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Best bets around the state
Vermont's trout season begins in just six days, and Friday the weather forecast for opening day called for scattered showers and a high temperature of about 50.
Opening day conditions are expected to be actually fairly decent this year -- with little snowpack left in the state. High water in rivers and streams could prove most troublesome, but dry weather later this week could bring down the levels on swollen streams.
Traditional best bets for early season trout fishing include the Willoughby, Barton and Black rivers in the Northeast Kingdom, and the Williams, Saxtons rivers and Mill Brook in southern Vermont.
The Mettawee is perhaps the best spot in southern Vermont, largely because of its ability to produce wild rainbow trout. The lower Castleton and upper Poultney rivers are good early-season bets for brown trout.
Angling for change
When are anglers more likely to catch trout, and with what success? According to the commissions study, anglers caught slightly more stocked fish after opening weekend than during the first-day crush. The catch rate was 1.0 trout per hour opening weekend and 1.13 fish per hour afterward. On wild trout streams, fishermen caught 1.76 brook trout per hour on small streams, 0.51 brookies per hour on large streams, and 0.56 brown trout per hour on large streams. Ken Undercoffer looks at the state's wild trout and sees enormous potential. "Devoted trout fishermen pursue them from early spring well into the fall, and sometimes even into winter," said Undercoffer, a former Greensburg resident who lives in Clearfield and serves as president of the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited.
Bird flu puts small dent in flyfishing business
DELTA, Colo. Lines of long, narrow, white buildings spread out across the ranch in the lush, green farmland of western Colorado. Inside are chickens, up to 85,000 in each of the dimly lit coops with interiors that feel like greenhouses and smell like outhouses. This is Tom Whiting's lab, where he creates new kinds of chickens or, more specifically, chicken feathers. Whiting is no mad scientist. He's a poultry geneticist and his company, Whiting Farms, is the world's largest producer of the chicken hackle that fly fishermen use for tying flies. Whiting keeps a watchful eye on his birds, from the time the chicks are hatched until their feathers are packaged and shipped to companies in roughly 40 countries. With the operation broken up among three ranches, Whiting has biological security from poultry diseases and protection from natural disasters that might wipe out his entire line.
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