One of the beautiful things about having discovered the stream accross the street held wild brookies, is that, I can take a "coffee" break during the day (I work from a home office) and hit the brook for 20-30' just to have a mental re-set. I cant pull that off every day, but it's a lot easier than driving some place! Wish I'd realized this years ago!
Yesterday I popped out to the stream, and managed my best in that river yet on a #12 Royal Coachman hair wing streamer. It's a fly I've carried for a while, but for some reason never fished... but after reading an old post by Brktrt at Small Stream Reflections http://smallstreamreflections.blogspot.com/2011/03/little-bit-of-this-and-little.html about the traditional version of the Royal Coachman streamer over the winter, I decided I had to actually get this fly wet.
So approaching the stream, I tied on the Royal Coachman hair wing and did some swing/drift/jig in a nice elbow bend of a pool with a massive log jam. There could be fish hiding in there you would never encounter... it's 3-4 feet deep in that hole, and there is a solid 8 feet (horizontally speaking) of woody "stuff" jammed into the corner. I'm sure there are many fish "stashed" into that cover.
Any way, not takes in that pool, and with limited time, i quickly walked up about 50 yds to a similar pool in terms of depth, but that has no log jam, just an undercut root ball on the outside. I had a take quickly and missed, then tried again and caught a true surprise - a brown!
I knew Mass Fish and Wildlife had evidence of brook trout and some other cold water species reproducing on this stream... But I was pretty sure they didnt know there were browns. So I quickly texted a pic to a friend who works for MDFW and he was going to run it past the coldwater biologists to see what they thought.
Makes me wonder if there are some big browns slyly making a living in the Nashua river 3/4 of a mile down stream... Regardless, It was a cool discovery - amazing to think these little creatures have made a living on this stream... and very curiosity inspiring to figure out where they came from!
I managed one more brookie from that same hole, the biggest I've caught on this stream so far I think: pic above.
I managed one more when I hit the original hole a second time before walking home, a very fiesty 6" brookie...
I'm excited to see what MDFW has to say about the brown. Very cool, to think that some how, some way, in a stream that has never been stocked, and which flows into a river that does not get stocked (Nashua) these little fish some how have arrived... Very cool indeed!
Can't wait to hear what you find out. Very interesting indeed. Beautiful fish you have there as well.
ReplyDeleteArgh Atlas, i had a big long reply and google ate it!
ReplyDeleteLong story short, MDFW said this is the first they have seen / heard of brown trout reproduction (and they noted they do not stock any browns that small, so the fish was either born in this stream, or in the nashua down stream)... they dont believe the nashua is healthy enough or cold enough to support trout, so the end point is that they think this fish grew up in the little stream accross the street, and that there must be some level of brown trout reproduction on the stream. They had not seen brown's during electroshocking a few years back, but admited that does not always tell the full story... So, they flagged the stream as harboring more coldwater species than they previously believed which has to be a good thing for helping protect it's headwaters and "drainage" overall.