Vol. 7 - Where the Rivers Meet: The Fly Rod Shop & Waters of Northern Vermont
Words by Mike Swanson / Photography by Evan Kay
Ask The Fly Rod Shop owner Bob Shannon about the waters of northern Vermont and settle in for a journey. He will run the whole length of the Lamoille for you without skipping a beat, from the hills above Hardwick all the way down to Lake Champlain. He will tell you the history of Lake Eden and the Gihon River, where Johnson Woolen Mills sits riverside. He will tell you which bends hold wild fish and which run stocked, and how the gorge at Dog's Head Falls in Johnson, come fall, turns into one of the most spectacular sights in the state.
This is what time well spent in one of the most beautiful areas of the country can do to mind and memory. It is why we wanted to tell a fly fishing story, and why Bob Shannon and The Fly Rod Shop were the ones to do it.
THE SHOP ON ROUTE 100
The Fly Rod Shop sits about sixteen miles up the valley, where Route 100 eases into Stowe. Bob found his first fly rod as a student at Paul Smith's College in the Adirondacks, traded in his spin gear, and never really looked back. He moved to Stowe a couple of years later, joined the Mount Mansfield ski patrol, and ran trips in the summers to fill the off season. The first year was fifteen trips and a side job tending bar. These days the shop runs over a thousand trips a year, including ice fishing in the winter.
The shop goes back further than Bob. It grew alongside Diamondback, the fly rod manufacturing company Bill Alley built in Stowe, back when Vermont was quietly turning out some of the most respected rods in the country. Bob will tell you that plenty of the rods sold through Cabela’s and L.L. Bean in the seventies and eighties were built on Vermont blanks. The Fly Rod Shop itself has been here since 1986, the place people walk into for a leader, flies for the day’s conditions, and an honest answer about where the fish are holding. Bob took it over in 2001, and keeps seven guides on through the summer, some with more than thirty years on these rivers. As he puts it, “When you come here, you’re getting the experience of decades of knowledge.”
THE WATER HE KNOWS BEST
The rivers are what Bob keeps coming back to, and the brook trout most of all. “The Vermont brook trout is the most sought-after fish in the state,” he says. “We’re surrounded by cold, clean mountain streams here, and the brook trout fishing is some of the best in New England.” The fishing is better now than it was generations ago. The hills that were cleared then have grown back, the streams have filled in again with timber and shade, and the trout are thriving.
One of the rivers he loves the most runs right through Johnson. The mill is on the Gihon, the smaller river that comes down out of Lake Eden, and the name runs deep. As Bob tells it, the Gihon was one of the rivers said to flow out of the Garden of Eden. It is also one of the few tributaries of the Lamoille that holds all three trout at once. Stand where the Gihon meets the Lamoille and you are standing on a shot at what the guides call the Vermont grand slam, a brook, a brown, and a rainbow pulled from one small stretch of mountain water.
Spend enough years on the water and it starts to hold more than fish. Bob keeps a handful of fly rods in his office that belonged to friends who have passed. He does not leave them on the wall. A good rod is built the way a good wool coat is, to outlast the hands that first hold it. Hand built to be handed down.
"I've got rods in my office from friends gone past. Every year I take them out, catch a few fish, and share that day with the fishing buddies I've lost."
JOHNSON AND FRIENDS OUT ON THE WATER
After talking with Bob, we did the only sensible thing. We met one of his incredible guides, Matt, on the Winooski River, pulled on our waders, and got casting. Matt read the water, chose the flies, put us where the fish were holding, and we got into some beautiful trout. It was the kind of evening where everything else falls away except the next cast and the anticipation of the take. A tight line, a half dozen wild trout brought to hand and slipped back, and the peaceful feeling that fishing people will go a long way to find.
The Fly Rod Shop even tied us a fly of our own for the trip, the "Johnson Woolen Bugger." It is their spin on the classic Woolly Bugger, tied in the red and black of Johnson's Buffalo Check wool. One Vermont craft tipping its cap to another. Rumor has it a limited run made it to the Factory Store in Johnson for some lucky customers at checkout.
If you want to fish the water Bob has been fishing for decades, one of the easiest ways is to come stay with us at The Mill on the River, right where the Gihon meets the Lamoille in Johnson. The Fly Rod Shop will pick you up for your day on the water, whether you have fished your whole life or have never held a fly rod.
Cheers to getting out there with Johnson Woolen Mills and our friends at The Fly Rod Shop.
