Lowell to North Troy: Big Falls and the Wild and Scenic headwaters
In December 2014 Congress added 46.1 miles of the Missisquoi and Trout rivers to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, and the first designated piece is the Missisquoi from the Lowell and Westfield town line to the Canadian border at North Troy, less the Troy and North Troy hydro projects. The river rises in Lowell, and near Troy it drops through Big Falls, an estimated 100-foot cascade inside a 16-acre state natural area with 2,400 feet of frontage on both banks that the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation manages for swimming, fishing and looking. The Wild and Scenic committee describes the headwaters and tributaries as high-gradient, cold streams with wild brook trout and the upper main stem as a mixed brook and brown trout fishery. The North Troy gauge, USGS 04293000, reads only 131 square miles and is the number for this upper water.
Richford to Enosburg Falls, with the Trout River at East Berkshire
The river loops through Quebec and comes back into Vermont at Richford, where the second Wild and Scenic reach begins and runs down to the Enosburg Falls hydro boundary at Sampsonville. The Trout River, itself designated from the Jay and Wade brook junction in Montgomery to its mouth, joins at East Berkshire, and the gauge this page uses sits there, USGS 04293500, reading 479 square miles. Route 105 follows the valley. The committee's summary of the whole system is a mix of cold-water and warm-water habitat with swimming holes and canoe runs from flat floats to technical whitewater; the Northern Forest Canoe Trail runs the river from Highwater down to Enosburg Falls and portages the dam there.
The Enosburg Falls trophy section: Kane Road bridge to the dam
Vermont Fish and Wildlife's trophy trout section on the Missisquoi runs from the downstream edge of the Kane Road (TH-3) bridge upstream about 5.7 miles to the top of the Enosburg Falls dam, in Enosburg and Sheldon. Two-year-old rainbows and browns go in from late April through May, usually in two plantings a few weeks apart, and the rule is two trout a day with no length limit during the harvest season, catch and release with artificials the rest of the year. The best public access at the top is the Enosburg Falls River Access Park: 7.3 acres and 1,500 feet of frontage that the Vermont River Conservancy bought in 2012 after a landowner posted the old path, reached by turning onto Duffy Hill Road just before the Route 108 bridge and parking at the pull-off a few hundred feet on. The conservancy says the bedrock pools below the falls hold smallmouth and the trophy trout.
Swanton: lake rules and two spring closures
From Lake Champlain up to the top of the Swanton dam the Missisquoi is treated as Lake Champlain for regulations. Two closures stack below the dam: from the top of the dam down about 850 feet on each bank, to the water treatment plant on the west side and the cement breakwater on the east, the river is closed to all fishing from March 16 through May 31; from there down to the Riverside Cemetery, 5,120 feet below the dam, it is closed from March 16 to the Friday before the first Saturday in May. The Swanton gauge, USGS 04294000, reads the full 850-square-mile basin at the bottom.
Hatches borrowed from the next drainage south
No shop or guide publishes a Missisquoi hatch chart. The nearest detailed local source is Catamount Fishing Adventures' chart for the Lamoille and Winooski drainages, one valley south. Read for this river it gives Hendricksons in the first half of May, March Browns in the last half, Sulphurs starting the third week of May, cinnamon caddis from mid May to the end of the season, Cahills in June, golden stones July to mid August, Tricos in the last week of July and through August, Isonychia and flying ants from late August to the end of September, and olives late September into October. The guide adds that Vermont hatches are thin and that attractors and a Woolly Bugger earn their place in the box. Those dates appear here unchanged and the chart is marked unverifiable; a river that crosses the border should run a little later than the Lamoille, not earlier.
Season and limits by reach, and the East Berkshire gauge
Statewide rules cover the river from Big Falls to the trophy section: trout may be kept from the second Saturday in April through October 31, eight a day in any mix of species with no length limit, and outside those dates the river stays open for catch and release on artificial flies and lures only. Kane Road bridge to the Enosburg Falls dam is the two-trout trophy water; the Swanton closures and lake rules govern the bottom. No shop gives a wading flow, so the page compares the East Berkshire reading to 200 to 700 cfs, built from the USGS record there: typical monthly flows of about 2,860 cfs in April, 1,200 in May, 560 in June, 345 in July, 280 in August, 320 in September and 645 in October. The river is a spring torrent and a summer wade, and the trophy stockings in May usually go in while the gauge is still above the window.