Dawn on The Beach

 I pulled into a mostly empty parking lot under the cover of darkness and extremely oppressive heat. Out over the Atlantic, a cumulonimbus cloud hurled electricity into the night. It's a very foreign feeling for a New Englander to have lightning illuminate the scene while his glasses fog up upon opening the car door... it just doesn't do this sort of thing up north. Sure, there are some sticky, muggy nights in Connecticut. But not like this. I'd already adjusted and was comfortable with the heat but that didn't stop it from impressing me every time I felt it. Unfamiliarity is a good thing, and not much of this was familiar. 

Connecticut doesn't have giant turtles that lay their eggs on the beach either, and after walking down the beach a ways I was sitting 20 feet away from an enormous reptile as she did her best to ensure a future generation despite the much altered setting she was in. This was no longer just a barrier beach teaming with native life. Eastern diamondbacks had been replaced with iguanas and anoles and palmettos with resorts and multi million dollar homes.  But the loggerhead was still returning to lay her eggs, though in the morning there was a good chance a biologist riding a quad would either tape off her nest or even dig it up. Now they couldn't make it without human assistance, the cruel irony being that it was human interference that made it necessary. So, though I was a quiet observer to a natural ritual I'd always wanted to see, it was hard to be present for without becoming deeply sad. That sadness turned to aggravation as a jogger came down the beach with a bright headlamp on. Human lights at night frustrate me. I fish without one most of the time because I feel it is a gross unnecessary and a crutch when the target fish species isn't tiny minnows, madtoms and darters. And spotlighting micros is something I do less and less. A headlamp makes tunnel vision. It ruins your ability both to see when it isn't on and learn to navigate what you can't see anyway. And this jogger was on a smooth, sandy beach with no obstacles at all. I was cognizant of his presence from a half a mile away and he was not even aware enough to notice me siting just yards from his path. Nor did he notice the giant turtle that stopped chucking sand due to his light's disruption. The jogger continued down the beach to disrupt who knows how many more turtles. I stayed back as my friend made her way back down the beach. I don't think she'd finished before the jogger interrupted her process, but I wasn't interested in worsening her stress either. I stayed back and took long exposures, covering the little red light on the front of my camera with my finger as I was worried even that might be noticeable to her. She paused a few times on her way down the sand. I'm not sure she was aware I was there, but I'd like to believe she did know and just didn't mind, that she understood that I meant no harm. 

By that time the morning light was starting to come up and when the turtle had reentered the surf, I sat again to tie a slim beauty knot in the dark. The slim beauty is a good knot for connecting tippet to shocker, and I was targeting fish for which shocker was definitely warranted. My 12 weight was already tarpon ready, but I wanted to make sure my 8wt was snook appropriate as there'd been no sign of tarpon yet and I was keen to at least get something blind casting. It had been a few years since I'd caught a snook at that point, and though I'd made some attempts in the dark already by that point in the trip it was without much awareness of where and when I'd be likely to find any in that area. Almost everywhere I'd fished on this trip was new to me, as was targeting these species from the beach. I finished the knot and carefully synched it down then tied on a Clouser before leaning back again and watching the surf for the first signs of life. Before the sun crested the horizon, bait began skipping and dimpling in front of me and further out a big tarpon rolled. I adjusted my stripping basket around my waist and walked down to the water's edge to begin to cast. It wasn't long before the routine of casting, retrieving right to my feet, then casting again was interrupted by a snook eating the fly in the curl of a wave. I'd learned through my friend John Kelly that it's a good idea in some circumstances to stand back a bit to convert fish running the trough, and this payed off here. If I'd even just been getting my ankles wet I'd not have gotten a shot at this fish, but with a few feet of line sliding on sand I had enough room to fish the fly right onto the beach lip, and that's where this fish ate.  It wasn't a big snook but put up an admirable battle, jumping a few times before I subdued it. I enjoy the way snook fight- the short, zippy runs and the head and gill shaking jumps are just the sort of fight I really enjoy. 

As the sun rose further, the tarpon that were rolling off the beach a ways drew a little closer. I looked back at my 12 weight and hoped it would get an opportunity to be flexed a little. But as the daytime heat (only a little more oppressive than the nighttime heat) settled in all I had to show for my efforts were a few big ladyfish. In time, the bait activity dwindled and so did the signs of predators. The fish left and the people arrived, and my interest in casting on a crowded beach is non-existent. It was time for me to go take a nap anyway. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Traprock Brookies

 I've fished wild trout streams through all sorts of substrate and geology. Classic limestoners, freestones through limestone bedrock, marble, quartzite, granite, gneiss, schist, sandstone, brownstone, conglomerate, alluvial substrate from clay to cobble, glacial till, even muddy lake beds. But it occurred to me not long ago that I'd never caught a brookie in a stream flowing out of and through traprock bedrock. 

Traprock is a reminder of our continent's volcanic past. Millenia ago, tectonic motion let magma seep up into cracks in the Earth's crust in what is now the Mid Atlantic and Southern New England area. This magma hardened into the two kinds of rock referred to as traprock: basalt and diabase. Basalt is generally extrusive, meaning the magma cooled on the Earth's surface. Diabase typically cools below the surface. Of the two, basalt is a little more common in Connecticut. The massive, imposing mountains and ridges that run North from New Haven to Holyoke, then arc east to a terminus between Belchertown and Amherst are all volcanic remnants. Today, we drive on a lot of this, and I don't mean that our roads go over these rocky slopes. Basalt is very uniform in it's crystallization and also very hard, so it makes great aggregate for road and railroad beads, and is used in concrete and asphalt as well. Basalt is a staple of the development, industry, and infrastructure of our world whether you knew it or not. Unfortunately that means the quarrying of it has negatively impacted the species that utilize the environments that evolved around these geological features. That includes species like red cedar, blue spotted and Jefferson's salamanders, northern copperheads, red squirrel, and peregrine falcons.

Female Northern copperheads often rely on the crevices on open trap rock ridges to gestate and birth their young.

But what about brook trout? Are there any small streams on or along these traprock ridges, and do they have brook trout in them? 

The very nature of these geologic features doesn't make for an ideal situation for a coldwater stream habitat to arise. First of all, spatially they aren't huge, so there just isn't that much room. Traprock ridges are narrow and tall, their shape lends better to streams running along or between them in the sedimentary rock they intrude rather than on the dykes themselves. But there are a couple streams that emerge from them and run some distance, and they have heavy spring influence so those that aren't season seem to stay cold. 

My decision to try to catch a traprock brookie was followed by the sort of oddball research I don't often hear about other small stream anglers doing but which isn't at all unfamiliar to me. I lined up bedrock maps with topographic maps to find streams that ran not just near trap rock but through it. Then I examined some satellite imagery to get an idea of the stream's consistency. I have enough experience to tell when a mapped stream is likely to be the sort that can hold water and therefore fish year round. It also gives me an idea of the forest type and what I might be in for as far as bushwhacking. Eventually I found one that looked very promising. An added confidence booster, though it had never been sampled another in the watershed had been with brook trout, albeit very few, in the 1990's and there were no dams preventing cross pollination, if you will, between the two streams. Some culverts could throw a wrench in that. Access would suck though, with questionable parking and a long circuitous walk. When the time came though, I suited up and hit the road. 

My parking spot turned out to be legal, thankfully, but proved to be a reminder of why I got an off-road capable vehicle. I parked grabbed my rod and sling pack quickly, as I had a decent distance to walk down the road and I hate being seen with a fly rod in hand. I hustled to a bridge, not on the stream I wanted to fish but the one it flowed into. This was down in the basin, in mudstone rather that traprock. I then traversed this low gradiant creek down. There was one ominously deep pool in about a half mile of difficult to negotiate water and I hooked a brook trout there. Not only did that put a new stream on my list automatically but it gave me even more hope as the survey site at the rod I'd parked on had no brook trout in the two years it was sampled. This was likely just wintering water though. Eventually I reached my stream. I looked at my map quickly as I'd saved where it crossed the line from basalt to sedimentary bedrock on the bedrock map as my starting point. It also didn't look very favorable at the bottom end, very straight on the map and shallow in real life, but where I wanted to start there were some bends and much steeper gradient. So I hoofed it upstream, staying out of the water but stopping to fish the two decent looking runs I did see. 

Just as I reached the point I'd marked I could see a good deep, slow pool upstream. The hope was there to put this goal to bed and fast. I had on a size 12 Ausable Ugly and was fishing each pool upstream, which would work well with this one as it was blocked by brush near the head. I covered the tail- as there is often at least one fish in the tail of a pool like this in the winter -to no avail. But as I extended my cast the water I was fishing held promise in the for of exceptional depth. I let the fly fall and there was a discernable but delicate tap. The next cast in the same spot I was ready and the fish was on. Success! The fish was diminutive and far from the most colorful example of her species, but that was all I'd needed. I continued upward and caught one more fish and missed some others, all very small, and decided to bother them no more. The day had been a fantastic one already.

 Though this may seem like an extremely trivial goal to have achieved and perhaps an unnecessary one for just a couple tiny brook trout, I think many anglers miss some significant keys to the understanding of fish and fisheries. Frankly I'll be blunt... I've only twice been legitimately impressed by the comprehensiveness of understanding an individual trout angler had of not only wild trout but the totality of their habitat, movement, behavioral patterns, and the nature of their whole lives. The geology of the land and rivers plays a HUGE roll in how trout survive, grow, and behave and it is one of the foremost factors I look at to understand a stream and what potential it has. And though I may only very rarely fish traprock trout, it is a piece of the puzzle and another step toward my end goal of having the most thorough understanding of the natural world I can. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, and Sammy for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.