a WTMA, Fallfish, and Pond Pickerel

It is great when other people's plans unfold in such a way that allows me to fish places that are a little out of the way for my day to day trips. Today my mom and stepdad had so shopping to do in West Hartford, so I asked them to drop me off at a spot I know that has a stream and a few ponds all in close proximity so I could get a couple of hours in.

The stream is actually a WTMA, and I hadn't fished it for more that a couple minutes until today. It was cold! I may be needing to switch to the waders now, I was wet wading today and if it had been a couple degrees cooler it would have been a bit uncomfortable.

I was truly expecting to catch some big beautiful fall brook trout, but that ended up being a pipe dream as there were simply no salmonids of any variety in the section of stream I was fishing. My friend Mark has caught brookies further upstream, so clearly I have some more exploring to do. Today it was all fallfish on beetles and skaters.

The main reason I wanted to fish the pond was that there are some big carp in it. I could see a few bubbling not far from shore, but the were infuriatingly difficult. I may have gotten one eat, but it's hard to say. What I did catch was a decent pickerel, some bluegill, and a little crappie. The pickerel was a minor miracle. It took very deeply and my carp leader is by no means meant for toothy critters! Had it not taken the fly a foot from the bank and jumped on shore, my fly would have been a goner!