John Dillon
Vermont has so much to offer in natural beauty and outdoor experiences. World class fly fishing is not one of them. Or so I have long believed, and mostly experienced, in three decades of angling in our lovely corner of New England.
Sure, you can wade and throw a line in beautiful places around Vermont. But, consistent, fish-filled days on rivers full of leaping trout? Go out West. Our streams are often overheated, lack prodigious insect hatches, and frankly are inferior to those of Colorado, Montana, and other famous fly-fishing meccas.
A Guide to the Green Mountain State
Angling author Mike Valla confronts that bias head on, and then gives you many reasons to ignore it, to fish successfully, and for unexpected species, all around the Green Mountains.
Valla’s “Fly Fishing Guide to Vermont” — a 2026 release from Stackpole Books — is subtitled the “complete guide to locations, hatches, and history.” It meets that billing, while mostly avoiding the myth-making, Chamber of Commerce copy that can sour your high hopes with fishless disappointment.
Valla doesn’t ignore the challenges facing Vermont’s rivers, particularly the cold-water habitats essential for trout. In his section on the Lamoille River, for example, he quotes a local guide as saying the impaired waterway is mostly a put-and-take fishery. That’s where the hatchery truck and not a healthy habitat produce the trout.
“The Lamoille has real issues, and I consider it a very mediocre trout river,” Stowe fishing guide Willy Dietrich told Valla. “It is largely a stocked trout fishery. The wild trout population in the main stem is in peril.”
Frank words from a fishing guide, whose profession demands optimism. It’s also a sober, realistic assessment to include in a book that aims to get people excited about Vermont’s fishing opportunities.
But Valla accomplishes that goal with his comprehensive, watershed-by-watershed approach that offers detailed guidance on stream access and favored flies. Valla also packs the pages with insights gleaned from interviews with guides and fisheries biologists.
My home waters include the Winooski River and its tributaries. A major benefit of years working near the Winooski in Montpelier was to leave the office near dusk and catch trout within sight of the Statehouse. Valla’s description of my home waters is spot-on: He notes the river fishes best from mid-May to June, then picks up again September through October. Also accurate is his advice on flies. His assessment that nymph fishing is more productive than casting dry flies on the Winooski rings true as well, as hatches can be sparse yet trout always look sub-surface for a meal.
Similar specifics are offered for rivers around the state. Details range from where to park to the various species found in particular river sections. With the rivers locked in ice, a browse through these pages can inspire angling outings from the Walloomsac River in Bennington County to the fabled Pherrins River in the Northeast Kingdom, known for its brook trout.
Vara gives special attention to these bright beauties that he calls “jewels of Vermont.” The state’s forested slopes and shaded streams provide the cold water these fish need. Don’t expect anything too big, however. A dollar-bill sized brook trout is a respectable catch.
Vermont’s only native trout is actually a char. Nomenclature aside; these remnants of the ice age are abundant statewide in high elevation brooks and streams. “As one fisheries biologist recently told me,” Valla writes. “The vast number of these little brooks are underutilized by anglers.”
The brook trout fishery in upland areas remains healthy. But recent catastrophic floods have done tremendous damage to local streams, particularly in the larger valleys. The Dog River in central Vermont, managed as an unstocked, wild trout fishery, never fully recovered from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and has suffered more in subsequent floods. Many streams are damaged by runoff or are thermally impaired. They simply get too hot to sustain trout as temperatures over 75 can be lethal. Indeed, Valla notes, when rivers warm it’s unwise to practice even catch-and-release fishing because the heat stress often kills the fish anyway.
This conservation ethic is welcome and evident throughout. And Valla urges fly anglers to think beyond trout as their target species. Warm waters fish like smallmouth and largemouth bass, pike and pickerel respond readily to the fly and are found statewide.
Lake Champlain is home to burbot, a freshwater cod, and sheepshead, a type of freshwater drum that’s hard-fighting and delicious. The big lake is also the northernmost range of the spottail bowfin, an ancient species that routinely reaches 30 inches and, Valla writes, puts up a tremendous battle when hooked in the lake’s marshy shallows.
As Valla notes, some of Vermont’s best fishing is found on Lake Champlain and other lakes and ponds around the state. He details a number of these still water treasures, like Echo Lake and Jobs Pond in the Northeast Kingdom that are home to North America’s largest mayfly, Hexagenia limbata. The “Hex” provides an essential food source for hungry trout. The mayfly spends several years in its nymphal form burrowing around the muddy bottom before emerging near dark in late June and early July. To my mind, this is the most exciting dry fly fishing found in Vermont. You cast to a spooky quarry that sometimes can only be detected by audible gulps as the fish feed voraciously on the surface.
Valla’s descriptions of where and when to find the Hex is very accurate. Indeed, my only — admittedly selfish — complaint is that he reveals a few places that I thought I had discovered on my own.
Tying Your Own Flies
Fly fishing can grow to an obsession. For me, nothing satisfies the passion more than catching fish on flies made by your own hand. A fantastic feature of this guide is a section at the end with recipes for flies recommended for different waters around the state. For the prehistoric bowfin, Valla raves about the “Mr. Bow-Regard,” an olive, fishy-looking temptation tied by fishing guide and writer Drew Price.
Price recently published “Favorite Flies of Vermont – 50 Essential Patterns from Local Experts” — also released this year by Stackpole Press. Price is renowned for his deep knowledge of the myriads of species in Lake Champlain often overlooked by fly anglers.
Price has made it his mission to catch as many species as possible on a fly. Bowfin are among his favorites, as his specialized Mr. Bow Regard shows. But perhaps the most unusual fly found in this collection is a “rope” fly designed to attract the longnose gar.
This toothy, living fossil — its lineage dates to the Cretaceous Period — has a long snout with a row of sharp teeth. The “Gar Champ” fly is built around strands of unbraided ¾-inch boating line which snare these multiple chompers. Price notes that this action does mess up the fly but it “will recover quickly using a comb.”
The Gar Champ would not be a go-to fly in most of Vermont. Yet Price offers variations tied by local experts of other, more familiar patterns such as caddis, muddler minnows, and streamers meant to imitate baitfish. Each of the 50 flies comes with a story and photos of the flies and the tyers behind them. Here you’ll find the Governor Aiken Bucktail — the state’s official fly named after the governor who loved the Northeast Kingdom and its landlocked salmon.
Another pattern I’m eager to tie is Roland’s Caddis Variant developed by Roland Tremble of the Tie by Night fly shop on Grand Isle. According to Price, it’s deadly on the reaches of the Winooski I like to fish.
Indeed, I’ve had my tying vise out in recent weeks clumsily attempting to copy these creations. This lavishly illustrated and informative volume is a wonderful companion to Valla’s guide. Both should help the fly fisher endure the long wait until spring.
