At the Quinapoxet

Better late than never…I ended up getting out last weekend on the Quinapoxet but have been so busy with moving and trying to get unpacked that I didn’t have the time to post about the trip until now. I did pretty well considering I was only able to dig out a few of the absolute necessities from the myriad boxes housed in temporary storage – rod/reel, a fly box or two and that was about it. Luckily I have now unpacked and should have the full arsenal. Back to the fishing. Some guys from work suggested the Quinapoxet as the closest really good system (my home base is in Worcester) so I took their advice and gave it a shot. I parked by the Trout Brook confluence and walked down to the river from there. There were a few anglers fishing the pool at the confluence. I hiked downstream to get to some unpressured water and leapfrogged my way from feature to feature all the way to the highway 190 overpass. There is a ton of really interesting water to fish just in that relatively short section. Some small-to-medium size but very deep pools, nice runs and insect producing riffles; overall really great water for most types of fishing you would care to do. I ended up nymphing with indicator – my usual go-to strategy, especially on new water. My go-to fly combo in these situations is equally as basic. Black or olive and black wooly bugger with a Copper John dropper (in this case red). The first good feature I fished I picked up a good stocker rainbow about 14″ (pictured). It fought surprisingly well given the sometimes bad reputation of stocked fish. I also got a smaller 8-10″ brown. Both on the Copper John dropper. The rest of the trip downstream I eked out another good stocker, 2 more small browns and a brookie. Everything but the brook trout was on the dropper. All in all a good first trip.  

A couple of general observations. One, I love the names of the rivers and streams around here. Quinapoxet sounds very exotic in my mind. I’m certainly looking forward to exploring many more interestingly named waters. Two, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the beauty of this area. To be completely honest, having never been here before, I sort of thought the whole state would just be one big Boston suburb. I was wrong. The proximity to good water rivals anywhere I’ve lived. Outside of being 10 miles from the Gunnison when I lived in CO, everywhere else I’ve lived was an hour or sometimes more to really decent trout water. It took me about 15 minutes to get to the Quinapoxet. Makes fishing before or after work so much more enticing.

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