Brook Trout and Other Wildlife

It's that time of year when deer become a bit ore bold and easier to get close to. Why? Amore! The other day I watched a buck and doe doing a little dance. I kinda feel bad for the buck, he was a handsome fella, not the biggest or best dressed but still a beautiful animal, and he was getting nowhere with this doe.

This has been a very odd weather year. We had good rain for a while in mid fall, now we're in a bit of a dry spell again. It always seems as though the springs put out more water when it gets cold. I don't know, maybe I'm just imagining that. In any case the streams are running clear and near their average flows. Ice is forming on submerged rocks and sticks t night now, and yesterday it persisted throughout the day. The water itself was above freezing,  but the surfaces of exposed rocks were not.

Yesterday I visited two streams, both of which are tributaries of the same river but are on opposite sides. Both have wild brookies, one has wild browns and has produced wild tigers in the past too. Usually the one with only brookies is the one that I can be sure will give up a fish or two. The other is an oddball. It produces very regularly but with odd inconsistency. I caught my first wild brook trout there in 2011 and haven't caught a single fish out of that pool in the intervening years. Until today, that is. The pool above it is a consistent producer and has given up a number of nice wild brookies and browns over the years, and that's where I caught the first fish today. A super dark female.

The next pool down is the one that hasn't produced fish for 6 years. I fished the Ausable Ugly through the run at the head of the pool and got no response, then leaned up against the fallen tree that splits the pool and flicked the fly into the deepest part. I let the fly fall, felt a tick, and saw some inexplicable movement I lifted the rod tip and was into a stunning male in spawning dress. Both of these brook trout were exceptional fish for the stream. What amazed me about the male is how much he looks like the first brookie I caught in that exact spot. It's been too long for it to be the same fish, but who knows , it could be on of his offspring.

While I fished the other stream a red breasted hawk was shouting at me. I though he was just mad I was in his hunting grounds, but now I suspect he was telling me to go home because I wasn't going to catch another fish. Aside from one brightly colored hump backed male that I spooked from the tail of one run, I didn't see a single brookie in that stream. They're in there, but they weren't playing this time.