This past Saturday I went in search of completing my second My Fishing Cape Cod challenge.
I drove to western Massachusetts near Belchertown to fly fish the Swift River. Several anglers were already on the water when I arrived. It was sunny and in the mid 30s.
The Pipe area had 4 guys in it, so I walked the other way and found some spots to myself. Starting with a bead head squirmy worm, I began my drifts with no fish to show.
Moving upstream I found several schools of small brook trout, so I tied on a small bead head jig I had bought at Orvis the night before. I added an airlock indicator several feet above jig, which allowed me to drag the jig on the bottom.
In this situation I used my 9 foot 5 weight fly rod.
Hopefully the jig would drift naturally right into one of the brook trout’s mouths. A couple of short drifts later with my nine foot long five weight fly rod, I watched in excitement as one of the brookies took the jig in the crystal clear water.
Working my way upstream towards the pipe I ran into a good-sized brown trout that was sitting alongside a rainbow, but they quickly slid by me not to be seen again.
A little bit more wading and I found another rainbow sitting behind a log. I had branches right in front of me and my casting area was small. I changed my flies a couple of times but the rainbow would not eat.
Eventually the branch caught my line and I lost my squirmy indicator. I decided to move back onto land to cut back my leader and add extra 6x tippet to make it longer.
photo by Anthony Vuong
I stopped at the pipe on my way out to see if anyone was catching or if any spots had opened up. I saw a couple more big rainbows and one or two additional browns.
However my zebra midges and squirmies were of no interest to the fish.
I think the pipe is between the Y-pool and the cable pool. Andrew is correct, the river is low and slow these days. It used to be 4 feet deep in the 70’s and 80’s and you could fill your chest waders dropping off the bank into the water (especially in the section toward rte 9). I find using streamers works for me #8-10 drift but strip and work the fly to keep it moving and not hang on all the natural slash in the river (good cover though). I will be hitting the Swift after the new year and as long as we do not get anchor ice I will keep at it. Should be a lot more quiet that the warm months.
The Swift is a tough place to fish. I’ve been in the middle of the river near the pipe with trout swimming all around me. No luck at all.
Nice trout and really nice photos. The swift can be as insanely productive as it is insanely frustrating. Somedays nothing works, somedays a specific technique is all that will work, and other days a totally different technique will work. For anyone interested in trying the swift here are few things i’ve noticed that help:
-Soft hackles are great – i use them as my tag flies with heavier nymphs as droppers, throw them single because they’ll sometimes sit on the surface like a dry fly, or ill use split shot to work the middle/lower parts of the water column. Orange and partridge is a classic but I also like olive and partridge as well as tan.
-dry droppers with caddis flies can be a great option too
-really “dragging” heavy/euro style jig nymphs can work well also. I’ve gotten a lot of hits from trout picking a stationary nymph off the bottom
-the flow at the swift is so slow that it usually takes me a bit to adjust, sometimes i find that i’m drifting too slowly and if I pick up the pace I’ll get more action. For every day I do well slowly dredging the bottom, there’s a day that they’ll only hit nymphs on the swing moving pretty fast ahead of the current.
-long thin leaders help – since switching to 6x or 7x I’ve been much more successful than classic 5x
-I’ve probably caught trout on natural colors 10x as much as anything bright or flashy – those fish have been seeing flies since the day they hatched or were stocked. Nothing surprised them any more
-smaller flies are also important – 16s are probably the smallest I go and sometimes the insanely small 20 or even up to 26 midges are all that they’ll notice
-there are a ton of brown trout in that river hiding under banks or under the lay downs – i always focused on pools and classic runs when i started but once i took the time to look I realized were a ton of browns right in “plain sight” but hugging structure.
-deaddrifting large streamers sometimes works too – I hooked a tiny brook trout once and an enormous brown shot out and ate it like a striper smashing a bunker. Those big trout love to eat “meat”.
I really like the Swift. It can definitely be “combat fishing” and there are always other anglers there, but if nothing else there is a 100% chance you’ll see fish every time you go. It’s definitely the best winter fly fishing in the state.
It goes without saying but stay off the redds! Try to wade on vegetation as much as you can – targeting fish that are spawning on sandy redds is an obviously and regularly stated unethical thing, but a careless sloppy step into a redd full of eggs can be a disaster and is often under-mentioned in terms of protecting the spawn.
Love it Piotr! The photos are also excellent!
Quick question…I’m curious what is “the pipe” that you reference in your report? I’m assuming it’s a skinny section of the river?
Ryan I used to live near there the pipe I believe is where the swift river starts the pipe come out of the bottom of quabbin resavour.
The pipe is a spot where the belchertown hatchery water dumps out through a pipe into the swift river. The bubbler is the spot where the quabbin dumps into the swift.