Floating and Fishing the White River

With the beautiful weather hanging around New England (with temps in the mid/upper 80°s and sunny clear skies), Krysta and I decided to try something different today, something that we’ve been talking about doing for a while – paddling!  After some discussion as to our plans, we settled on canoeing from Bethel to South Royalton on the White River.

There was only one catch – I was planning on fishing along the way (of course).  I’ve heard a lot about the fishing on this section of the White River (including lore of 27″ browns!!), and while I’ve been out on the White a few times (only last year), I’ve never had any luck.  I think that part of the reason for this is that this lower section of the river (below Bethel) is simply big water, and water that is best fished from a boat.  Since we were canoeing down the river, I had the perfect opportunity to finally check it out.

After dropping Krysta’s car off in South Royalton, we headed up to Bethel to put in.  It must have been around 86° with a nearly cloudless sky, so the fishing conditions weren’t looking too great, but in either event I was excited to check out this water.

Krysta was pretty excited to be out on the water as well.

We paddled down the river for a bit before taking a short water break at this great spot.  This is the sort of scenery and weather that we had all day long.  Certainly nothing to complain about!

As I spent a few minutes fishing a hole by the beach, Krysta was being entertained with other things in the water.

Casting into the obvious hole by the beach.  Alas, I had no takers.

We continued along our way, paddling and fishing down the river.  I tried out a variety of flies, including enormous hoppers and big ol’ stimulators (an orange #8 and a yellow #10), but nothing was seeming to do the trick.

Even in this fishy looking water, I got no love.  I think that it was just a bit too still in here, as I could see some surprisingly large fish running away from the boat as we approached.

Paddling down, I finally managed to hook into a decent rainbow using a yellow stimulator in deeper water strewn with boulders.  Unfortunately, after we got the canoe to the shore, the fish managed to free.  Bummer.

But now I knew the ticket, and before long had another taker on the yellow stim!

Not a bad fish .

Krysta had to say hi before letting him go.

Having just caught the one nice fish in this spot, I needed to give it another shot.  Alas, I didn’t see any more fish in here.  Somehow I reckon that we spooked them all when we passed overhead in the canoe.

Paddling on and on while fishing all the likely spots wasn’t producing any action, so I switched out to the larger orange stimulator.

On the first good cast into a very deep looking hole, I hooked into this nice rainbow.

And again, since I had just caught a fish, I needed to try the hole for a few more minutes.  And just like last time, I didn’t see anything (although I think the kayakers going right through the hole didn’t help things).

We got back into the boat and continued our journey downstream.  Seeing the bridge downstream that marked our takeout was somewhat disappointing, if only for the fact that this journey had to end.

Considering I hadn’t expected to catch anything, I’m quite pleased with how the float down the river went.  There are certainly a few more kinks that need to be worked out with respect to canoeing and fishing, but I’m sure that this is something that I’ll be doing again later this summer.  And now that I know how quickly this stretch of water can be paddled, we’ll be going out for more of an excursion next time.