Mountain Home last week, and I spent the day with my friend and Arkansas TU Council Chair, Bill Thorne, drift boat fishing in his new boat. Bill and I had been trying to get together to fish for a number of years, and we finally had the opportunity.

Bill recently picked up a very slightly used ClackaCraft Flypod from a mutual friend. I had actually rowed this same boat a day last year. We met up at the White Sands Restaurant for an early pancake and omlet breakfast and then headed to the White to enjoy some hopper fishing together.

Bill Thorne rows away from our access at the beginning of a fun day of fishing.

Flows today down river were very easy on this early fall day, and the fish were looking up from the get-go. There was some breeze, and the bigger the hopper, fatter the tippet, and splashier the landing, the better the fish liked it. On many days, they like it like that more often than not.

Bill Thorne fishing from his drift boat

We found some browns on the hopper, and a couple were mighty nice, but my favorite fish was a nice cutthroat. I so love to see these on the White. They are dryfly-aholics, and this one fought the best of any I have caught in a long time.

I love seeing cutthroat red on Snake River Fine Spotted Cutthroat. They are a beautiful fish!

After lunch, I was ready to switch to subsurface fishing, and we started throwing a McKee’s Rubber Leg. This is a fly that is a modern adaptation of the old Girdle Bug or Rubber Legs patterns. This time of year it seems particularly effective, and I’ve often wondered if trout don’t take it as a sunken hopper. It is also a very effective stone fly nymph imitation. Anyway, the stocked rainbows ate this thing up as they have in previous years.

End of the day at the ramp–just ahead of a thunderstorm.

Bill and I thoroughly enjoyed the day switching out rowing for each other and taking our turn fishing. It was great time spent on the river we both love.

© 2012 Scott Branyan

My family and I took a road trip to New England the first week of July. We drove 4,400 miles roundtrip in about ten days. Because the purpose of the trip was so my son could attend a wedding in Portland, Maine, fly-fishing took a backseat. But we did make several stops at historic fly-fishing places.

The major fly-fishing locations we visited were: White River Junction, Vermont; Rangeley, Maine; L. L. Bean at Freeport, Maine; and Orvis and the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont.

On the way, the major rivers we crossed included the Mississippi, White River in Indiana, Mad River in Ohio, Erie Canalway in New York, Mohawk River in New York, Hudson River in New York, Battenkill River in Vermont and New York, White River in Vermont, Connecticut River in Vermont and New Hampshire, Androscoggin River in New Hampshire and Maine, Merrimack River in New Hampshire, Kennebec River in Maine, Penebscot River in Maine, and the Machias River in Maine.

Other major water bodies we saw included: Lake Erie in New York, Lake Ontario in New York, Rangeley Lakes in Maine, Frenchman Bay in Maine, and the Bay of Funday in Maine.

Of mountain scenery, we drove across New York on I-90 between the Catskills and the Adirondacks and experienced the heart of the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. All are impressive ranges.

The surprise of the trip had to be a stop at the President Calvin Coolidge Education Center in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Paul and I spent an hour going through the visitor’s center, and there was an entire room devoted to his fly-fishing memorabilia. We all enjoyed spending the morning at the historic village.

I put together just the fly-fishing related photos from the trip. I hope you enjoy them.

P.S. I forgot to add this photo of the Battenkill near Manchester to the collection. The river is much prettier from here upstream. (Click to enlarge)

© 2012, Scott Branyan

I spent four days fishing Bull Shoals tailwater this past week. We saw the heaviest caddis hatches I can remember in some time. The hatch was late, but I will take them when we get them. There were lots of dry fly fishing opportunities, and the nymphing and streamer fishing was good also. We boated a couple of quality browns and a lot of smaller ones.

Hatch cooled Friday with the weather change. The first of the cream mayflies came off downriver below Norfork confluence also. I think they were cahills, but I just saw a few and couldn’t get a sample. Sulphurs should be starting. If they are like the caddis this year, we may not see a good hatch until mid-May or later.

Moss was heavy Tuesday and Wednesday, and high wind was a pain Thursday and Friday, but it didn’t slow the fishing much.

Fish are feeding heavily on the caddis and are fat. Browns will move into the riffles this time of year to take advantage of the hatches.

Caddis have primarily been two types at Rim Shoals: the large brachycentrus size 14 green bodied caddis and a size small darker bodied caddis with mottled wings. For dries, a darker natural deer hair caddis with a dark green body in a size 16 has been working quite well.

Straight from the stomach pump, this shows how heavy the fish are gulping these down. Separated with a little water you can see two species and a pupa shuck in the foreground. A lot of shucks in the sample indicates the fish prefer the caddis just subsurface. But the preference changes as the hatch progresses.

Good fishing!

© 2010, Scott Branyan

Flip Putthoff and I ran up to Capps Creek today to fish. The water in the stream is higher than the levels two years ago when he and I hit the stream just before Christmas in 2007. Weather was stupendous. T-shirt weather felt mighty fine. It’s apparent that Capps had serious flooding last year also as debris fields are still very obvious and the old channels have been modified some. It looks as if floods were over the top of the dam there at the old Jolly Mill. But today water levels were perfect. Enough water was covering the moss beds in the park to make it productive fishing and one could still wade at the dam and catch fish.

Flip Putthoff plays a Capps Creek rainbow trout.

We ran into a number of anglers. I suspect some of them normally fished Roaring River State Park which is closed currently and preparing to open for no-creel season November 13th.

It was a great day to be out.

© 2009, Scott Branyan 

I fished Beaver tailwater with the Moore brothers on Monday. Fishing didn’t produce the usual large number of stockers, but then I don’t think anybody really cared. It was a special day and deserved a write up in my Morning News column for this week.

© 2009, Scott Branyan

Read Flip Putthoff’s Morning News article on our trip to Crane Creek. Flip always gives me the grandest reviews, but I take that with much less than a grain of salt. He gets most of the other stuff right however. The article will run in Thursday’s outdoors section of the paper.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

Flip Putthoff and I fished Crane Creek in Missouri today. It was Flip’s first time to fish the small wild rainbow stream.

I gave him the nickel and dime tour first and then we fished the upper most part of the Wire Road Conservation Area. The creek in the middle of the upper area was running shallow and thin. We found better flows upriver by the springs and discovered a beaver dam across the stream about a quarter mile downriver. I suspect there might have been yet another one further down stream also causing the flow to run slow by the time it made the lower parking lot.

Tough fishing, but I managed one fish before lunch, and Flip got to see the beauty of these special rainbows. We found some Baetis (Tiny Blue Winged Olives) coming off but nothing rising to them. I brought one home (a female spinner) and keyed it out. We see these on the White River tailwaters also from time to time in the winter months mostly.

After lunch we moved downstream to the lower section where water flows were very good and fish have more cover and are easier.

We each hooked some fish—I landed my three. Ha! Flip had a good sized one break off. There were some pretty good midge hatches coming off and a very rare riser or two.

It had been 2-3 years since I had fished Crane, and we had a pleasant, leisurely day of it. These fish are wild, and if you hook one in a hole, it may be the only one you can hook afterward for a good while in that spot. We saw few fish in the upper section. The lower section below the dairy farm seems to hold more which is usually the case; but I still like the challenge and the character of the upper stream.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

This is the time of year I do some outings to fish Missouri spring creeks, and I’ll have a report coming up in a few days.

Here is MDC’s page of links with maps on where to go fly-fishing for trout in Missouri.

If anyone has a good fishing report to share on one of the creeks, feel free to post a comment here.

© 2008, Scott Branyan

Wednesday was a day off for me, and Moose Watson and I floated from Bull Shoals dam to Wildcat Shoals access. Traffic was light. Streamer fishing was slow. The weather and comaradarie was great.

Nice guy that I am, I started off letting Moose fish. On his third cast he caught the biggest brown of his fly-fishing career. I foul hooked one rainbow. That pretty much sums up the day–well–except for the photo, of course.

Moose's Big Brown

© 2008, Scott Branyan