Vermont Trout Hikes

 Vermont Trout Hikes: A Guide to its Backwoods Ponds

 5.5” X 8.5”, 30 maps, 116 pages,   

 ISBN 978-0-578-76640-9

 $15.95, at local bookstores.

If you are going to find an 18-inch brook trout in Vermont, it will be in a backwoods pond, which is included between the covers of this guidebook. However, anglers are not the only readers who will be excited about this guidebook. At a time when COVID has sent thousands of new visitors to Vermont’s woods, here are remote places to swim, kayak, camp, birdwatch, as well as fish. Hike-in waterbodies are rare real estate in the Green Mountain State, but Vermont Trout Hikes offers directions and maps to more than a score of these destinations. The journeys range in distance from only a few hundred feet, to hikes that take you miles from the nearest road, and in some cases into trailless wilderness. Here are places to practice no-trace, primitive camping on designated federal or state lands. Whether the visitor is going to portage a canoe or kayak into one of the easily reached ponds, or throw on a backpack to spend some nights in the backcountry, the reader will find clear directions and information, supported by trail maps. If you are a trout angler, this is a critical reference book that includes information on wild trout populations, stocking, depth charts, and more. There are also special tips for anglers who fly fish.

Features include:

• Directions and 16 trail maps
• 15 depth charts for fishing strategies
• GPS coordinates of key trailheads 
• Camping information for both primitive and developed sites
• Stocking histories (7-year minimum data review)

It is not all about the fish, though, as this excerpt indicates:

“These backwoods waters are places to see an eagle steal a trout from an osprey; to be transfixed by a field of lady slippers; to get nervous as you confront a moose; to listen to an otter crunch on the bones of a living fish; to have a hummingbird perch on a cord that guys your tent; and, to fall asleep listening to the tremolos of the loon and the splashes of feeding trout.”