Home Water Mouse Experiment

Interested by my minor success getting a wild brown on a mouse last night on my "part time home river" I decided I should try a mouse on my actual home river. During the day. Because, well why not? Small stream wild trout are dramatically more opportunistic than their big river counterparts, and the conditions were optimal for fishing a mouse during the day. It was cloudy, spitting rain, warm, and the water level had moderated nicely (WAY too late to get a good blue quill or hendrickson rise, but whatever).

I was expecting a few pops and splashes here and there from wild browns, maybe a few stocked trout to hand. Best case scenario I would get a handful of wild fish hooked. That did not happen, but I did have two takes that were clearly large wild trout, and plenty from small fish. No surprise at all, I caught stocked brookies, salmon smolts, and one rainbow. It was cool to see a few wild trout go for the mouse during the day, especially since two were way above the size I've been seeing here the last two years. A hookup would have been nice though.

Was it worth experimenting with the mouse even though I knew it was far from the most likely thing to catch a good number of wild fish? It is always worth learning something new. But in this case, I chose the wrong day to mess around. There was a huge number of sulfur nymphs in the drift. Had I been nymphing with a size 16 PT, I would have had a field day. Oh well.