Some Small Stream Time, With Big Fish

Small stream fishing and autumn go hand and hand most years. This year it is still to dry for a lot of my favorite streams, but a few are deep enough to fish. I chose two to fish today, one I have fished quite a bit, and another one that I had never fished aside from one bridge pool. 

 The first stream takes some time to learn. It is mostly long, flat riffles and shallow glides with short stretches with sets of deep pools. It is easy to put some mileage on hiking the long sections between fish holding water. Today I worked the deep pools with a green weenie and caught plenty of small fallfish and common shiners. No salmonids though.

 This spot, with all of its woody debris, always has some fish. I fished it with Jon early in the summer and we found a few brown trout sitting in this spot. They were not there today. I worked up through some good pools where I have caught nice trout in the past without a touch. At that point I was pretty sure it was the fly so I changed to a little foam beetle and made my way up to a big deep pool where there are almost always rising fish. There were a few dimple risers near the head of the pool. They all looked like decent trout. However, to my surprise the first fish I had take was a big fallfish, all colored up and fighting like a little salmon! I'm not certain, but it may have been my personal best.

The next fish was a scrawny little holdover brown. had some teeth one him though!

After that I made my way to the other stream. It was unfortunately not as productive as I had hoped, I was thinking there should be some wild trout in there. I saw one brookie, plenty of little redfin pickerel that I would have loved to have caught, and brought to hand more species in the minnow family and a couple salmon parr.