Great Averill Lake

Great Averill Lake — Great Averill Pond on the older maps — sits in the unincorporated town of Averill in Essex County, farther from a stoplight than almost any water in Vermont. Route 114 skirts its northern shore on the run from Island Pond to the Canadian line at Norton, and beyond that thin ribbon of pavement the country is working forest to every horizon. At 828 acres and roughly 1,700 feet of elevation, Great Averill is a high, cold, clear lake with an almost entirely undeveloped shoreline, sharing its watershed with wilder Little Averill Lake just to the south beneath the cliffs of Brousseau Mountain, where peregrine falcons nest.

The fishery is classic border-country coldwater: lake trout in the depths, rainbow trout along the shoals and drop-offs, landlocked Atlantic salmon riding the smelt schools, and brook trout at the brook mouths. Rainbow smelt anchor the food web here as throughout the Kingdom's deep lakes. The historic Quimby Country lodge at nearby Forest Lake has guided sports on the Averill waters since the 1890s, and the lakes still fish much as they did then — by canoe and streamer, in cold water, with nobody else in sight.

Ice-out comes late to this elevation and latitude, often the first week of May, and opens the year's defining window: salmon, rainbows, and lake trout all shallow, chasing smelt along gravel shorelines and off the inlet brooks. Streamer fishing from a canoe or small boat — Grey Ghosts, bucktails, white buggers on intermediate lines — produces steadily for three or four weeks, and the surrounding forest means the wind, while real, rarely builds the seas the bigger lakes throw.

Summer fishing follows the northern-lake pattern: chironomids over the shelves at dawn, damsel and dragonfly nymphs along the boulder shorelines, evening midge rises in the coves, with the lake trout deep and the rainbows most willing. Flying-ant falls in August can bring up every fish in the lake. Fall re-concentrates salmon and lakers on the shoals — October fishing here is cold-fingered, spectacular, and utterly private.

Come self-contained: the nearest services are in Island Pond or Canaan, cell coverage is a rumor, and the state access on the northern shore is the only developed facility. For the angler who measures a lake partly by what is absent — cottages, jet skis, other anglers — Great Averill may be the best water in this file.

Great Averill is a cold, clear, oligotrophic lake in a high glacial basin: boulder and gravel shorelines, defined shoals and points, and a central basin dropping past 100 feet. Cold inlet brooks and the outlet toward Averill Creek structure the fishery, and the shoreline is essentially undeveloped forest.

Rainbow smelt drive the salmonid food web; chironomids are the dominant insect, with damselflies, dragonflies, and leeches along the stony margins and significant late-summer terrestrial falls (flying ants especially) off the surrounding forest. Water clarity is high and the fish, though unpressured, get a long look — fine tippet and low light are allies.

A long, reliable ice season at this elevation, with lake trout and salmon taken by jigging over the deep basin. Effort is very light — you may share the whole lake with two or three shanties. Full winter self-sufficiency is essential this close to the border and far from services.