Home River During the Spawn

This is a less than easy time of year on my favorite stream. It's wild trout population has a tendency to migrate quite a bit up and down stream, especially during the spawn, and it can be tricky to find them up until the second week in December. But I like to go regardless, because the fish are rarely prettier than they are right now and I also like to find and make not of fresh redds so I can avoid them when they start to turn dark again (when fresh, the gravel is light colored and clean, but algae and vegetation will grow on the gravel before the alevins emerge). Beyond that, it's just fun to watch trout spawning. If I get really lucky and find a big communal redd cluster with anywhere from 5 to 15 trout on it, there's often a ton of fish immediately downstream that aren't spawning and are there to eat loose eggs. In the last couple days I made two visits. The fishing was as slow as I expected it to be, but very much worth while. On the first visit I caught one brown and lost a big fish, likely 14 or 15 inches. That was almost made up for by the number of wildly colored juvenile salmon I caught.

On day two I took four casts in the first pool I fish almost every time I come to my home river, a pool that had produced six salmon parr the day before and nothing else, and pinned an absolute stud of a brown and missed two similar fish. What a difference a day makes. 

One of the progeny of the late great Grandfather? He has the same coloration. Not that parr marks are still visible. I hope to encounter this fish if and when he reaches 18 inches. 

That had me hoping that this would be a bang up day, fish after fish after fish, and maybe a few big ones. Nope. I caught browns, but not double digits, and none as spectacular as the first fish. And I don't mind that it let me cover more water. I refuse to catch and release more than 12 wild trout in a day during the spawn. I want to limit my impact. If I'd caught that many in a quarter mile of water I wouldn't have seen as much of the river to look carefully for redds. I did find redds, which I will avoid for the next few months, but didn't see any trout actively working them. I suspect they were there but saw me coming. 

The last fish of the day was a big old holdover which was cool to catch. I leave anything that held over the summer alone. It's lucky for this fish we didn't cross paths in April, I may not have treated it well.

The stage is well set for early winter, one of my favorite times of year. On Christmas Eve Morning I will be on this river, as with every year for the last five years. And that day has a lot to live up to. 

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Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.