Fourteen years ago, Jack Gagnon moved from Waterbury to the tiny village of Lakeville, Maine, (population 105), near the Canadian border. He went to enjoy the peace and quiet and the trout fishing. But in recent years, he has been making a yearly summer pilgrimage to the best fly fishing waters he knows — the upper Farmington River in Connecticut.
“Despite the good fishing here, I come down there and fish the Farmington,” he said in a recent email to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “A freestone, cold-running, tailwater trout fishery with mayfly hatches galore — it’s as good as it gets!”
Gagnon grew up fishing the famed Beaverkill River in the Catskills and has ranged as far west as the spring-fed creeks of Montana, Idaho and Yellowstone National Park to cast a line.
“The Farmington River is as good as any of them,” he said, telling of a 22-inch brown trout he caught in June and released near the former Ovation guitar factory in New Hartford.
Ask fly fishermen where their hearts carry them when the mayflies hatch over a riffled current and fat trout rise to feed, and conversation will turn to certain storied places. There’s the Beaverkill in New York (where the hamlet of Roscoe bills itself as “Trout Town USA”), the Battenkill in Vermont, the Au Sable River in Michigan, birthplace of Trout Unlimited, and the many clear rivers of Yellowstone.
There’s continuing and growing recognition, though, that the Farmington — where trout populations in some stretches measure 600 fish per mile — offers all the same elements of fishing nirvana: scenic beauty, good public water access, abundant trout, year-round fishing and holdover fish that can top 10 pounds. You don’t have to look far in Trout Unlimited’s Guide to the 100 Best Trout Streams to find the Farmington: It’s listed on Page 3 (just before a profile of the nearby Housatonic River).
While just a two-hour drive from New York or Boston, it says, the Farmington’s West Branch, whose 22 miles of fishable waters run northwest from Unionville to Hartland, “offers one of the best tailwaters in the Northeast for catching 20-inch trout.” (A tailwater fishery is created by the outflow from a dam). The state stocks catchable-sized trout in more than 300 Connecticut rivers and streams, but on the upper Farmington changes in fishing regulations that help fish live longer and grow bigger make it arguably the state’s premier inland fishery. That is boosting tourism.
More than a dozen professional guides book trips all year long on the Farmington’s West Branch. Many of their clients arrive from out of state.
“I have people from all over the planet coming here — Boston, New York, England, France, Finland,” said Antoine Bissieux, who once taught at the Orvis Fly Fishing School in Manchester, Vt., before moving to Connecticut. “If I had to pick a single place to fish in the Northeast, it would be here. That’s why I’m here.”
Another longtime guide, Fred Jeans, said in one area he recently noted 13 parked cars with license plates from nine states.
“They came a long way for a very good reason,” he said.
It wasn’t always so.
Recent years have seen a dramatic reversal of the long-held “put-and-take” fishing ethic, which had 80 percent of Connecticut’s stocked trout going home to the frying pan. William Hyatt, chief of the Bureau of Natural Resources at the DEEP, said around 1988 environmental officials recognized that careful management of cold-water releases from the Goodwin Dam upstream could support a “wild” trout population that would spawn in the river.
Management tactics were shifted. The limit on “keepers” was dropped from five to two, and to give young trout a chance to grow those fish now must be at least 12 inches long instead of 9. A 1.8-mile section of the best fishing water was designated a Trout Management Area, where year-round fishing is allowed but catch-and-release is enforced. Coordination with the Metropolitan District Commission, which operates the upstream dam, was stepped up.
Those periodic releases keep trout healthy through the summer heat, and serve to moderate the water temperature in winter. The result is that a small black insect, Doliphilodes distinctus — known as the “winter caddis” — will hatch on sunny winter mornings on the Farmington, extending the fly fishing season well past closing day for most rivers.
“The trout population responded even better than we expected,” Hyatt said of the bureau of natural resources. Since 1993, the state has been capturing wild trout from the Farmington and using them as brood stock, building a “survivor strain” of fish that are hardier and better adapted than standard hatchery trout.
By 2012, the catch-and-release management area was tripled in length to include some of the best sections of the river. It now covers 5.3 miles. That includes popular spots such as Greenwoods Pool and Church Pool, where clouds of mayflies hatch throughout the season and the river is lined with flycasters whipping their lines overhead.
Letting trout grow into line-stretching lunkers instead of hauling pails full of stocked 9-inchers home for dinner has made a huge difference.
Grady Allen, owner of UpCountry Sportfishing in New Hartford, credits the DEEP with changing the fishing culture on the upper Farmington.
“They’ve given us [almost] 6 miles of catch-and-release fishing, which is the real draw for these people from out of state. When they make the trip, they want to reliably catch fish — and they’re after the big ones. And if you don’t have catch-and-release, you don’t have the big trout.”
Randy Fiveash, director of the Connecticut Office of Tourism, said the popularity of fly fishing fits the profile of modern tourism, in which “people really want to experience their vacation,” not just gaze at scenery from behind a car window. Trout fishing on the Farmington, Housatonic and Salmon rivers is featured among “52 Getaways” shown on the state tourism site. Fiveash said his office has just completed an online microsite to promote the Connecticut Antiques Trail, and something like that might be done to promote fly fishing.
“When you talk about outdoor sports, that is the lifestyle here,” said New Hartford First Selectman Dan Jerram. Kayaking, canoeing, skiing and hiking as well as fishing draw locals and out-of-towners into the outdoors. “We’re not a town that is pursuing rapid growth,” he said, “but we’re looking for businesses that can work in concert with that outdoor lifestyle.”
The DEEP estimates that anglers make 30,000 to 35,000 trips to the Farmington every year, spending on average of four hours on the water. Its 2012 angler survey found that each such trip injects $45 into the local economy. Guides reported taking in $285,000 in client fees — a figure the DEEP says may fall far short of the real total.
At Upcountry Sportfishing, that kind of spending translates into more sales of $10 lures, $95 trout nets and $300 Gore-Tex jackets — and the activity benefits the entire local business community.
“They come here in droves for the river,” said Leslie DiMartino, owner of the Riverton General Store, which sells deli sandwiches just steps away from one of the most popular fishing holes. At Chatterley’s restaurant in New Hartford, manager Samantha Roach says the influx of anglers accounts for much of the restaurant’s tourist trade, along with leaf peepers in the fall and patrons of Ski Sundown in the winter. “We do notice an influx of fishermen from out of state, especially in spring,” she said. “Almost every night, we have fishermen at our tables.”
A key factor for any kind of tourism is the rate of overnight stays, which serves as an economic multiplier. That’s where the Route 44 corridor is lacking. The DEEP survey found that only 2.6 percent of anglers on the Farmington stayed at hotels or inns. Another 1 percent are using state forest campgrounds.
Besides the historic Old Riverton Inn (with 12 guest rooms) and two small motels in New Hartford and Canton, plus a few B&B’s, there isn’t much in the way of lodging along Route 44 west of Avon and Farmington. Grady Allen said he recognizes “our weakest point is accommodations.” To help meet the demand from anglers, he opened a three-bedroom rental apartment above his store.
“There’s a shortage of hotel accommodations that target anglers as a customer,” said Hyatt, who has studied the Farmington since the 1980s, “especially compared with what’s available on the rivers with a longer history of destination trout fishing.” But he said word is spreading about the quality of the fishing experience on the Farmington. “The potential of that river to attract people from out of state will continue to grow,” he said, “simply because the fishing is that good.”
Just opening this month in Barkhamsted is a new bed and breakfast oriented to the fly-fishing crowd. Sal Tataglione, an investment portfolio manager, said for 25 years he drove from his home in Easton to fish the Farmington and always wished for a place like Legends on the Farmington, which he built on five acres adjacent to the Greenwoods Pool. “There weren’t a lot of options here,” he said. “Hopefully, this will help fill that niche. We’re starting to book up now.”
Gagnon, who makes the eight-hour drive from Maine every summer for a week of fishing on the Farmington, said he can’t stay away because he consistently catches larger trout in the Farmington than he does anywhere else — the big brown trout he landed in June probably weighed 5 pounds. “I could’ve put a tennis ball in it’s mouth, it was so big,” he said. “It barely fit in the net.”
For more information, visit www.ct.gov.
