Fly & Spey Fishing New York & Massachusetts Salmon, Steelhead & Trout Guided Trips

Westfield River: Right from the get go we had plenty of water in Western Mass due to the extended amounts of rain fall. The Westfield River fished exceptionally well mostly all season and into November with enough flows to allow for fish comfort. The typical spring of wet fly and nymphing was as good as it gets here with the summer dry fly and terrestrial fishing continuing to be very good into late September. Up until a couple weeks ago, there were still some nice trout being taken on the swing, but with the water temps now falling into the mid 30s, this will slow down considerably. Access to this area will also become extremely difficult, if not impossible, with the ice and snow beginning to cover the rugged unimproved roadways along the rivers.
With the introduction to two handed spey fishing here on the Deerfield and Westfield Rivers, I have been able to show how more trout waters can be reachable to those who wanted to learn these casting styles. Two handed spey casting here in Western Massachusetts is putting the future into the present, where you too can find yourself effectively fly fishing high water conditions that were otherwise unobtainable to the single hand overhead or shorter roll casting techniques.
For information about two handed spey casting instruction, fishing and guided trips, click on this link.

Deerfield River, which almost always fishes well and this year was no exception. Those who did venture out with me had a very good season both wading and floating for some of the finest big water trout fishing in Western Massachusetts. Many days of unpredictable flows made for difficult wade fishing for those who didn't have the luxury of fly fishing with me from my customized fishing raft. When these unpredictable and sustained releases occur, it’s nice to have a backup plan of float fishing some of the more productive fishing areas on this Majestic Deerfield River. Two handed Spey casting and fishing was another option and for those willing to try they found themselves casting to and hooking up trout that were unreachable to the wading single handed fly rodder.
Know more about Reel Recovery for Men and how The Deerfield River Fly & Spey Day is helping their cause while promoting and instructing Spey, two handed and fly single hand casting and fishing.

Salmon River, what else can be said for this gem of trophy salmon, trout and steelhead of the Northeast. Slightly higher than normal waters for September and early October provided some great early season fly and spey fishing from the DSR all the way into the Upper Fly Zone. Swinging the larger size 1 to 3 spey flies and natural and colorful wooly buggers in sizes 4 and 6 proved to be very effective for Kings, Cohos, Browns, Steelhead and even a few Atlantics mixed in. The Kings ran larger this year with more of an average of 22 to 25 pounds with many touching the 30 pound class and a few more in the mid thirties. Combining these powerful Salmon with the faster flows was a mixture for plenty of tackle testing runs and battles along with the ultimate test of the angler’s patience. A great year for many and big brown trout, these beautiful fall spawners saved many days while we were in waiting for the chrome steelhead to arrive in better numbers. Many browns in the 4 to 7 pound class found their jaws holding tight to our large streamers, buggers and spey flies while their thumping heads worked to break away. We did manage to coax a few ten plus pound browns to our cameras for some beautiful photos. Steelhead are now in the river and with the recent rains we are enjoying fresh pushes of chrome into the lower end and we’re finding them steadily migrating towards their winter holding spots. The cold and winter weather, that avoided us until this week, has seemed to finally set and should make for even better steelheading. The area and especially the Salmon River are still in need of much needed rain fall to increase flows throughout the full river system. Fishing pressure has been very heavy and ugly at times but hopefully this will diminish as water flows and weather conditions change. We are currently enjoying a fair to good early winter season and looking forward to a good 2010 spring steelhead season.