Post by bartman on Jun 27, 2011 22:02:11 GMT -5
We attended my niece's wedding in Quechee VT this past weekend and I thought it would be a good time explore the White since I've never fished it. I did a lot of research, used the satellite maps, etc and the word was that the river was at a great level and fishing well. That was Wednesday and then the rains came down. We left for Vt at 5:30 am Thursday and I peeked at the USGS water levels before I left and the river had just risen a little bit since the day before. Unfortunately, the chart jumped from about 900 cfs to 5000 just after we headed out. When we arrived it was a raging mess. Still, I drove into Bethel in hopes that the tribs would be OK but they were also mud. I then drove all the way up to Rochester and found some cleaner water so I parked and proceeded to get my gear on when some rather large lightning bolts crashed into the hillside and it started pouring. It was not to be. With the wife in the car, we opted to vist the fish hatchery and then head to Windsor for lunch at the Harpoon Brewery. I thought that would be the end of any chance to fish until I pulled into Quechee and found a nice river named "Ottauquechee" which was famous for the Queeche gorge. This river was flowing high also so we checked into our room with hope of finding reduced flows on Friday. To make an already long story short, my son and I found some nice stretches on the Ottauquechee and between the two of us landed about 45 rainbows which were a mix of stocked and wild fish. The biggest was around 17" taken on a streamer. We actually caught some dry fly action on Saturday with some sulphers but the best method was drifting weightless PTs through the runs. So all the advanced research didn't pan out for us but the story has a silver lining. 
