Super Bowl Sunday Brown Trout

I wasn't overly enthused about the game, yesterday. I don't like the Eagles, and I don't like the Patriots. Two teams I'd almost equally prefer to lose....

So I went with the trout game instead. Throw streamers, catch brown trout. My initial goal was to check out a spot that Neal Hagstrom told me about on Saturday at the CFFA expo. Neal always has some really great information to share. So I went to the spot he suggested, knowing full well it was not the right time of year to find the huge rainbows he told me about. I got one pull in the run below the spot and found some sizable but not huge rainbows in spawning mode in an adjacent tailout. I had written this stretch of water off after fishing it thoroughly last winter without luck. It seemed to me it could only be productive when it was cold, it is kind of an isolated stretch of gravelly riffle with lots of slow, nearly empty skunky water both above and below. Now I know I need to try it in spring and early summer. And probably at night. 

I continued upstream to water I knew would be holding trout and I met up with Mike Carl. This is a moody river and we both covered quite a bit of water before getting a hookup. Mike broke the ice with a perfect wild brown.

I found a rainbow that was very willing to hit my streamer, but only after following it right to my feet. A good distance upstream I finally killed my skunk with a gorgeous mid teens brown.

A little while later Mike had to cal it a day. I wanted to see if I could get a few more fish so I pushed even further upstream.

Two deer... can you find them?

My second fish took the fly hard on the inside seem of a productive run. He was about as brown and a brown can be.

By that point I felt like I ha figured out pretty well what presentation the fish wanted most, but my third trout, by far the most colorful, took after I thoroughly fished his little run and turned to punch a cast upstream with my fly dangling behind me. My forward stroke was met with a lot more resistance than it should have. I turned back around to see a good sized trout launching itself across the run.

It had just started to sprinkle when I landed the last fish. I quickly released him and turned towards home. Every time I fish this stream I am more impressed. It isn't loaded with trout and it never will be. But the reclusive and moody brown trout that call it home are very special animals.