Androscoggin River Trip - end of June

Well, I finally got around to uploading, compiling, editing and publishing some of the pictures and videos of our two weeks on the Androscoggin River.  The Alder Fly hatch was almost two weeks earlier than the usual emergence, so many of our clients saw only the very end of the hatch.  The water level in the river was great and at a perfect temperature and the fish were really active.  As the trip went on the fish became more and more selective, but we were able to fool a lot of fish.  We mostly caught brook trout, but also got quite a few salmon and some rainbows, too.  Here is a video of Rob (a frequent visitor here) and his dad Joe catching some fish and having a great time.

Brothers David and Alan (frequent visitors/participants in this blog) also spent some time with us on their way to Grant's Kennebago Camps. Here is a picture of Alan with a really nice alligator-jaw landlocked salmon he caught on an Alder Fly pattern. They also had a great time fishing the hex hatch, but no pictures from that evening excursion have surfaced. 

You often hear/read about the Alder Fly hatch on the Androscoggin, and it is hard to describe what it is like, unless you are there at the beginning of the peak emergence.  Here is a video I took on the first day I guided the Androscoggin on this trip (June 18.) It shows the mats of spent caddis floating in an eddy. 

This is probably 5+ days into the hatch and the fish have gorged themselves. A couple days earlier the fish would literally be hurtling out of the water, eating zebra caddis, but now tens of thousands of flies are available for them to eat at their leisure.  Surprisingly, most of the rises on naturals and our flies was to ovipositing (egg-laying) females as they danced on the water.  No way for me to tell for sure, but my theory is that the females with eggs taste better to the fish than the spent flies that are dead on the water.  Anybody want to volunteer to eat them and let me know which taste better?