Native Brookies With Mike Carl

Yesterday local guide and fellow small stream explorer Michael Carl (easternctflyfishing.com) messaged me and asked if any of my local streams would be worth visiting the next morning. I had already given that some thought as my original plans to fish the shoreline had to be canceled, and I offered to show him a particularly special brook trout stream. Plans were made, and we found ourselves in the slow moving cold water of what is probably the most fertile small wild trout stream I've fished south of Massachusetts this morning, fly rods in hand.

Mike happens to have become friends with Joe Humphreys, and has adopted a lot of the methods that Joe pioneered. It really shows, in his casting,setup, the way he approaches a pool full of trout... I watched a lot of video of Joe Humphreys fishing small streams as I was learning and I strove to emulate his methods. Watching Mike fish I saw some things that I have watched Joe do in videos that I have never quite gotten the hang of. I swear, every time I fish with someone new I learn so much.

Fall colors are near their peek both on the trees and the brook trout right now, and though we found some aggressive fish it was clear they weren't quite yet in 'kill everything that hits the water' mode.

Mike and I took turns fishing the bigger pools that held numerous fish, trading places after we'd either caught a fish or two or missed a few. It worked out quite well, we both took a good number of wild char. Of course it seems the big ones get away and today was no different, we both lost a couple quite spectacular brook trout that I would have loved to ave been able to show off. If last November was any indication I should be able to show you all a few of this stream's larger inhabitants soon anyway.

The last pool we fished on our upstream hike had an incredible number of fish that were clearly visible from our position, the bottom was just lined with brook trout.

No, your eye do not deceive you, those odd parallel shapes are fish. Casting in this pool as technical and hook setting difficult, and though we did fool a good number of these fish it took work and we both lost and missed some stunning specimens. The ones we brought to hand made up for it. Look at this well dressed guy:

Now, it's hard to find something wrong with a day like that isn't it? A great little outing on one of the greatest little streams I've had the privilege to discover, in good company. I'm sure I'll see you on the water again soon Mike!