salmonoid
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2007
- Messages
- 2,721
I had the good fortune of being able to fish for part of Thanksgiving Day and all of Black Friday this year. I've fished the same stream for about ten years in a row on Thanksgiving Day and have never encountered another angler there on the Thursday before deer season, but this year was different. The past few years, I've opted to start out later, since the early morning chill has the fish somewhat sluggish this time of year. But this year, the planned hour of eating got bumped up a bit so I decided it better to be out early and enjoy the scenery at a minimum than to get out later but have to blow through water. I was going to try to hit three streams and was on the water on the first by a little after 8. The early morning chill did not seem to affect all the fish, but the action was a bit slow to start off. The fly is a conehead LiteBrite minnow, which is what I caught most of the fish on.
I hadn't fished more than a hundred yards or so when I saw two anglers walking down the path. I was somewhat hidden by the rhododendron, and it ended up they didn't see me. They fished below me for a bit, then I saw them walking up the path again. I figured it might be time to move along, since I wasn't interested in playing a game of leap frog, but it turns out that they were waiting at the bend. We exchanged introductions, and after comparing notes on streams, the connection to PAFF was made, as SNPbound thought I looked familiar. They had an earlier Thanksgiving meal scheduled than I did and since we had some potential overlapping streams on our itinerary, we split the difference (which worked out well for me, in helping to make sure that I didn't overbudget my time on three streams, and arrive late for turkey dinner by trying to get to all three).
One thing I am fascinated with is the variability of markings on brown trout. It's such a simple thing, really, but it intrigues me nonetheless.
Similar, but at the same time, not.
Different, darker.
High red spots, anchored on lateral line, red spots below lateral line fairly equidistant from each other.
Similar to the last, but more buttery.
Not so red, almost the orange spot color of a stocker...
Another item that intrigues me is the skim that forms at the bottom of a pool. I always imagine a fish lurking there, and sometimes, they do (I caught one here). I always fish these types of areas.
The first stream I fished had some active redds on it.
The second stream I went to is virtually identical from a bedrock perspective, but is a little bit smaller with respect to drainage area and it has a higher gradient. It might be a degree or two cooler, because it is a narrower valley. But, I observed no redds on the second stream. This had me pondering the question about what is the significance of the presence of a redd.
1) Is the presence of a redd the confirmation that a male and female fish were engaged in spawning activities?
or
2) Is the presence of a redd the confirmation that a female was present, and ready to spawn?
In other words, is the presence of a redd an indication that spawning occurred, or simply an indication that a mature female trout was present?
Even though the fishing was ok Thursday morning, the fish really did not start to become active until early afternoon, which of course coincided with the time I had to get off the stream. I was only about five minutes late for Thanksgiving dinner, which is negligible, when it comes to fishing. For all intents and purposes, if I was there within an hour of when I was expected, I was on time. Given that my only constraint on Friday was darkness, I opted for a later start. I had planned to fish multiple streams Friday as well, but as the day wore on, that would morph into just one stream.
Based on some Swattie recon, I had mapped out a reasonable day, that involved parking in a lot fairly close to the middle of the stream I planned to fish, doing some road walking to get to the stream and doing some trail hiking to get back to the car. This was my first time fishing this particular stream, so I wasn't sure to expect. I had switched over to my WJ Exodus pack on Thursday, after letting it gather dust in the garage for a number of years, but was a bit flummoxed with how many times my net fell out. So I toyed with leaving the net in the car Friday, but eventually decided to carry it. The air was brisk to start off, but I quickly warmed up as I walked the road to the stream. Like the day before, the water was crystal clear and running a bit on the low side. From a distance, a number of the first holes I encountered looked really deep. They had an inky black color to them, but as I got closer, I noticed the color moved a bit and I discovered it was actually thousands of baitfish milling around.
Before long, I spotted some non-baitfish (or at least bait only for a much, much bigger type of fish). But it turned out to be a few stockers. Some really trout looking water yielded nothing, although I'm sure there was a trout or two in there.
If I was a fish, this would be a place I would want to live. The big rock on the right is undercut, with a current that eddies back around. There's a nice log running through the middle of the hole and there's an undercut log at the tail, with some more woody debris. And there's a mat of film and seed pods providing cover right in the middle of the photo. I was swinging a bugger through this little run and saw a fish or two take a swipe as I slowly retrieved. And on the third or fourth swipe, I hooked a nice little wild brown.
I continued to work my way upstream; I continued to encounter some trouty looking water, deep pools, log jams, but the cool night had the fish with a little bit of lockjaw. It took five or six casts to entice another brown out from this log jam, but once he woke up, he rocketed out and took the bugger.
Some more great habitat showed up. I like reading these types of habitats and tend to fish them like a quarterback progressing through his receiver options. The first set of progressions yielded nothing, but a sidearm toss under the rock on the left (maybe my read of dumping the ball to the last outlet receiver?), yielded a dark little brownie.
I often wonder what the daily life of a trout is like. You're hanging out, in cooler water, maybe under a rock. All kind of stream junk is floating by and all of a sudden, a flashy silver wooly bugger floats by. It triggers something in your pea-brain, and you accelerate through the water, and take a swipe. You don't eat for enjoyment; you eat to survive, but when you eat this minnow, it bites you back. And then starts pulling you towards an apex predator. And then this apex predator type reaches down and removes the bite, and you swim back to your lair, wondering what just happened? Or not. Because you're a piscavore with the brain the size of a pea, and you probably don't do much wondering. Just reacting to stimuli in your environment..
By late morning, the sun was shining brightly and the chill was starting to disappear. I had worked my way up to a large pool at a bend in the creek and spotted several trout holding. I missed a number of fish in the deeper parts of the pool and was also surpised when a brown or two that were camoflaged in the leaves took a swipe. I finally caught a fish, which turned out to be a fall fish. And then a trout. I actually felt bad for the fish for a second; it looked like it really needed a meal. Although I don't fish many ATW, and consequently don't catch many stocked trout, I've noticed that the holdover rainbows that I have caught are often emaciated, while the holdover browns seem to adapt much better.
A paler brownie:
A darker brownie, with parr spots, both on and below the lateral line. This one is intriguing to me, because the parr marks are circular, compared to most fish, where they are elongated (compare to all the Thanksgiving Day fish, for instance).
Once upon a time, I would often fish for a whole day, without eating or drinking much of anything. It was no surprise that by the end of such a day, I'd end up with a headache and feel pretty lousy. Now, I try to do a better job of eating and hydrating, and that necessitated a stop for lunch. And hydration. By this time, the net had fallen out of the pack a number of times. And I was sort of wishing that I had left it in the car, because I hadn't used it.
It's a shame this is now only available in SN's specialty packs.
A few more browns came to hand after lunch. And while I had not observed many redds before lunch, I now came into a stretch of stream that appeared to be very suitable spawning habitat. This pattern of small and shallower pools, with ample spawning gravel carried on for a few hundred yards.
But the geology was subtly changing. Where before the bedrock that was exposed was in the form of large boulders, with lots of smaller rocks and gravel, now, the stream bottom would be just bare bedrock for short lengths, like in this pool. The further upstream I went, the more bare bedrock I encountered. It reminded me of Slate and Cedar Run, although there the rocks are sedimentary in nature, not meta-sedimentary.
I came up to one of those shallow pools, with bare bedrock making up the bulk of the pool bottom. A large boulder was on each side of the pool. A log was jammed in the boulder on the right and another log elevated the pool level, wedged below the large boulder on the left. I had one follow from a small trout in the middle of the stream, but was surprised that nothing else darted out. I was standing behind the log below the left boulder and I made one sidearm cast to the top left of the pool. As soon as my line hit the water, I observed something that got the adrenaline going. Under the shadow of the large boulder on the left, the tail of a fish emerged and then disappeared just as quickly. And it was not the tail of a dink. I think the fish had rose to my line. Maybe I had a wind knot in my line and it thought it was a midge. Or maybe it was just coincidental dumb luck timing that the fish showed itself. As I had fished through the morning, I had kicked out three or four small suckers, but I had not spotted any large suckers. And I had not spotted any carp either. So I was pretty sure I had found a trout.
There was one way to find out, so the very next cast went back to about the same place as the first. This time, no tail emerged. The line rapidly went tight and barely daring to believe that it could be that simple, I set the hook. And had the owner of the tail on my line. Mind you a small rock standing sidewise, a log, and a bit of current stood between me and the fish, but thankfully, it had a whole pool to work in. I jumped the rock and attempted to jump the log, but didn't quite make it. I went down in the bottom of the pool, dislodging a sign that had caught in the log. I managed to keep the rod up and out of the water, keep the tension on the fish, and avoid having the stream drown my phone, and recovered, albeit not gracefully. The fish made a run at the log wedged under the rock in the right side of the pool, which would have been the death knell of the fight, but it responded to a gentle steering. By this time, the adrenaline had been neutralized and aside from not having the fish snap my line, I had one practical consideration - how to get it into my net. The net, the one that I almost left in the car. The one that fell out of the back of my pack half a dozen times earlier in the day. The one that now appeared to be wedged in tightly when I needed it most. But I extracted it. The fish wanted no part of it and made a few more hard runs. A stealth attempt via the tail first finally yielded the fish. There was a moment of disappointment when I realized it was a fish born in a concrete raceway, but that faded quickly enough, as I realized it had survived at least seven months (or more) since it had been initially released. The fish was just under 8" shy of that mythical 30" brown (22" for the math-challenged)...
The fish sulked a bit, before taking off for the log on the right side of the hole.
My original plan was to fish a few different streams, but by this point in the day, I didn't want to burn 20% of my remaining daylight by driving somewhere else, so I figured I'd make a complete day of it. Immediately above the big brown pool was a fresh redd.
And immediately above that, was the frame of a wagon or trailer, or something. Maybe it was someone's idea of habitat improvement? Can you imagine being in a stream, fishing during a somewhat higher water event, and see that frame come floating downstream?
A few more wild browns
and a few more emaciated rainbows
I wanted to end the day with a wild brown but the last fish above would be the last fish of the day. Just before I caught the fish, I heard a shrill blast, which I identified as a dog whistle. And about two minutes after that, the loud boom of a shotgun close by jolted me. I instinctively ducked (not that I would have been able to outduck the pellets) and waited to hear the sound of pellets plinking around me, but only heard three more blasts. This sealed the day for me and I turned tail and quickly headed back downstream.
On the way out, I passed two ironic signs.
Humankind had marked their territory with a SGL boundary marker. A buck had marked his territory with a rub just outside the SGL.
The second sign was facing the stream. I was walking a blazed trail just above the sign. Since I was no longer fishing, I guess it was ok I was on the bank.
I hadn't fished more than a hundred yards or so when I saw two anglers walking down the path. I was somewhat hidden by the rhododendron, and it ended up they didn't see me. They fished below me for a bit, then I saw them walking up the path again. I figured it might be time to move along, since I wasn't interested in playing a game of leap frog, but it turns out that they were waiting at the bend. We exchanged introductions, and after comparing notes on streams, the connection to PAFF was made, as SNPbound thought I looked familiar. They had an earlier Thanksgiving meal scheduled than I did and since we had some potential overlapping streams on our itinerary, we split the difference (which worked out well for me, in helping to make sure that I didn't overbudget my time on three streams, and arrive late for turkey dinner by trying to get to all three).
One thing I am fascinated with is the variability of markings on brown trout. It's such a simple thing, really, but it intrigues me nonetheless.
Similar, but at the same time, not.
Different, darker.
High red spots, anchored on lateral line, red spots below lateral line fairly equidistant from each other.
Similar to the last, but more buttery.
Not so red, almost the orange spot color of a stocker...
Another item that intrigues me is the skim that forms at the bottom of a pool. I always imagine a fish lurking there, and sometimes, they do (I caught one here). I always fish these types of areas.
The first stream I fished had some active redds on it.
The second stream I went to is virtually identical from a bedrock perspective, but is a little bit smaller with respect to drainage area and it has a higher gradient. It might be a degree or two cooler, because it is a narrower valley. But, I observed no redds on the second stream. This had me pondering the question about what is the significance of the presence of a redd.
1) Is the presence of a redd the confirmation that a male and female fish were engaged in spawning activities?
or
2) Is the presence of a redd the confirmation that a female was present, and ready to spawn?
In other words, is the presence of a redd an indication that spawning occurred, or simply an indication that a mature female trout was present?
Even though the fishing was ok Thursday morning, the fish really did not start to become active until early afternoon, which of course coincided with the time I had to get off the stream. I was only about five minutes late for Thanksgiving dinner, which is negligible, when it comes to fishing. For all intents and purposes, if I was there within an hour of when I was expected, I was on time. Given that my only constraint on Friday was darkness, I opted for a later start. I had planned to fish multiple streams Friday as well, but as the day wore on, that would morph into just one stream.
Based on some Swattie recon, I had mapped out a reasonable day, that involved parking in a lot fairly close to the middle of the stream I planned to fish, doing some road walking to get to the stream and doing some trail hiking to get back to the car. This was my first time fishing this particular stream, so I wasn't sure to expect. I had switched over to my WJ Exodus pack on Thursday, after letting it gather dust in the garage for a number of years, but was a bit flummoxed with how many times my net fell out. So I toyed with leaving the net in the car Friday, but eventually decided to carry it. The air was brisk to start off, but I quickly warmed up as I walked the road to the stream. Like the day before, the water was crystal clear and running a bit on the low side. From a distance, a number of the first holes I encountered looked really deep. They had an inky black color to them, but as I got closer, I noticed the color moved a bit and I discovered it was actually thousands of baitfish milling around.
Before long, I spotted some non-baitfish (or at least bait only for a much, much bigger type of fish). But it turned out to be a few stockers. Some really trout looking water yielded nothing, although I'm sure there was a trout or two in there.
If I was a fish, this would be a place I would want to live. The big rock on the right is undercut, with a current that eddies back around. There's a nice log running through the middle of the hole and there's an undercut log at the tail, with some more woody debris. And there's a mat of film and seed pods providing cover right in the middle of the photo. I was swinging a bugger through this little run and saw a fish or two take a swipe as I slowly retrieved. And on the third or fourth swipe, I hooked a nice little wild brown.
I continued to work my way upstream; I continued to encounter some trouty looking water, deep pools, log jams, but the cool night had the fish with a little bit of lockjaw. It took five or six casts to entice another brown out from this log jam, but once he woke up, he rocketed out and took the bugger.
Some more great habitat showed up. I like reading these types of habitats and tend to fish them like a quarterback progressing through his receiver options. The first set of progressions yielded nothing, but a sidearm toss under the rock on the left (maybe my read of dumping the ball to the last outlet receiver?), yielded a dark little brownie.
I often wonder what the daily life of a trout is like. You're hanging out, in cooler water, maybe under a rock. All kind of stream junk is floating by and all of a sudden, a flashy silver wooly bugger floats by. It triggers something in your pea-brain, and you accelerate through the water, and take a swipe. You don't eat for enjoyment; you eat to survive, but when you eat this minnow, it bites you back. And then starts pulling you towards an apex predator. And then this apex predator type reaches down and removes the bite, and you swim back to your lair, wondering what just happened? Or not. Because you're a piscavore with the brain the size of a pea, and you probably don't do much wondering. Just reacting to stimuli in your environment..
By late morning, the sun was shining brightly and the chill was starting to disappear. I had worked my way up to a large pool at a bend in the creek and spotted several trout holding. I missed a number of fish in the deeper parts of the pool and was also surpised when a brown or two that were camoflaged in the leaves took a swipe. I finally caught a fish, which turned out to be a fall fish. And then a trout. I actually felt bad for the fish for a second; it looked like it really needed a meal. Although I don't fish many ATW, and consequently don't catch many stocked trout, I've noticed that the holdover rainbows that I have caught are often emaciated, while the holdover browns seem to adapt much better.
A paler brownie:
A darker brownie, with parr spots, both on and below the lateral line. This one is intriguing to me, because the parr marks are circular, compared to most fish, where they are elongated (compare to all the Thanksgiving Day fish, for instance).
Once upon a time, I would often fish for a whole day, without eating or drinking much of anything. It was no surprise that by the end of such a day, I'd end up with a headache and feel pretty lousy. Now, I try to do a better job of eating and hydrating, and that necessitated a stop for lunch. And hydration. By this time, the net had fallen out of the pack a number of times. And I was sort of wishing that I had left it in the car, because I hadn't used it.
It's a shame this is now only available in SN's specialty packs.
A few more browns came to hand after lunch. And while I had not observed many redds before lunch, I now came into a stretch of stream that appeared to be very suitable spawning habitat. This pattern of small and shallower pools, with ample spawning gravel carried on for a few hundred yards.
But the geology was subtly changing. Where before the bedrock that was exposed was in the form of large boulders, with lots of smaller rocks and gravel, now, the stream bottom would be just bare bedrock for short lengths, like in this pool. The further upstream I went, the more bare bedrock I encountered. It reminded me of Slate and Cedar Run, although there the rocks are sedimentary in nature, not meta-sedimentary.
I came up to one of those shallow pools, with bare bedrock making up the bulk of the pool bottom. A large boulder was on each side of the pool. A log was jammed in the boulder on the right and another log elevated the pool level, wedged below the large boulder on the left. I had one follow from a small trout in the middle of the stream, but was surprised that nothing else darted out. I was standing behind the log below the left boulder and I made one sidearm cast to the top left of the pool. As soon as my line hit the water, I observed something that got the adrenaline going. Under the shadow of the large boulder on the left, the tail of a fish emerged and then disappeared just as quickly. And it was not the tail of a dink. I think the fish had rose to my line. Maybe I had a wind knot in my line and it thought it was a midge. Or maybe it was just coincidental dumb luck timing that the fish showed itself. As I had fished through the morning, I had kicked out three or four small suckers, but I had not spotted any large suckers. And I had not spotted any carp either. So I was pretty sure I had found a trout.
There was one way to find out, so the very next cast went back to about the same place as the first. This time, no tail emerged. The line rapidly went tight and barely daring to believe that it could be that simple, I set the hook. And had the owner of the tail on my line. Mind you a small rock standing sidewise, a log, and a bit of current stood between me and the fish, but thankfully, it had a whole pool to work in. I jumped the rock and attempted to jump the log, but didn't quite make it. I went down in the bottom of the pool, dislodging a sign that had caught in the log. I managed to keep the rod up and out of the water, keep the tension on the fish, and avoid having the stream drown my phone, and recovered, albeit not gracefully. The fish made a run at the log wedged under the rock in the right side of the pool, which would have been the death knell of the fight, but it responded to a gentle steering. By this time, the adrenaline had been neutralized and aside from not having the fish snap my line, I had one practical consideration - how to get it into my net. The net, the one that I almost left in the car. The one that fell out of the back of my pack half a dozen times earlier in the day. The one that now appeared to be wedged in tightly when I needed it most. But I extracted it. The fish wanted no part of it and made a few more hard runs. A stealth attempt via the tail first finally yielded the fish. There was a moment of disappointment when I realized it was a fish born in a concrete raceway, but that faded quickly enough, as I realized it had survived at least seven months (or more) since it had been initially released. The fish was just under 8" shy of that mythical 30" brown (22" for the math-challenged)...
The fish sulked a bit, before taking off for the log on the right side of the hole.
My original plan was to fish a few different streams, but by this point in the day, I didn't want to burn 20% of my remaining daylight by driving somewhere else, so I figured I'd make a complete day of it. Immediately above the big brown pool was a fresh redd.
And immediately above that, was the frame of a wagon or trailer, or something. Maybe it was someone's idea of habitat improvement? Can you imagine being in a stream, fishing during a somewhat higher water event, and see that frame come floating downstream?
A few more wild browns
and a few more emaciated rainbows
I wanted to end the day with a wild brown but the last fish above would be the last fish of the day. Just before I caught the fish, I heard a shrill blast, which I identified as a dog whistle. And about two minutes after that, the loud boom of a shotgun close by jolted me. I instinctively ducked (not that I would have been able to outduck the pellets) and waited to hear the sound of pellets plinking around me, but only heard three more blasts. This sealed the day for me and I turned tail and quickly headed back downstream.
On the way out, I passed two ironic signs.
Humankind had marked their territory with a SGL boundary marker. A buck had marked his territory with a rub just outside the SGL.
The second sign was facing the stream. I was walking a blazed trail just above the sign. Since I was no longer fishing, I guess it was ok I was on the bank.
