Big, dark, mysterious holes

This...this is what lives there 😉

That's a 6 wt in the photo. Fly was a meat whistle fished on 16 lb mono tippet. Most people who fish this same stream use a dry dropper and 5-6x tippet. They wouldn't have a chance against a brown like this. I like to give myself the chance to actually land a monster in the rare instance one bites in daylight.

I have some friends who would kill me if I posted a pic of the pool it came from but it's the deepest pool on a small stream. 5-6' deep and so picturesque it ended up in an episode of a very popular TV show.

I do think if there's a downstream connection to a bigger trout stream, however marginal, the chance of a true monster occupying these deep pools goes up dramatically, especially in summer. Isolated deep pools on small mountain streams with limited or no migration prospects can produce nice fish but unless the food supply is insane they won't grow too large. Think 11-12" brook instead of 14-16", or 17-18" brown instead of 22"+.
 

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