Read this before you keep anything
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health advises that no one eat fish, frogs or turtles from the Housatonic River, or from the tributaries feeding it, from Center Pond Dam in Dalton to the Connecticut border. That is the whole Massachusetts trout river: Pittsfield, Lenox, Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington and Sheffield. The reason is polychlorinated biphenyls that General Electric released from its Pittsfield plant from the early 1930s into the late 1970s, which EPA says have reached very high concentrations in the river's animals and led to consumption advisories for fish, frogs, turtles and waterfowl in Massachusetts and for fish in Connecticut. The DPH advisory has been in place since 1982. The MassWildlife season summary lets you keep one trout of 20 inches or more from the main stem; the health department says do not eat it. This page treats the river as catch and release everywhere, and the guides do the same.
Route 20 bridge to Willow Mill Dam, Lee
MassWildlife's upper catch-and-release area starts at the Route 20 bridge in Lee and runs downstream to the Willow Mill Dam. Artificial lures only, no bait, and from June 15 to August 31 no fishing within 100 feet of the mouths of Beartown Brook, Goose Pond Brook, Hop Brook and Mohawk Brook, the cold tributaries the trout crowd into when the river warms. Bill Hager's Memorial Day 2022 account on BlogFlyFish is a fair picture of the water: he took browns from 7 to 17 inches on a soft-hackle Pheasant Tail and a Mop Fly, mostly by working downstream to deeper runs, and he notes the Housatonic is a brown trout river until about mid-June, when the water warms and the smallmouth take over. MassWildlife stocks Lee and Stockbridge in spring only; the browns that hold over are the fish the Housatonic's reputation rests on. The Lee Athletic Field access on Housatonic Street is the launch.
Glendale Dam to the Stockbridge railroad bridge
The lower catch-and-release area runs from the Glendale Dam downstream to the railroad bridge in Stockbridge, under the same artificials-only, no-bait rule. Route 183 follows the river through Stockbridge and Glendale, and the Park Street access in Stockbridge is the official put-in. Berkshire Rivers Fly Fishing, which floats this river from Great Barrington, fishes trout only in spring and fall, from March 1 to the end of May and again from mid-September once temperatures drop, and refuses to trout fish in summer for the fish's sake; June through mid-September it runs smallmouth and pike floats, and it calls June its best pike month. The guides say the biggest browns of the year come in the slow March to mid-April window, and mid-April to early June is the most consistent trout fishing.
Woods Pond, Rest of River, and the dredges
Between Lenoxdale and Lee the river backs up into Woods Pond behind a dam that has trapped PCB-laden sediment for decades, and the EPA Rest of River cleanup is now under way around it. General Electric's design for Reach 6 calls for removing 493,320 cubic yards of contaminated sediment from Woods Pond, Valley Mill Pond and the adjacent floodplain over three to four years by hydraulic dredging, with material moved by pipeline and rail rather than trucks. EPA held public meetings in June 2026 on GE's final work plan for Reach 5A, the river between Pittsfield and Woods Pond. Expect construction traffic, staging areas and closures along Crystal Street and New Lenox Road for years, and expect turbidity below the work. Decker Landing on New Lenox Road in Lenox and the Woods Pond bridge access on Crystal Street in Lenoxdale are the upper put-ins.
The Great Barrington gauge and the 600 cfs ceiling
This page reads USGS 01197500 near Great Barrington, 282 square miles of drainage, which sits below both catch-and-release areas and above the Ashley Falls gauge near the state line. Hager writes that the river is fishable at 600 cfs or less and that 250 cfs is comfortable; 500 after a thunderstorm looked like chocolate at dawn and was wadeable by ten. He does not name his gauge, so take 600 as a ceiling to confirm on the water rather than a law. The record agrees with him. Monthly medians at Great Barrington since 1913 are about 1,140 cfs in April, 580 in May, 360 in June, 215 in July, 175 in August, 180 in September, 250 in October and 400 in November. The 200 to 600 cfs band is the May through early June trout window and the October return; below 200 the river is warm and the guides are chasing bass; above 800 it is, in Hager's words, a raging torrent that cannot be waded.
Hatches on the Massachusetts Housy
No Massachusetts-specific Housatonic chart exists, and the Connecticut charts belong to a colder, dam-fed river fifty miles south. Berkshire Style's regional piece puts drakes, Gray Fox, Brown Drakes, March Browns and Sulphurs in mid to late May, and the FlyFishFinder Massachusetts chart places Hendricksons in the first two weeks of May on Berkshire rivers, Sulphurs from June and Isonychia from August into October. Hager saw heavy bug activity on Memorial Day 2022 with no risers. The rows below combine those sources and should be read as Berkshire timing, not a Housatonic survey.
One trout at 20 inches, and what the zones change
The MassWildlife season summary gives the main stem Housatonic its own line: from the confluence of the East and West Branches in Pittsfield to the Connecticut line, the trout limit is one fish per day, 20-inch minimum, January 1 to December 31, exclusive of the two catch-and-release areas where no trout may be kept. Both C&R areas are artificial lures only. The Lee area adds the June 15 to August 31 closure within 100 feet of the four brook mouths. The tributaries, Beartown Brook, Goose Pond Brook and Hop Brook in Lee among them, are stocked and fall under the general river rule of eight trout April 1 to September 10 and three the rest of the year, but the DPH advisory covers them too. With everything else, the honest summary is: fish it, release it, and wash your hands.