An Apple in an Ice Shelf

My favorite brook trout stream has one occasionally annoying characteristic. It has a really substantial brook trout population, the best of any stream I've fished in CT. However, there are times when you will get to the stream and see almost nothing. Why? They left that water. Literally, up and left for more favorable conditions. Gone. They aren't home. There's always some. But in the middle of winter much of the stream bed is just bear white sand. Brook trout stand out when sitting over bear white sand, so these fish, especially the biggest of them, leave, going into the depths of a swamp and reservoir downstream. 

That leaves me knocking on the door in the woods upstream... "Hello? Anybody home?" There was somebody in there, but I wasn't going to get them to eat a dry fly as I had hoped. Sometimes there are really good January midge hatches on this stream, and the brook trout stick around. Today it was going to be a tougher hunt. Not quite like finding a needle in a haystack. More like finding an apple in an ice shelf. What is is that doing there? 

I found brookies in three places as I worked my way upstream initially, but did not catch them. What frustrated me was where they were sitting. The stream was running fairly high, and it tends to have very strong conflicting surface currents and slow bottom currents that often go completely the opposite directing of the surface currents. I found brookies in three types of places today: plain sand bottom, deep water with a strong counter current; sheltered gravel with an even slow current; Almost still water over leaf litter. Literally all of these are a pain to fish when the trout that are there are very lethargic, won't move more than six inches, and take so lightly it feels no different from bouncing on the bottom. But I am persistent, and pretty well practiced.  Here's my first native brook trout and first fish on the fly of 2018, 16 days in.... that's too long! Why'd I even bother coming back to CT? I should have just stayed in Florida.

I probably spent almost as much time looking at and photographing natural ice sculptures as I did actually fishing on this day. Who could help it? Winter is beautiful.

This handsome young male was one of those sitting in near still water. Specifically the dark are right under the ice shelf below.

I ventured way up one of the tributaries to see if I could reach what I thought was going to be a nice culvert pool. I was rather disappointed to find concrete step like structures, certainly not passable for brookies and not even providing a nice deep hiding hole. I did get a pretty great view though.

On my way back down the valley I found this fantastic spring. This is the life blood of small stream wild trout in this state. Without cold ground water seeps like this, there would be no small stream wild trout. It was very nice to see one without a few beer cans or an oil can tossed carelessly along the edge (as though you could toss an oil can in a spring with care).

I'm going to try to fish every day this week. With the exception of tomorrow the weather looks pretty good. Near perfect winter weather. Some time on the ice and some time on the streams is guaranteed.