Lake Willoughby

Lake Willoughby fills a glacially carved trench in the town of Westmore, its 1,687 acres squeezed into a narrow five-mile ribbon between Mount Pisgah and Mount Hor. The cliffs plunge nearly straight into the water at the south end, and the lake bottom keeps falling: at more than 300 feet, Willoughby is the deepest lake lying entirely within Vermont and one of the deepest in New England. The setting has earned it comparisons to a Norwegian fjord, and the fishery lives up to the scenery.

The story of Willoughby is a coldwater story. The lake stays frigid and well-oxygenated top to bottom, and its foundation is an abundant population of rainbow smelt. That forage base grows lake trout to exceptional size; Willoughby has produced Vermont's state-record lake trout and continues to give up fish in the double digits every season. Landlocked Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, and brown trout round out a true two-story fishery, with salmonids working the smelt schools from ice-out into early summer.

For fly anglers, the prime window opens the moment the ice leaves, typically mid to late April. For four to six weeks, lake trout, salmon, and rainbows cruise the surface layer and shoreline shelves chasing spawning smelt. This is when a fly rod is genuinely competitive with any method on the lake: trolling or casting smelt streamers like the Grey Ghost on sinking lines along the drop-offs at the north and south ends produces the best fish of the year. As the thermocline sets up in late June, the lake trout retreat beyond practical fly range, but salmon and rainbows still show early and late in the day.

Summer fly fishing turns to the margins: chironomid emergences over the shallower northern shelf, evening midge clusters on calm water, and leech and bugger work along the weedlines at each end of the lake. Fall brings salmonids back toward the surface and toward the mouths of tributaries as temperatures drop, and October can feel like a second ice-out for streamer anglers willing to brave the Kingdom wind.

Willoughby is big, deep, and frequently windswept; a boat or kayak transforms the fishing, though the accesses at the north and south ends both offer legitimate shore and wading opportunities over gravel shelves. The Willoughby is not numbers water. It is a place to hunt a genuinely large fish in one of the most beautiful settings in the East, and every serious New England stillwater angler should make the pilgrimage at ice-out at least once.

Willoughby is a cold, deep, oligotrophic glacial lake with remarkable water clarity; visibility of 20 feet or more is common. The basin is a steep-sided trench, with the bottom dropping quickly from narrow shoreline shelves into very deep water, especially along the cliff faces of Pisgah and Hor at the south end. The broader, shallower shelves at the extreme north and south ends hold most of the weed growth and insect life.

The forage base is dominated by rainbow smelt, which drive the behavior of every gamefish in the lake. Chironomids are the most important insect, with midge activity spring through fall; the shallow ends also hold damselflies, dragonflies, and leeches. Wind funnels down the lake's north-south axis almost daily, and conditions can change from flat calm to whitecaps in minutes.

Willoughby is one of Vermont's premier ice fisheries for lake trout, with jigging over deep structure producing fish through the winter season. Deep water and wind keep ice conditions variable near the cliffs; the north end sets up first. Check current ice fishing season dates for trout and salmon.