Fly Fishing in Vermont

I spent the Memorial Day weekend at an Orvis fly fishing school in Manchester, Vermont. My buddy Regan from Atlanta invited me up to join him since he was up near Burlington on a business trip and couldn't resist the opportunity to get some lessons and advice from some of the best fly fishermen on the planet. You see, Regan is really good and has a ton of experience fishing. Me? I'm a hack and basically just enjoy being on a river and enjoying nature. I love catching fish, but the thing about trout fishing is that it's all about technique and skill. That's where the school comes in :-)

Orvis puts on fishing schools throughout the country, but what makes this one special is that 1) it's at their flagship store, and 2) the Battenkill river is nearby. Regan told me that the Battenkill is legendary since it's one of a few rivers in the country that are truly wild (no stocking of fish), which makes the trout even tougher to catch. This fact has some irony to it that I'll explain more later :)

The school is a 2-day fly fishing extravaganza, with classroom instruction and plenty of casting and fishing exercises. I finally learned how to cast, although I still need tons of practice. We learned about proper casting, fly selection and what the actual mayflies and caddis flies look like that we're trying to imitate. We were in class from roughly 9-4 each day with the rest of the time to ourselves. Luckily for us, the instructors are also local fishing guides, so we took the opportunity to hire a few of them (one for Saturday afternoon and another for Sunday).

Saturday afternoon we went out with Antoine Bissieux, a relative newcomer to the Orvis schools from France. He took us to 4 beautiful areas on the Battenkill and we fished until there was hardly enough light to see. I was the lucky one on this night, landing a gorgeous 17" wild brown trout from a hole near the Rec Area. Antoine happened to have an underwater digital camera that took video, so he was able to capture it in wonderful detail for me. I was tickled beyound belief with how it came out (This is where the irony comes in... I was so lucky in landing this fish since I basically did just about everything wrong that you can do. Luckily for me, our skillful guide talked me through it and I ended up with this amazing keepsake video!). I was the talk of the class on Sunday, which I must admit was pretty cool :-)



Day 2 of the course was cool since they gave us the opportunity to fish in their trout ponds for some MONSTER pet trout. They keep the ponds climate controlled and allow visitors to feed them, so the rainbows, browns, and brookies get HUGE! It was like fishing in a Koi pond, except you're allowed to cath them! I landed a 20" brown that took me about 10 minutes to land, and Regan landed a ginormous rainbow that was easily 30" long and weighed about 8 lbs. Granted, it's not exactly river fishing, but the thrill of the fight and bringing them to land was just as exciting .


On Sunday after class, we hired Peter Kutzer to take us up to the Mettawee River, another amazing wild river that runs along the eastern Vermont / New York border. This river is absolutely beautiful and we had a ball fishing it for a few hours. Regan and I both caught a few small rainbow trout (we're talking really small...~3-4"), but had a lot of fun fishing dry flies for the first time all weekend.

I highly recommend these classes and these guides for anyone who loves the outdoors, even if fly fishing isn't necessarily your thing. Just having the opportunity to wade in these beautiful rivers was worth the trip.