Steak and Eggs, and Sewer Trout

This isn't the greatest time of year for trout on a lot of my local rivers. I try to stay out of the waters where wild trout are up on redds, most years the bigger creeks have only a handful of holdovers, and there's only one stocked river that I can get to on the average day. I've been a little lazy these last few days, and have been meaning to get up to some streams to the north that I love fishing this time of year. Maybe tomorrow? I hate myself when I'm this way, I get nothing truly productive done most of the day outside of my typical day-to-day work, and yet I still manage to mentally exhaust myself. It's lame.

Anyway, I've taken the easy route the last few times out for trout: nearby water, mostly stocked rainbows. It has been a good few days for steak and eggs. Steak being streamers, and eggs being...

eggs.

In the case of the primarily wild trout holding water around here, it is a little early for an egg. My evidence of that is that this...

...the only wild fish I've caught on an egg in the last seven days despite fishing eggs for hours in the right water. That, and I have yet to see browns and brookies on redds. Soon though, the first two weeks of November are prime time for redd watching. 

So, if the wild and holdover browns and brookies aren't yet spawning, why would I choose to fish eggs right now, aside from the fact that stocked rainbows are dumb. Actually, that's why. Some of the state's stocked rainbows are so dumb that they try to spawn shortly after they are stocked in the fall. I very often see them attempting to spawn, though they don't seem to be very successful redd builders, and I can't count the umber of fall stocked bows I've caught in CT that have dumped eggs or milt while being handled. So, with some eggs ending up in the drift from these dumb stocker rainbows, egg patterns become an even better method to dupe said dumb stocker rainbows. It's almost too easy.

If, that is, you know how to high stick.