A fine day in May, what to do? \u00a0I love trouting this time of year, the streams and the woods are alive with all kinds of life.\u00a0 The contrast between the streams when I start out in March and what they look like now is amazing.\u00a0 Looks like someone was turned loose with a green paintbrush, with a few yellow, white, and purple accents.\u00a0 Trouble is, the really good streams will be crowded today, both with anglers AND kayakers.\u00a0 [I\u00a0have a pretty good rant against kayakers building up, but I’m going to save it for another time]<\/p>\n

With all my years on the streams, you can be sure I have built up a few secret spots.\u00a0 One such secret spot is where I pointed my truck on Sunday.\u00a0 This stream is known for\u00a0marginal water quality, and\u00a0plenty of non-trout species, but at least it is not on most anglers’ radar.\u00a0 I have fished this stream on and off for many years, and know the subtle nuances of its waters.\u00a0On the popular “name-brand” streams around here, [you know, the ones that start with “R” or “K”] every likely spot probably has a dozen or more fish in it, and it is easy to find a lot of fish.\u00a0 But this creek\u00a0is a place where you had better plan on covering a lot of water, as there just isn’t a high trout\u00a0population here.\u00a0 If you like to fish light rods, small flies, or only cast to rising trout, well there’s a reason not many people fish here.\u00a0 I use a 5 or six weight, and plan on fishing beefy nymphs or oversize streamers.<\/p>\n

As usual, I was greeted by a cacophony of songbirds when I got to the parking spot, but no other anglers.\u00a0 I headed up the trail for a bit, and dropped in to an old favorite spot.\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n

There was a nice caddis hatch coming off, but the only thing eating them were American Redstarts and other warblers.\u00a0 No fish hooked at my first spot, or the next.\u00a0 The third spot I dropped into is one of the best on the creek, but after 30 or 40 drifts without a fish, I was starting to think this would be a day best suited for taking pictures.\u00a0 Then it happened–BAM! My indicator when down and a fat foot long trout came flying out of the water.\u00a0 Two cast later I had his twin hooked up.<\/p>\n

And so the day went, lots of spots gave up no trout, but I covered enough water to end up with a decent box score.<\/p>\n

Quite of few of these: <\/a><\/p>\n

I couldn’t believe how many of these were along the path<\/a><\/p>\n

And I even caught a few of these<\/a><\/p>\n

Could resist this shot when I took the high trail back up the river valley<\/a><\/p>\n

None of the fish I brought to hand were particularly large, although I did lose one that made me say a bad word when it came off after I saw how big it was!\u00a0 \u00a0I’ve had days when far more and much larger trout were caught, but this was just a great day on the water–I only had to share it with the songbirds and a mink!\u00a0 I\u00a0might make it out for trout once more this year, but this is when my attention starts shifting to the lakes and larger rivers for bass and muskies.<\/p>\n

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A fine day in May, what to do? \u00a0I love trouting this time of year, the streams and the woods are alive with all kinds of life.\u00a0 The contrast between the streams when I start out in March and what they look like now is amazing.\u00a0 Looks like someone was turned loose with a green […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16,39,9,7,25,38,36,42,8,32,37,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":459,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wildsmallie.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}