Encounters with Salvelinus fontinalis

salmonoid

salmonoid

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In my first installment of this trip report, I encountered a youth one summer evening and introduced him to night time mouse fishing. It was a rewarding experience for both parties, even though neither of us landed any fish.

My target for the next few days, though, would be primarily brook trout. The stream I was fishing is a mixed brown/brook trout stream. For many years, I thought the stream was primarily brook trout, since I tended to fish it in low-flow regimes of the summer months. And that is what I caught, with an extraneous brown thrown in every now and then. But as the years have gone by, I've learned that it harbors a good brown population, which show themselves under the right conditions. It has shaped my view of streams that are brown trout streams, to some degree, as I know not to write them off, unless I have fished them in the proper conditions to catch browns.

Anyway, even though some heavy rain was in the not too distant past, the streams in the area were still low. Even though it is a cool summer, it is still summer, and flow regimes are still following the general summertime trend and are down.



Since I was fishing alone, there was no sharing the weight of potentially common items, like tent or water filter or stoves. I did a pretty poor job of packing, since my planning consisted of an impromptu packing session the evening before. Basically, I threw the gear in the car and sorted it out the next morning. I've cached gear and food in my car already, so I did leave a few items there for retrieval later. But I somehow managed to have a heavier than normal pack. I threw in a few extra shirts and decided to carry my rain jacket, not because of concern for rain (none was forecast) but to keep off the bugs.

So I started my fishing for the day. It was foggy to start and cool. The air was in the upper forties and the water in the mid-fifties. But the brookies were out and seemed willing to take just about anything. I made slow and steady progress upstream, picking up a fish every few holes. Some food sources were evident.





I covered some of my observations on trout in summer water in another post and saw several instances of fish schooled up.



But unlike warmer summers, these fish would strike. I thought this one looked particularly pretty.



I came up to a small undercut root system and cast to the head of the run. My line immediately went taut and I hauled in what would turn out to be my largest brookie of the trip, at 12".

Root system (but taken after fish was caught and released):





Same hole, just a few steps upstream, I picked up another pretty fish.



Last year I caught three tigers; two came from this stream. There's always a little bit of anticipation when you come up to the hole you caught the tiger from, wondering if lightning could strike twice there. But it wasn't to be this year. I don't think I caught anything at all out of the hole this year.



Mid-morning, I set an arbitrary goal of catching 75 fish for the day. By noon, I was only at 21 fish, so I was considering revising that goal. But I decided to leave it intact. The fishing picked up a little bit, even though it was mid afternoon. And I decided that in addition to feeding the fish, I had better feed myself. So I stopped for lunch. Because of the last minute decision to take this trip, there wasn't time to prepare any homemade pepperoni bread, which has become a staple lunch on my backpacking trips. It started out that my brother and I would grab some whole wheat pitas, a sharp cheese, and a stick of pepperoni. And we'd slice that up and it would make for a great backwoods lunch. But it's a bit messy and time consuming to prep, and I find warm cheese somewhat disgusting (unless its heated to melting for consumption, say on nachos or pizza). So I graduated to a form factor that had all the same components (more or less) but that was self-contained and fully prepped; enter the pepperoni bread. So in lieu of homemade, the Walmart bakery brand had to suffice. Verdict - not nearly as good, not enough pepperoni or cheese. But still good enough.



The diversity of colors of brook trout in the same stream has always fascinated me. Some streams might have some commonalities between the brookies, but this stream has a wide variety of belly colors and spot colors.





This particular guy lost his upper lip. I've always wonder what happens when these become detached - do they have the ability to regenerate? If they do, it hasn't happened here yet.



As the afternoon wore on, I reached one of my favorite stretches of stream. It is not exactly what you would call prime fish habitat, because a lot of it is flat shale bottom. But it still manages to hold an amazing quantity of fish. It is extremely difficult to fish the long shallow shale pools at the height of summer and I lined a lot of fish. But one attraction for me is the presence of browns. I don't think I caught anything out of this hole. I'm pretty sure I know why.



I arrived at my chosen campsite and was pleased to find it unoccupied, so I moved in. After setting up camp, I decided to push on upstream. By this point, I had tallied 63 fish and my arbitrary goal from mid-morning seemed very attainable. However, the stream size had definitely gone down too, as I was now a good five miles upstream.







Somewhere, after crossing over into early evening, I crossed the threshold and ended up notching a total of 81 fish for the day. True to the time of year, the tally was heavily weighted towards brooks - 75 to 6. This was a new personal best for me, particularly since every fish (except maybe the largest brookie) was wild. Here is one of the more interesting speckled trout I caught Friday evening.



The next day, I had planned to break camp and move to another location. I made some breakfast.



But after thinking about a second night fishing escapade where I took the skunk, and not getting any younger (feeling the effects of fishing with a heavier pack), I decided to do what I did years ago, when we'd hike into the campsite for the weekend, and just lounge. So that is what I did for the rest of the morning.

In the afternoon, I walked back downstream a few miles and decided to fish a tandem rig - dry fly with a wet ant dropper. This was for two reasons - to provide a second hookup vector, and to provide something that I could float by the lone rocks sitting on the shale bottom. I was hoping to entice some browns this way. Alas, I still caught predominantly brookies. A few took the ant, but most took the dry. I did draw out a few brownies, but even at a young age, they are a wary lot.

Almost had a double here - landed one on the ant and lost one that struck the dry at the same time.



I contemplated the difference that three months make. In late May, I sat at this spot and watched the stream roar by, in a chocolate milk state, following a torrential thunderstorm.



I did manage a few nice brookies, despite the gin clear water.



Sunday, I observed my day of rest, for at least part of the day. I observed a brookie finning beside the campsite for awhile.



I wondered why people can pack in containers with food, they eat the food, then dump the containers.



I did some dapping on the way out; this proved to be remarkably effective, and I finally moved the proportion of browns to brookies higher with this technique. Never overlook the standalone rocks in a shale bottom stream.







I was in no hurry - although I knew I had a long drive in front of me, I took my time walking out that Sunday afternoon and enjoyed catching a few more of our state fish.







I threw in the towel when I had another encounter late afternoon. But that will have to wait for another installment. And in the next installment, we will discuss encounters with browns.
 
The people on here really get to fish in some beautiful places and this stream is no different.
 
Great write up again. Went very well with some coffee and blueberry pancakes on a Sunday morning. Looking forward to the next one.

FWIW, I'd vote wild too on the big Brookie. We know that stream is capable of producing them and there's nothing there that screams stockie to me.
 
wonderful post. great photos and story.
 
Nice write up! Awesome fish as well. Its amazing the different color patterns. The spots and background colors on those fish are very nice. Thanks for sharing !
 
I always really enjoy reading your write-ups. Thanks for sharing your experiences and great photos with us. Truly some beautiful area and gorgeous fish.
 
Thanks for sharing that, excellent!
 
Good stuff. Looking forward to reading the next adventure!
 
Great post!
 
Lots of nice brookies there! Love the last two stream shots.
 
Swattie87 wrote:
Great write up again. Went very well with some coffee and blueberry pancakes on a Sunday morning. Looking forward to the next one.

FWIW, I'd vote wild too on the big Brookie. We know that stream is capable of producing them and there's nothing there that screams stockie to me.

I think the biggest brookie is a stockie. Compare the fins and coloration with the other brookies.

 
Great story. Love those brookies, some great colors there and your point about browns rings true.

Jeff
 
Great post! Really enjoyed it
 
tb - Fins look sharp, with clearly defined edges between the orange/black/white and appear to be full sized IMO. I've seen Brookies I've known to be wild with that general coloration before. As you can tell from the pics, there are many different general color tones and patterns in the fish salmonoid caught.

Location is the trump for me that leans wild. I know for a fact where this fish was caught, although I suspect you may too. Never an exact science of course, but I'll stick with wild as my guess on this one.
 
Great story. Those brookies are beautiful. I got hooked on them last month while fishing in CO. Some of the water was so small, that I thought no way were there fish in here, but I was fortunately mistaken. All caught on big hoppers. They were like sharks and a blast to catch with a little 2 wt. Most were in the 6-8" size.
Can't stand litter bugs. I ran into the same thing on the White Clay yesterday. They better hope that I don't catch them. :)

I see you are close to me in Lancaster. How would I go about locating some brookie streams? Not looking for your spots.

 

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That one "unusual brookie" in the pic above the breakfast photo looks like a brook/brown hybrid to me- either a tiger trout (male brook/female brown) or a leopard trout (male brown/female brook). Leopards have never been found in the wild, according to what I've read. So maybe it's a tiger trout. A tiger trout that looks like a leopard...
 
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