I spent the past weekend up in the Arlington / Manchester area in
Vermont. The weather was close and hot (88F) so we stayed on
tributaries upon arriving Saturday afternoon.

As an aside, this whole area is currently the throes of a tent
caterpillar infestation. Thousands of acres across a swath of the
lower mountains are bare. The trees in the valley also are hit to
some extent and you can see hundreds of these caterpillars on a
single trunk of a maple or oak. The river is littered with leaf
cuttings and the ground with their turds.

Also I noticed a large population of house fly that buzzes around you
annoyingly, which I assume is prospering on the prevalence carcass,
or turd. It is a temporary manifestation, but last year was the worst
in the 38 years (14,000 acres affected) and this year seems to have
outdone it, so some trees may not develop secondary growth. Leaf
peepers may be disappointed this year.

Sadly, I am lead to believe tent caterpillars are toxic to trout, so
they ignore them.

Anyway, myself and my partner fished a nice Taconic spring fed trib
and I had a dozen brookies to my name in the first couple of hours on
a caddis. The water temp was about 68F which is high for a spring fed
stream, but great for wet wading. Great fun with my 1 oz 6' for a #2.

After getting a cold drink we visited another trib, this time on the
Green Mountain side, so more acid. Walking to the bridge where you
can get in we noticed a half dozen fish including one fat brookie, an
easy 14 inches. They were rising steadily and the brookie was in her
stride, as she did not really spook to our appearance. There were a
few duns and spinners in the air, but we could not see what the fish
were on.

The other side of the bridge was a nice brown nearly 15 inches, but
spooked easy. Further downstream there was a lot of rising fish. It
reminded me of tricos.

When I got in I saw the reason. There was a spinner fall of massive
proportions. I could not ID the fly and tried to match it with a
light tan spinner, mahogany spinner to no avail.

My partner knows the hatches much better than me and he correctly
identified it as the Gray Drake, or Siphlonurus occidentalis. This is
a rare hatch in the Northeast, observed on the Batten Kill, Saco,
Farmington and the Swift. It's interesting because there are no duns
on the water, the nymph swimming to the bank, but the spinners are
thick and will fall so long as the temperature is over 65F (else the
females take a rain check and try again the following day). Google
reveals this to be an important western hatch on the Yellowstone, so
I am sure other Roffians can speak to it.

My partner gave me the fly he tied last year when he unsuccessfully
sought out this hatch and my first cast takes a 10" brookie way short
of the target I was mending line for. The spinner fall lasted over 3
hours and I had over a dozen more fish and all over them in the 8 to
12 inch range. One memorable hook up was at 20 yards out on my 6
weight, which swelled my head at little. My partner complimented me,
but he took honors for the largest brookie.

Truly fantastic trout fishing, and if you put aside the size of the
fish, just about as perfect a dry fly fishing experience and you can
have anywhere in the world.

That evening we hit the main stem of the Batten Kill. We noticed the
river up and off color. By 8:45pm I knew the place we selected was
wrong, but it was too late to move. So instead we watched the
cahills, sulphurs, yellow sallies and caddis hatch thick and fast,
unmolested by trout.

Next day we rose around 5am and tried streamer fishing, but the river
seemed up more and maybe even more off color. We assumed
thunderstorms from previous evenings were the reason, because the
river was also warm, around 70F, which seems too early (the Batten
Kill rarely ever exceeds 70F). I thought it was better to find
flatter water to see if the fish would move to the caddis that were
now hatching. We fished below Benedict's Crossing to the famous
Atherton pool and my partner picked up two to my zero.

Around 9 we had breakfast at the State Line diner in NY and checked
out the Dutchman's Hole (where the largest Batten Kill trout was
taken) and the Spring Hole. We fooled around with some risers but no
hits. So after that it was to the Green River, an important trib to
the Kill. Running at 60F, this chalk stream earns its name from the
underlying rocks of chalk and the mineral rich water. It was running
60F, but we were unable to scare up anything.

By now it was noon and extremely humid and hot. So we decided to call
it a day as it would be a long wait to the evening hatch and a big
question mark on us even seeing fish.

Still, it was a superb weekend that the Batten Kill is wont to
occasionally give up to us, its most hardened addicts.