Memorial Day Fishing

Having stocked the river only a bit over a week ago, it is not surprising to find willing trout in a short amount of time. But the first one was a first for me--a huge male brook char. Really huge but certainly a stocked fish. First for being huge--huge for me at 15" and heavy. I've caught plenty of 13" stocked char. But nothing this big, with a kype-jaw.

Look at that mouth!

That was a pleasant 45 minutes of fishing.

Again a few days later on Saturday, I went out for an hour and had two good takes but lost both fish. It was a very nice stretch of water--the kind that just brings back my memories of fishing with my father as a kid. If you put 1300 trout into a 4 mile stream, you will still have about a thousand new fish there a week later.

Later I went to a slow stretch farther downriver, where I've never caught anything. I was streamer fishing, trying to find out if a pickerel would come racing out from the weedy bank, or maybe a spawning yellow perch, or even a fallfish. I've caught all three on a section lower down, quite sizable ones. After about a half hour of nothing, suddenly there was a swirl. Aha! Someone is in here!

I immediately re-tied to a traditional gray ghost--a favorite of perch. And after a few casts I added a splitshot as nothing would come up to it.

Two casts in I had a fish--but not a perch. It was a sizeable brook char--but only 1/3 the weight of the big one.

It had the tell-tale ragged lower caudal fin of a stocked trout. But it was very colorful in a way that matches the water. I took it home and cooked it up, but it had pink-orange meat. Perhaps it was a holdover from a year ago. It was in the lower section that hasn't been stocked since opening day (wasn't stocked a week ago).

This leads me to two questions.
1. How long does it take for a worn caudal fin to regrow?
2. Stocked trout would probably become orange in flesh after a time, if eating wild food. I'm sure this varies considerably based on local conditions.

Part of the fish tasted exactly like the smell of the river. But the meat closer to the spine in the "back" meat did not.

Getting back on the Trout

There's been a lot of travel this past year--business travel. Much of it has been a long way from home waters. I tried to learn to catch subtropicals but I have a lot to learn. Meanwhile I felt spring coming on and the need to catch trout simply rose.

Last year, the late winter was in some ways the most interesting gratifying period in trout hunting. The only people oh the stream in Feb and early March are die-hards. All the fish you are cating to are veterans. They'e been in the stream for at least 4 months instead of 4 days. They may have been caught.

But Spring is, well, Spring. It gets urges to be outside moving involuntarily. Is this an echo of our protohuman past? Whether it is or not, I felt the increasing need to prove to myself that my 8 hours in the late winter were not in vain--that I had not forgotten how to catch trout, in 8 months away.

The first hookup did not get on film. It was the day after opening day. That can be a madhouse second only to opening day itself. And in a class III TMA, it is very busy. But in the afternoon in a particular run, there was nobody there, so I went with a friend who was doing this for the first time in decades.

It is a location I've caught a few trout in before--as well as bass in the late summer. This stream is strange because it can hold all sorts of fish. It has slow sections, marshy sections, fast plunging water, and muddy bottom sections. The water is from the bottom of a deep reservoir so never terribly hot until it gets to the sea.

The water this Spring has been very high. We finally turned the corner on the Drought of 2015. Many a rrrr

The next day I fished a class 3 WTMA and caught a stocked brown:

First Rockfish of 2019

Trolling on way out of the creek is often productive.