The salmon hole is a steep slope of forest leading down to a pristine river, where the water forms eddies and riffles due to the obscure geographic features of the site. It has many maple trees with the occasional white pine. The forest has a definite canopy, with a thick amount of shrubbery and barberry. Leaf litter accommodates for the forest floor, and there is very little plant life under 12 inches tall. You’ll know you’re there if you hear a rushing torrent of water streaming from the Winooski River dam. The water from that dam smooths out, as it flows into a quarry like structure that is very deep. It is so deep in fact that cold water trout species like brown trout, rainbow trout, and brook trout take refuge there. It is also home to landlocked salmon and steelhead, which is rare for such a small fishery. You get there by walking down Colchester Avenue past McAuley Hall and Kampus Kithchen. At the bottom of the bridge before the hill, take a left nearly 360 degrees backwards. Follow the shoddy walking trail on the right side of the road, and you will climb down a steep embankment. This will eventually lead to wooden steps that are particularly slippery (as I found out). Keep following the path and you will see where the trees break and open up into a large shale sheet that banks the river. The experience of being there is nice to a degree until you see trash floating by or weeks old cigarette buts in the mud. I enjoy fishing here and visiting the location, but I can’t help but imagine it if people weren’t so careless. It would be a pristine waterway un-plagued my trash, sediment, and other human wastes that ruin the aesthetic of a waterway teeming with life. On my first visit I saw a school of minnows, probably shad or something of that variety. The school would dart and make holes on occasion, due to a a predator swoopig in for a mouthful of a few unfortunate pieces of bait. I found out that one of these predators was a smallmouth bass, because I caught it on my fly rod.
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