We got to the closest parking area to the brook, geared up and were on our way. We hiked for at least 30 minutes before taking a turn into the woods and heading for the brook. Once we got there, it was beautiful and looked like text-book brookie water, awesome!! It was still early in the morning, pretty cloudy and it had just rained a few hours before we had got there. Still, the water wasn't too bad and there were plenty of pocket water to fish!
We both worked our way up the brook, slowly fishing our way to the upper stretches. It didn't take long before Chris was landing brookie after brookie! They're such beautiful fish! Every once in a while, Chris or I would get into a nice rainbow like this one!
Beautiful...!
One of the many bows landed
High-sticking a dry in the faster stuff - I ended up getting whacked by a bow at the end of that run....saw him chase it and commit!
This waterfall was a little tributary of the brook that Chris went to check out.
It was such a great day of fishing I'll let the pictures do the talking. The water we fished was so beautiful, I couldn't believe it. We had hiked for hours, and it seemed like we ended up walking over 5 miles into the woods to chase these brookies.
I had done something I'd always wanted to do, get brookies on dries! I tied on a size 12 Royal Wulf once the sun had hit the water, and right away got smacked by a brookie. It seems like we had landed dozens of brookies with bows mixed in, and I got quite a few of mine on dries, how much better could it get?!
We ended up having to stop since the walk back to the car was a good 2 hours and it was getting dark soon. The last hole we stopped at was probably the best one we'd fished. I had landed about 5 brookies and 1 bow from the one hole and had many more slashes at my dry.
At the top of the pic was one of the best holes we'd fished...at least 5 feet deep and held plenty of wild brookies!
The only thing I regret that day was that my camera didn't take any good footage. I had some of condensation on my lens - and all my video taken for the day was worthless...it was heartbreaking to watch the video when I got home. I had captured so many brookies slamming a dry (even on some pretty far casts of 50+ ft on this brook just to have a gorgeous brookie slam the dry off the surface. It would have made for some awesome footage....) I couldn't believe how many fish were in this brook. It was so ridiculously gradient I just couldn't fathom fish making it up some of the obstacles we had crossed. You could tell the average size of the brookies were smaller which I think is because of Irene. We saw quite a bit of what Irene did to the brook in terms of habitat - really bad! It seemed like they were making a great comeback, and I can't thank Chris enough for showing me this gem of a brook.
A great day of fishing(pretty much my first time fishing for and catching brookies, and on dries at that!), a long much needed hike for myself, and fishing with a great friend. Another great memory made. I now know why the Salvelinus fontinalis is the states cold-water fish.
Not only are the fish beautiful themselves, but the scenic wilderness they are found in is just unforgettable.
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