2004 Fishing Highlights

Tall Timber Lodge strongly encourages all anglers to
practice Catch & Release. In the immortal words of Lee Wulff,
"A good gamefish is too valuable to be caught only once. The fish you release is your gift to another angler."

April 29 - The clarion call of our resident loon announced the departure of the ice and the arrival of our spring season! After a long and cold winter, it is hard to believe that Back Lake flows once more. The salmon run has not yet begun, but with the warmer temps just around the corner, it won't be long now. Don't forget, black fly season is just a few weeks away!

May 17 - The fishing on the Connecticut has started to pick up, due in part to our great weather, but also because of the stocking trucks. The McKernan party all called today their best day of fishing Pittsburg ever, hooking many rainbows and brood stock brookies on streamers. While the water flow isn't quite fast enough for great salmon fishing, there are still some around in the river right now. The hendricksen hatch has started on the river as well. The lake was stocked twice last week, so the fish should start biting any time now. As predicted, the black fly season is in full swing, so come on up and experience it for yourself!

May 25 - The fishing on Back Lake is the best it's been all season, as many of our guests have hooked
in to 3 and 4 lb. brookies and browns. Walter, Scott, Rich and Gil from the Rundlett party, all longtime TTLers, had their best fishing in all of their visits to Pittsburg last weekend, as they landed (and lost) several of these monsters. This is Scott with his 4.2 lb. brookie at right. The fishing on the river continues to be good with all of the rain runoff we've received this week. Nymphs, streamers and some early mayfly patterns are working the best right now.

5/29 - With expert net man Levi at his side, Chris Merrill landed this 3 lb. 10 oz. brookie two minutes after they left the Tall Timber dock. They certainly earned it, as we saw all kinds of weather, some of which included snow flurries in the higher elevations that day! The fishing was pretty good all weekend, as the Laroche party also caught several large brookies and the usual assortment of rainbows as well. The Trophy Stretch continues to produce lots of average fish with the occasional lunker mixed in. Hopefully, this is the last snow we see for a while, but not the big fish!

10/6 - Sorry it's taken so long, but we had some minor technical difficulties with our computer. Anyway, on to the highlights! This summer, the lake really produced well in June and most of July, as our hex hatch hung around for two to three weeks. The outer ponds were very good in June, with the fishing especially hot at Clarksville Pond and Little Diamond Pond. The Connecticut River had a moderate, consistent flow all summer until late August, when the amount of rain we received forced US Gen to let more water out of the Connecticut Lakes. That made the September river fishing challenging to say the least. Still, people were fishing the trophy Stretch and the Magalloway Stretch and picking up some salmon. Last week, the river flows finally returned to normal, but the fishing has remained spotty. Our weather lately has been so nice that it has actually been too sunny for the fish, but still a great way to spend your days fishing. Today, Cindy, Jon and Dick Felone fished the Magalloway area and did very well on salmon and brookies with dries, but it was an overcast day and maybe that helped the fishing some.

Pictures (especially Catch & Release ones) are greatly appreciated for use with this page.
E-mail : Tom at Tall Timber