These Are the Fish in My Neighborhood

As an angler privileged with an exceptionally flexible (though impermanently so) work schedule, I recognize I get to fish more than most or at least as much as pretty much any other very driven fish bum. I am also lucky to live in a very fishy place. I still don't have my own vehicle, but don't need one to get to a lot of different species in a variety of different fishing scenarios. I've got a lot really close, but even the least fishy parts of the planet have options five to twenty minutes away from just about any home. If there isn't fishable water people probably wouldn't live there. Most fishable waters are never getting taken advantage of. To some degree that's fine, the best fishing pressure is no fishing pressure, but the amount of people that lament about how little they get to fish that have water within minutes of their home and work is crazy to me. If you don't want to fish more and are happy with how well you fish when you do get out, that's one thing. But if you only fish a couple times a month or less, complain about it, and also wish you were a better angler, there's no good reason you can't find the odd few minutes here and there to get on some piece of water. Keep that casting muscle memory in play, exercise your ability to see fish and read water. Wherever you happen to live, I'm sure there are fish somewhere in the neighborhood that you could be practicing on.

Here, not quite a mile and a half from my home, is a ditch. A ditch with some fish in it.

Some of those fish just so happen to be brook trout. This long, lean, spawned out girl fell for an Edson Tiger on the first cast into this stretch of slow water.

Believe it or not I crossed another brook trout stream less than half a mile from home on the way to this one. But part of the reason I passed that one up was that I wanted to get a fish or two on a mouse. This stream has some meat eaters in it, and some larger fish as well.

One moue eater was satisfying enough though, and I went redd hunting. I found them in all the places I've found redds in this stream in the last 6 years. Yeah, by this point these fish are practically my pets. The stream change a little year to year, but barring something seriously catastrophic I've got the drill down pat.



So I went to the next stream, which I found a little later but have also fished a lot for a while. It has a very different character and more fishable length. And the bottom 200ft are tidal.

November dry fly fish, 58th consecutive month.

Duped by the ever productive Ausable Ugly. 

And then I went home. Which didn't take long at all. These are some of the fish in my neighborhood. Do you know the fish in your own neighborhood?

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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