Blue Brook Trout in Early Spring

Today, I was able to get away for a few hours to wet some flies. I picked a familiar stream that I had fished over the summer, on that trip I caught a couple of nice brook trout and a feisty little brown trout. I had also shocked this stream during a summer internship with the Forest Service a couple of years ago. It's a class two tributary that holds good populations of brook trout, brown trout, and rainbow trout... there's always the possibility of a 'grand slam' there. It has a pretty steep gradient at times, with overgrown hills on both sides of the channel. This makes for great trout habitat because it keeps the stream cool all year around. There was even snow still on the ground, and it hasn't snowed around here in over a week.

I fished a nymph for the majority of the day. On one of my first casts, I hooked into a small brook trout. I can usually tell what type of fish I've hooked into once it rolls over in the water, but I wasn't really sure what I had. This brook trout was abnormally dark, with a very blue tint; a very pretty fish nonetheless. The color variation is most likely due to the chemical properties of the stream. If I remember correctly, I believe this stream had a very high conductivity for electro-fishing. This means that there is a high amount of dissolved solids in the water. Just a guess, I'm not sure how much research has been done to determine why they vary in color.

I fished on, encountering some truly beautiful sections of stream. There were several rock cliffs along the stream with large icicles hanging from them. There were lots of nice holes that I couldn't even fish due to downed trees that had all collected over the stream from flooding events. I made my way to a very deep hole with several falls contributing to it.

I hooked into a good sized fish - huge for a stream this size. My best guess was that this was an adult brown trout that had made its way up the stream to prepare to spawn in a few weeks, I had seen several fish nests in slower moving side-channel pools. Unfortunately I didn't get a great look at the fish. During the fight, my reel came loose from my reel seat... dropping into water and releasing all the tension from the line. The fish got off while I was trying rescue my reel. Not my most graceful angling of all time...

I called it a day shortly after, giving myself plenty of time to climb the steep embankments to get back the road bed. Overall, this had been a challenging trip but I enjoyed it. Though it's technically Spring now, I can't wait for some warmer temperatures and some increased fish activity.