Fishing the Massachusetts Berkshires for Brook Trout and Brown Trout

by Dave Williams (Adam Bolonsky)

The Berkshires Are Well-Known for More Than Tanglewood: Brook Trout and Brown Trout

Savoy Mountain State Forest, in Florida, Massachusetts holds within its eskers one of the prettiest little ponds in Massachusetts. Tiny, round, set deep in a sharp notch in the woods below a steep esker whose banks plunge to the water's edge like the face of a waterfall, the forest's pond is full of trout: not only rainbows, but brook trout and brown trout. Surrounded by 14,000 acres of state forest, it's filled with waters clean and clear.

Just one of several freshwater fishing spots tucked away in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, you can't beat a three or four day fishing stay here especially if you're a need-to-get-away angler with willingness to carry in firewood, water, and food to one of four one-room log cabins available for rent from the state's Department of Natural Resources.

The payoffs: remote loveliness, good fishing, and access to the pond's long ice-fishing season. The cabins are available for rent year-round.

Built by the civilian conservation corps in the 30's and well-cared since, the cabins at Savoy Mountain are a good bargain. Several summits nearby offer views of four distinct mountain ranges: the Taconic, Green, Hoosac, and Litchfield, and a glimpse of New York's Adirondacks. The hills which undulate through the forest are gentle, rounded, rolling, offering good hiking when you've had your fill of the fish.

As for what you can catch here, it's a matter of taking your pick among brown, brook and rainbow trout. A variety of panfish, including pickerel, populate nearby Bog and South Ponds. Ice fishing is an excellent option, but it's the ponds' browns which offer the most satisfaction.

Like all browns in the US, the browns here are the progeny of an import effort back in 1882 which brought brown trout to the US from England.

Regarded as native to Massachusetts ever since, browns in North Pond haven't lost any of their characteristic caution, guile, and wiliness.

There's lots of structure here: logs, heavily-vegetated banks, low-arching tree branches. There are also rock jumbles on the bottom.

Brown trout require finesse and a patient, subtle approach. When the ice melts, the best gear on them is fly gear: dry flies in the 12-18 size, one-and-a-half pound tippets, long leaders.

Massachusetts' only truly native trout, brook trout, also fare well in North Pond's pure water. Like browns, the trick is to find them. You have to go deep, and send your bait to the bottom, in summer, and suspend it higher, beneath bobbers, in the colder seasons. The woods cloud up with a wide variety of insect hatches in season, including a massive black fly inundation, so bring your deet along. Daytime feeders, North's brook trout subsist on those hatches and on the pond's baitfish. The North Pond flyfisher who flicks mayflies, caddis flies, stoneflies, etc., or ants, moths, grasshoppers, etc., over the water --- anything similar to the week's hatch, in other words ---- will do well.

To stay at Savoy Mountain, you can camp or stay in one of the cabins. Fees are nominal; reserve with via the efficient ReserveAmerica website.

If you're renting a cabin, you'll need to provide your own linens, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, pots, plates, flashlights, lanterns, etc. Each cabin has a dining table, chairs, double bunks, a wood-burning stove and outside fire pit.

To get to Savoy Mountain take route 2 west to North Adams, being sure not to miss the Rte.2/91 switch in Greenfield. After a roller-coaster ride around and over the hairpin turns of Florida, turn left onto Central Shaft, then right onto Central Shaft Road. Forest HQ is on the right, after South County Road. North Pond's parking, access to camping and the cabins, is two miles further.