Big January Brookies

Some of you may have noticed, but this fall I had a rather glaring lack of big colored up male brookies. That's mostly because of the conditions: low water, lot's of leaves, and unpredictable spawning. But winter 2016 is already making up for that and I have caught some really nice brookies. Today I got two spectacular males that both still had spawning dress on. I would classify one as one of my ten best wild brookies.
We had rain last night, so the stream I fished was flowing beautifully with clean, clear water. I'm sure that rain water raised the temperature of the stream a bit too, so I figured the fish would be feeding. I also figured that I would need to sink my flies to within a couple of inches of the bottom in order to reach the fish. A weighted Ausable Ugly was all I needed. The best pools in this stream are deep plunges, and that is unsurprisingly where the first take came from. I was high sticking the fly in the seem and BAM! A gorgeous dark male brooky was on.

The next productive pool is extremely deep, and it holds a lot of fish. Today I caught three, one big male and two smaller females. The big male hammered the Ugly and fought like a train. I love catching big, wild, hook jawed brook trout!