One of Those Awesome Days

With the increasing length of daylight, I have more time after school to fish. Today I took advantage of that to get in one last outing on a non-TMA before CT's short closed season. I really wanted to fish one of my favorite small streams, one that I have not fished since early fall. I really did not get an idea of how the fish that live there fared through the dry summer.

I started out with an Ausable Bomber. I caught the first fish of the day in the pool bellow, right in the soft water near the big rock in the middle.

After a bit I got tired of drying the bomber and changed to something more buoyant... a foam beetle. That got my a few fish.

In the calm pool bellow I got the first of a number of sizeable brook trout. I cast the beetle to the left of the partially submerged stick, and the fish took with a slow and deliberate head and dorsal type rise. He began to battle against the rod and made it into the stick. I had to work my way up to the stick (on the bank, I wasn't wading) where I was able to maneuver the line off of the stick and landed the fish. It was fat and very colorful.

The next fish, to my amazement took three times. Sometimes a brooky will still eat after it has gotten well hooked and been pulled four feet down the pool. That happened on the first cast. I hooked up again the next cast and once again the fish was juiced up enough to hit my Ausable Ugly again, giving my a chance to land one of the best fish in the stream. And so fat! It's like this every spring. The moment the water gets up to about 40 degrees the fish go nuts and eat faster than they can digest. Greedy, fat fish means crazy awesome brook trout fishing.

FAT BELLY!

Further up another solid fish at the Ugly, and yet further still I lost a decent fish that was to shaken by the experience to come back for more.

I was left with two options. There is a waterfall that blocks passage and the upstream portion is fishless, so I could either go to a nearby stream or fish the lower section, which I was not too confident in. I have fished it a few times in the summer and not seen a thing. But I decided I wouldn't be able to forgive myself for not giving that water a shot. You just never know.

In this pool I god a taker. The same fish hit the Ugly twelve times, was hooked four, and just kept taking. When it started to get shy I changed to a Bomber, which it ate four times. Finally I tied on a Mickey Finn, and three casts in a row that fish came up and hit it. In a last ditch effort I twitch the streamer quickly upstream. I watched a wake appear behind the fly and the fish clobbered it. I finally caught it! Either that is a testament to the aggression and greed these brook trout have or, and these are not mutually exclusive, my lack of skill as an anger. The fish was aggressive and not at all timid and it took me twenty plus chances to catch it? That's just depressing.

I must say the coloration on this fish was crazy... it had a green cast to it. I have seen purple, blue, grey, gold, and copper sheen on brook trout, but green is new.

All in all, that is one of the coolest brook trout outings I have had in a while, and I have been doing very well lately! With the closed season I will have to find my March dry fly fish on a WTMA or TMA. It is perfectly possible to find rising fish on the Farmington in March, and I'm sure I'll be up there very soon.