Chittenden Reservoir

Chittenden Reservoir lies in a mountain bowl at 1,480 feet in the town of Chittenden, ten twisting miles northeast of Rutland. The roughly 750-acre impoundment is ringed by the Green Mountain National Forest, with Bloodroot Mountain and the main Green Mountain ridge rising directly from its eastern shore; on a still morning the reflection doubles the mountains and the loons, and it is easy to forget Rutland's traffic is twenty minutes away. A hydroelectric dam controls the outlet, feeding East Creek toward the city.

The fishery mixes cold and cool water. Wild and holdover brook trout and brown trout work the reservoir's cooler reaches and tributary mouths, with the best trout fishing in the weeks after ice-out and again in fall. Smallmouth bass are abundant and underappreciated, patrolling the rocky shorelines, stump fields, and drop-offs all season, and a warm-evening popper bite here against the mountain backdrop is one of central Vermont's finer fly fishing experiences. Yellow perch and the occasional walleye round out the community.

Fly anglers treat Chittenden as an early and late water for trout and a summer water for bass. At ice-out, trout cruise the margins and tributary inflows — Lefferts Pond's outlet and the mountain brooks entering the eastern shore are focal points — and respond to buggers, leeches, and chironomids. June brings damselfly migrations along the weedy northern coves and the smallmouth shallow; July and August belong to bass and to early-morning chironomid fishing over deeper water; September and October return the trout to the banks.

Adjacent Lefferts Pond, a shallow, motorless appendage at the southeastern corner, adds a wild, marshy counterpoint favored by paddlers and evening-rise hunters, and the whole complex is a designated quiet-water gem: the reservoir carries restrictive horsepower rules that keep water skiing and fast traffic away. A canoe, kayak, or small motorboat launched at the Chittenden Dam access covers the water comfortably.

Chittenden does not grow the giants of the Kingdom lakes — the basin is only moderately deep — but as an accessible, beautiful, lightly pressured mixed fishery within a short drive of Rutland and the Killington corridor, it has no local rival. It is the right lake for a traveling angler with one free morning and a float tube in the trunk.

Chittenden is a moderately deep mountain impoundment with a flooded-valley bottom of stumps, rock, and old channels, weedy coves at the northern and southeastern ends, and clear, cool water fed by Green Mountain brooks. The basin deepens toward the dam; most of the reservoir is under 30 feet.

Forage runs to yellow perch, shiners, and crayfish, with strong chironomid populations, June damselfly migrations, dragonflies over the weedbeds, and late-summer flying-ant falls. The elevation keeps water temperatures friendlier to trout than most central Vermont lakes, and the mountain walls moderate — but sometimes funnel — the wind.

A steady local winter fishery for perch and stocked trout through the ice in season; the mountain elevation makes early, reliable ice most years. Snowmobile and ski traffic shares the plateau in winter — the reservoir stays pleasantly uncrowded.