Suckers, Chubs, Brookies, and Bears

On Sunday Noah and I went out with the express purpose of getting him two species that he had not yet caught: white sucker and creek chub. Outside of their spring spawning run it is actually not that easy to happen into a white sucker, so it is understandable that Noah had never caught one. And, although some of the streams around where we live hold creek chubs, their niche is mostly filled by fallfish and common shiners. I have fished only a handful of streams in CT where creek chubs were the prominent cyprinid. So his not having caught one of them is also understandable. What isn't understandable is why I hooked two on artificial flies this trip before he got one on a worm!

Mission accomplished we moved over to a stream where I thought we might potentially get some creek chubs along with some small common carp. 12 fallfish, something like 40 bluegills, pumpkinseeds and hybrids, and one common later we left for a "sure bet" stream.

Seeing small chubs in shallow edge water there I was certain we'd get it done here. I waded up to a nice pool and promptly caught the target species. Then something unexpected happened. A big female bear and her almost grown cub came by to say hello.

OK, so now is the time for a PSA: When walking your dog in the woods, it must be leashed. You never know when you'll run across a bear or a big cat, or just someone else with another more unfriendly dog. In this case two women were walking up the creek and one of their dogs began to chase the bears. It disappeared behind the ridge that they had gone over briefly before running back with its tail between its legs. This is a confrontation that needs to be avoided at all costs because it could result in the injury or death of the dog, possibly the owner too, and the possible 'euthanization' (its really just murder) of the bear. Luckily this time all were unscathed.

After the bears had moved on Noah and I got to fishing. He got his creek chub.

And I got a wild brook trout that happened to have more parasites on it than any other salmonid I've ever seen.

We walked upstream a little ways, catching more chubs and the odd fallfish. I got one more brookie. Then, on our way back downstream, I stopped at a spot were I had seen a big brown on the way up. Sure enough it was back, and it took my nymph on the first presentation. This was a big fish for the stream, easilly 16 inches and maybe even bigger. Whether it was wild or a holdover I'm not sure, but it was in no mood to hang around for a photo op. I brought it up against the bank and grabbed the leader, at which point it thrashed and spat the nymph back at me.

The next few days and this weekend will be interesting for me. Expect some great posts soon!