Recent outings

Here are a few pictures of my recent visits to local streams.   While I think that the change in the weather (cooler at night and during the day) has lead to a decrease in the activity of the wild fish that I search for, I'm still able to catch a few of these beauties by being patient.  Dry flies, like the Bomber (traditional and parachute) and Adams (parachute) have fooled a few fish lately, some of which are pictured below.

Alan and I went to a small stream in a local state forest which has some beautiful brookies in residence (see my last post).  As I said, the cooler weather seems to have slowed things down and while we were together I had no luck.  After he left I went upstream from where we were and using a small yellow dry fly that I found in my box I was able to catch a couple of brookies, one of which is pictured below.  As I stood by this pool right next to the road, a fish darted up toward the head and amazingly struck twice at the fly near the upright rock.  I'm glad it did, as it turned out to the best catch of the day.  Of greater interest may be the observation that led to the choice of fly.  While we were fishing together a small yellow fly fluttered by us, appearing to be a caddis.  While searching online today I found the closest fly resembling what I had seen was a Sallfly, a small yellow stonefly.  If it was then it's a new one to me.  The insect life in and around a stream can be as interesting as the fish life.

In a stream that I fish quite often due to it's proximity to where I live, I drifted a cream-colored Usual down the riffle in the picture below and twice a fish came and struck at it.  I had seen a few similarly colored and sized mayflies above the stream and hence to choice of fly.  After giving it an alternative (Picket Pin) with no luck, I noticed a few small greyish mayflies and suddenly a light went on in my head and an Adams parachute was tied on.  Two drifts later the fish was on and posing for a picture.

The brook below flows into the stream in the last picture.  While I'm still hoping to talk to the nearest landowners about fishing more of it upstream, I went a short distance from the confluence and took a few casts in the pool pictured below.  Two or three small brookies readily took the Adams, leading me to believe that more may be present upstream.  By the way, the bridge over the pool is a long piece of carved rock.  It took a lot of muscle to get that chunk of stone placed spanning the brook.  The locals live in an absolutely beautiful setting.