Plus One

Yesterday the half mile brook was frozen over. Then it rained. It rained hard. For low gradient streams, the water came up and crammed pack ice wherever there was a barrier. Corners, cut banks, culverts. It made a bit of a mess, like this:

There are two spots in that pool where I usually catch a fish, but today neither spot existed. The half mile creek, however, looked like this:

I got two brook trout today, one on an Ugly and one on a yellow and chartreuse panfish jig. The first one was pretty special, because it is the first one I have caught out of a cut bank that I cleaned out over the summer, it was totally filled with leaves and not really a cut bank any more. Along with the pool above that was filling up with sediment from road runoff, I cleaned it out and returned it to a state that benefits the fish. Of course, the cut bank is very deep now and not too easy to fish, so I was pleasantly surprised. Then the nice deep sediment free pool above gave up another of many (it has fished well for a long time, though now it tends to hold a few fish rather than just one). That gave me one more reason to be happy than I had yesterday.... any day with any wild brook trout is a great day!

Frozen Footprints