Sick in the Woods

Today was good. I am still sick, hacking my lungs out, and sore as can be, and exhausted. The only logical remedy, obviously, is a strenuous walk to a native brook trout stream where I could crawl around on my hands and knees, screw up my back by hunching over, and maybe get frustrated by 4 inch fish. Just what the doctor ordered.

Only someone as crazy a me would hike out into a tiny stream to catch little fish after 3 days of  bronchitis like cough. But then, as John Gierach wrote, "If people don't occasionally walk away from you shaking their heads, you're doing something wrong". So it happened that I explored a small stream this afternoon using wet flies and nymphs. Of course, I ended up flipping off 4 of the five bigger Brookies off before I could photograph them. Darn those things were so beautiful. That stream grows some very speckled trout. The sizes varied little. the fish were either 2-2 1/2 inches (making up 90% of the catch), or 5-6, and one honker that went 8. Of course I couldn't get a pic of him. This size is surprising considering the fact that this stream dries up to be a series of 3 gallon puddles in the summer.

Green!