Sorry guys, it’s been a few days. Just giving a quick report…

Over the past few days I’ve had to do a bit of driving for work. By “a bit”, I mean a lot. I was all over the state, but took it as an opportunity to check out some rivers. Here are some of the rivers I fished or drove by, and how they’re doing…

1. The Swift – As usual, doing well. The water was surprisingly low, and some spots that are normally a foot or more were ankle deep. But with the Swift being a tailwater controlled by the Quabbin, it could easily change in a day. Anyways, the small brookies are thinning out. I didn’t see nearly as many as usual. And also, there were very few trout above route 9, so I mostly fished the pipe. A few trout were caught in my short visit, and all fell to size 24 black zebra midges. Also worth noting, I saw some “feeding frenzies” with crazy slashing at the surface form some big rainbows. I believe that they were actually gorging on the tiny brookies!
2. The Ware River – Only stopped by here, didn’t fish. Flows were pretty good, and surprisingly enough, there were several other fly fishers there. A few of them reported catching one or two trout, with small pheasant tails and black woolly buggers being the popular flies.
3. The Quinapoxet – I swung by here for 45 minutes at the most. Flows were pretty good, and I even managed to catch a December rainbow in my short trip. I was near River Street and caught the 14 incher on a size 18 pheasant tail.
4. The Nissitissit – This is one of my “home rivers”, so I was glad to see it was doing well. Again, flows were surprisingly good, and the fish were cooperative. I talked to three other fly fishers, and each had caught at least 3 trout, with one of them landing 6! Not bad for December! I landed 4 myself – two on orange eggs, one on a pink San Juan worm, and one on a size 18 pheasant tail.
5. The Parker – Don’t fish here now; it’s not doing well.
6. Fish Brook – Same as the Parker. I’m not sure what happened. The Ipswich seemed to flood it or something.