Salmon River

The Salmon River is the one water anglers in the eastern half of Connecticut plan a spring around. It's a medium-sized freestone that forms where the Blackledge and Jeremy rivers meet just above the Comstock Covered Bridge, then runs southeast through the Salmon River State Forest to the Connecticut River at East Haddam. The draw is a fly-fishing-only stretch inside a larger Trout Management Area, stocked heavily — and stocked early, sometimes by mid-February when weather allows — with a genuinely good holdover-brown component and the occasional hatchery brood fish that runs to five pounds. Ten-fish days aren't uncommon early in the season, which is part of why the fly-fishing-only water draws a crowd. The river also carries retired broodstock Atlantic salmon each fall from CT DEEP's legacy program, which turns the lower river into an odd late-season fishery you won't find in many places.

This is entirely a wade river — long riffles, a few real runs, deep slow pools, and stretches of honest pocket water. Access is easy and public: Route 16 crosses at the Comstock Covered Bridge between Colchester and East Hampton, River Road parallels the water through the state forest, and the whole TMA sits on state land. Newly stocked fish will eat an attractor, but the browns that hold over into a second season get picky, so matching the Hendrickson, sulphur, and caddis emergences with the right stage matters in the fly-fishing-only water. It fishes best March through June — early stocking, overlapping hatches, and the Hendrickson and sulphur dry-fly windows — and again through the cold months, when the catch-and-release season and the broodstock salmon make it a quiet, protected fishery.

The honest catch is summer. Despite heavy forest shade through the state forest, low July and August flows warm the water into the danger zone, and below roughly the low 20s CFS the river runs thin and stressed — water temps push past 70°F. Carry a thermometer and give it a rest when it climbs above about 68°F; the Thames Valley TU chapter and the local guides push this hard. When it's blown out after a spring storm or too warm in high summer, the Farmington tailwater an hour west is the fallback.