A nice afternoon

[BrooksAndHooks]

Got out to some real water after only making one local small stream brookie trip in the last 6 weeks. Hit up a small headwater section of my homewaters that sees little pressure and I try to only visit a few times over the course of the year. Had to make the hard choice of fishing my 3wt or 5wt, because although this section is predominantly brookies, I have caught a few browns, including one 17-18" which blew me away and gave me a fight on my 5wt last year. Decided to go with the 3wt and stay away from the big guy, since I know where he lives. Got on the stream, and third cast had a nice 7" brookie some up and nail my dry. On up the stream about 150 feet after some rapid stretches I didn't spend much time on, I had a nice take from another smaller brookie but lost him on the way in, typical fare for brookies and barbless hooks. Went on up the stream and hooked up with a smaller brookie, 5" or so. Got to the first decent sized hole, and started working across the stream dropping the fly in the slower stuff and mending over the current since water levels were just a tad higher than normal for this time of year. Had a nice brook come out and give chase but he missed it. Decent to drown the dry and do some runs just under the surface, and had a nice solid hit and set. Pulled out one of the nicer brookies I have caught on this stream after a few casts, I was very happy. Released him and at that point the hole was spooked so moved on up. Spooked a few small brookies in the far bottom of the hole, and worked slowly around the side to the front, crouched down in by a tree and some rocks and shot a long cast out near the head of the pool to drift down through. On my second cast I had a nice hit on the surface and immediately knew that it was no brookie. Got a good 15 second fight out of a decent sized brown trout. Got him back in the water and headed up for the hole that has the boss brown in it. Was a bit milky in this hole, so I shot across and drifted the dry over some side pools around some rock outcroppings. On the third or fourth drift had a nice fish come up and nail the dry. I set the hook and fought him for about 4-5 seconds and lost him. Reeled in only to find that I had lost my fly... was pretty bummed out as that was one of a kind I was given as a gift. I had retied it twice now as it was falling apart from catching so many fish. I had had 30+ fish days with it. At that point I decided to head back as it was starting to thunder, and I had plans that evening for diner and fireworks. Overall it was a great day other than losing the fly, and the fish were feeding aggressively and I was hooking up great. Was wonderful to get out after several weeks and have such great stream conditions. Hopefully everyone else gets to get out and enjoy some trout and stream conditions we have from all the cool weather and rain we have been getting recently.

Take care and tight lines,

 

[JackM]

Blue brook trout; black eye-spot on the brown trout. Starkly contrasted. I rest my case.

 

[BrooksAndHooks]

Which case would that be Jack? Hahaha.

 

[JackM]

The case of the colored-blind trout identifier. Once someone claimed there was the color blue on brown trout, whether halos or eye spots, but I insisted only book trout have blue in/on them.

Blue is a universally positive color to see and therefore many people see it where it doesn't exist.

 

[dc410]

Sounds like an all around great outing. Thanks for sharing it with us. Really great color on both of those fish. The Brookie is just a flat out beautiful fish. Good stuff!

 

[ryansheehan]

I feel like I see blue just behind the gills in some of the browns I catch. I also see some blue in that Brown as well.

 

[PatrickC]

Just wanted to say that I appreciate your editing of your photos to your own tastes. I edit photos from my minds eye. I edit them because I like them a certain way. And while my style or your style might not be everyone's style...it's cool to see how your mind's eye see things. That is what art is all about. Well done! Keep up the good work!

 

[HopBack]

Dug this one up from 2013. Blue eye spotted brown trout with blue halos. They do exist.....No photo editing here except for some cropping. Nice job Brooksandhooks!

 

[BrooksAndHooks]

Thanks for all the kind words guys. I do leave some of my images unedited, particularly from my phone. However the images from the GoPro I use most of the time fishing, while extremely detailed and high definition, lack color because of the format used. The images and video are actually intended to go through some processing/editing before they really look right. I try not to go overboard and get a good balance of realistic color and light. Nothing can replicate the way these fish actually look as you all know. I'm glad you can appreciate it as well, and I agree, everyone has their own styles and likes to see things a certain way. Often times I will just color balance the images and bring up the saturation of colors a little bit, a lot of the low light images end up really washed out otherwise.

Definitely was a fun trip. Itching to get back out but I got other priorities in the way. I would say 95% of the browns I catch have a black spot, but some of the fish that tend of have a silvery tint to them are the ones who sometimes have a bluish hue to the cheek as well. Everyone sees colors differently so who knows. A lot of peoples cameras get funny exposure and colors too so the pictures look different.