RLeep2 wrote:
Regarding the West Branch..
It isn't very friendly to the incidental visitor. Its a stream to be learned over an extended period of time and even after you've learned it, it will still usually insist on being either stingy or moody or both. So, the fruits of learning the stream more often than not are seeing what you do work now and then rather than racking up a pile of fish on a regular basis. It was the first wild trout stream I ever learned well, and in that it served me well when I started going elsewhere a lot. It made a lot of other places seem pretty easy by comparison.
Tons of fish...? I dunno. I've had some pretty amazing days there, but almost all of them were 15 or more years ago. Most of my information is dated, but when I used to regularly see copies of the surveys on the WB (from the mid-70's to the late 90's) , they usually ran between 50-60 kg/ha (about 5 kg/ha of which was usually brook trout, interestingly enough). But I don't think its carrying that many fish now mostly because it has been missing from the Class A list for the last couple years. Which means that in addition to the fish remaining stingy and moody, there are apparently also less of them.
I guess what it comes down to is that if you learn the West Branch, you aren't necessarily entering a place in your relationship with the stream where you are now catching a lot of fish there. More like you're maximizing your ability to take advantage of the scattered times when the stream trips into the ON position and more like you've played a tough chess opponent to a draw.