Hiding in Plain Sight

There's something rather special about an urban wild trout stream, especially the ones barely anyone knows about. There are probably hundreds in the Northeast. Streams running along highways. Next to city parks. Right through people's backyards. There's trout there. There's also graffiti, road noise, and usually some litter. What attracts me to fish these streams? The counterintuitive nature of their existence, for one thing. Some have said that trout don't like in ugly places. Though beauty is subjective, that are certainly many that would call most of the urban trout streams I've fished ugly places. And they might be. But I find beauty in the fact that caddis, dace, midges, mayflies, suckers, and trout are perfectly capable of living so close to people if given half the chance. That, and I get some sort of weird satisfaction out of catching a wild brook trout living in a discarded bathroom sink.

Yesterday I fished new water, adding three new streams to my list, each deep within the urban jungle and all holding an extraordinary amount of life. The first stream was the only one I had serious questions about. I knew it could really only be a seasonal trout stream at best, having a top draw dam as it's source. But if it were seasonal there would most likely be trout in it this time of year looking to spawn in its numerous gravel filled tailouts. The first cast I made proved there were trout there as a substantial brown materialized and swiped at my fly before disappearing again and never returning. A few runs downstream a small brookie broke the skunk.

I eventually became frustrated with this little creek, being without waders and having exceptional difficulty navigating it. I moved on to the next, which made good of itself just as quickly. I missed a good trout that made far more attempts at my Ausable Ugly than made sense for a brown, but that is what it was. I would come back and dupe that fish one last time later. Moving upstream I found a very deep hole that would undoubtedly be holding a few fish. On the way up it produced a brookie. On the way down, two brown trout. 

Pressing on I began to see active redds. The first had one small female brookie with two males fighting over her. Another had a pair of browns, both over a foot long. I tried and failed to get into a good position to photograph either. The window to do so is closing rapidly too, which is a bummer. I do like sharing photos and videos of trout doing what they are supposed to do (instead of, exclusively, fish with hooks in their faces).

There's a redd there. If you can't see it you have no business wading over gravel from October till March. 

Onward and upward I reached the confluence of the two streams that formed the one I had been fishing. I went up the one on the left first. It was the smaller of the two and proved very difficult to fish. It gave up one brookie before I left it. Its brother on the right was easier but still difficult. The first fish to come out of the shadows there was probably one of the smallest browns I've ever caught.

I knew there were bigger fish than that here and continued plying what water I could get to in hopes of finding one. What I didn't expect was to encounter what really would be the fish of a lifetime in a stream of this size. I cast my fly to the head of a relatively shallow run and rolled it back down towards me. As I drew the rod up I saw a shockingly large fish following the fly down. There was a tell tale white flash of mouth, and I set the hook into the unyielding weight of an 18 inch wild brown trout. The fish didn't react quickly but sloshed around in the shallow water, continuing downstream past me. I turned the rod down, trying to keep pulling the fish down, but to no avail. The hook pulled, hitting me on the wrist and sticking there. I gasped both from the pain of being whacked by the splitshot and bead and loosing an unrealistically big brown.

I refused to let that be it and began working back downstream to get some of the water and fish that I hadn't fished to efficiently on the way up. I was rewarded with more than half a dozen fish, including a stud of a brookie and the brown I had missed where I started, but that big fish still irked me. I'll be back big fella. You'd best keep your wits about you. 

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Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.