Beautiful fall days

For a while the fish in one of my favorite brooks have been less than enthusiastic about taking aritficial flies drifted into their line of sight.  Although the very little residents have nibbled, the brook's larger denizens (in relative terms) have remained all but invisible.  With the improvement in the weather over the last few days some of the bigger brookies have begun to emerge.  Pictured below are a couple of the larger brookies that I've tricked, as well as one of the smallest.  The beautiful fish pictured second fell for a pink midge dropped straight down into the small pool below the tree trunk.  I watched two fish moving around this well-protected but limited area and was able to fool one.

Hanging in the current (dead center in the picture below) are two brookies that I watched spawning closer to the head of the pool.  It was the first time that I have witnessed these remarkable fish in reproductive mode.

Fall brookies

I went to the same nearby stream that I often post pictures of and while it was not an overly successful trip at least I caught a couple of beauties.  This stream is very odd in that each visit results in fish being caught in a limited number of pools and runs, but seemingly alternating which ones reveal their inhabitants each time I go there.  None of its larger brookies came to hand this time, but the ones that I did see were beautiful none the less.

On Friday Alan and I met at stream that I stumbled upon many months ago, one that was home to numerous small to middling wild brookies.  By the time that I showed him this stream its residents were not as active as when I first fished it.  My hope was that some day he would experience what I had previously.  During the summer the stream flow dropped to some very low percentage of what I had originally seen.  We've both been very patiently awaiting a return to this stream, hoping that the water level would be back to "normal".  When we arrived on Friday the level was better, but not up to where it had been in the past.  We worked our way upstream, fishing many of the pools and riffles that had previously held many of the stream's beautiful brookies.  While we did get a few strikes by very small fish, I think that only one came to hand (in the run just downstream of the large tree in the first picture below).  I seriously hope that the hot and dry summer has not permanently damaged the wild brookie population in this small gem of brook.