The Best Small Stream Spring

This spring has been something special. There are a few areas in which the conditions have given me the short end of the stick, my home river for one, where the high water both suppressed the rise activity and made covering water effectively difficult. But other small streams are fishing as well or better than I've ever seen. 

On Sunday, I visited a small southern CT stream that has been a favorite of mine since Alan Petrucci showed it to me a number of years ago. I visited it a couple times this winter and did not do well. But I was determined to fish it during prime dry fly time this spring, and I had a good feeling about my chances. This stream and it's tributaries have produced some of mine, Alan's, and Kirk's biggest CT brook trout. 

I found it in fine form Sunday morning, water barely touching 60 degrees, and at a perfect flow. I saw a riser within minutes of getting within sight of the water. I tied on a rig one can hardly go wrong with: an Ausable Bomber above a beadhead Soft Hackled Hare's Ear. 

It took but a few casts before the bomber plunged under, and I soon had a ten inch wild char at hand. The very next cast had much the same result.

And it didn't take long to find one willing to take the dry, either. Oh yes, this was to be a glorious day.

Spiderwebs hanging over the river were loaded with mayflies. Sulfurs, light cahills, vitreous, and march browns were most abundant.

This fine specimen was to be my biggest of the day. The photo does a poor job of demonstrating this handsome male's true stature. This was a large fish for a CT small stream, though not the biggest I would see today.

In one large bend pool who's depths reach about four and a half feet, I planted my flies in a bush that hangs over. Carefully wading out to retrieve them, I saw an absolute behemoth of a brookie, a fish that was 18 inches at the smallest and probably three pounds. It was an astonishing sight, even though I knew this stream had potential to produce such a fish. Believe it or not I didn't feel the need to catch it at that moment, and I haven't thought about it much since. I may go after it, I may not.

I was retracing my own steps and catching the fish I'd missed on the way up when i hear a familiar voice. I looked up to see Alan approaching. He'd been having a great morning too. We chatted for a bit and continued our own ways.

This spring truly has been exceptional in a number of ways. With nights remaining fairly cool I foresee a decent early summer as well, especially if we continue to receive rain.

The only fry fly one must have if they seek wild brook trout. 

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Burbs Trout Quickie.

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons, Erin, David, john, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Last Sunday Mike Andrews and I drove more than 150 miles go get to and from streams that hold trout. Going that far to get to trout when there are plenty of them closer isn't something Mike or I are strangers to. But usually the idea is to get to less populated places. On this day, we basically went as far into suburbia as possible to look for our fish. One river Mike had fished one time but I hadn't ever, another I had fished one time but Mike hadn't. We're both pretty good though, so even with a very short morning trip time span we knew we'd be on fish. And we were in no time at all.

Mike and I leap-frogged downstream. He fished nymphs, I fished streamers. We both did pretty well and were out of that river with plenty of time to hit water with more wild fish.

With the trout slam done and more than enough freshly stocked fish out of the way, we headed back the way we came and in 20 minutes were on smaller water. We both rigged dry droppers, and it was on. BWO's, caddis, midges, and stoneflies were hatching. It was a pretty solid morning bite. Through one riffly stretch I was getting takes virtually every cast, though they were almost all little year old fish. It was pretty clear that that was nursery water.

All in all that was a nice little Sunday morning. And if this post seems hurried and short of words, good. It well matches the kind of outing we had. Short, but sweet.

Home Water

I returned to the stretch of small stream that I call my home water today. It wasn't as high as I thought it would be, nor was it discolored. It was moving a bit, and that is always good for big dries. The chosen rigs were a Bomber and two dry dropper rigs, one with San Juan and Humpy, the other with Hare's Ear and Royal Wulff. The brown trout were taking either or, and the salmon par that are always prevalent selectively took the nymph.
None of the trout to hand were all that big but one of the bigger boys did come up for and miss the Wulff. Regardless of size the wild trout were full of energy and very colorful. I did get two stockers way downstream, they rarely make it into the best stretch of stream. When they do and I catch one after landing tons of gorgeous stream born fish, I am disappointed.

Can You Tell the Difference?

The walk home was a perfect one. Flowers in bloom, birds everywhere, green! green! green!!!

I heard some wrens making a ruckus. Looking up, a bard owl was no more than ten feet above me. Being that it was already dark, and I was shaking (its not often you get to be that close), I had to use a flash. An owl's eyes will glow red no matter what.

On the way home I stopped by a farm pond, and let the Edson Tiger fly. It came back with a gill attached. It was a good end to a very good day.