April 3 - SNOW!

Saturday I got in a nice 2.5hrs on the bike riding to my parents with my wife carpooling the kids out and picking me up there.  It was nice, but cold with the steady rain.  Sunday they were going to breakfast with the neighbors at a sugar shack, so I had a little chance to fish a bit of water I have not in years.  It's got great history to me - as a kid, I fished it many times.  The first trout I caught was about a half mile down stream at an old mill pond.  It's a spot with decent population of native trout, but few are the folks who bother to fish it any more.

It flows in a valley and much of this section is hemlock covered.  It's freestone.  In this section, it really is the truest form of that river form.  It starts about 2-3 miles above this area where a few streams merge.  Calvin Coolidge - former president of the USA - used to vacation and fish those streams.  He notes one was his favorite stream.  I've never done to well on it, but hope it returns eventually.

Those streams merge in a gorgeous swamp that runs for a few miles.  It's a placid looking flow through most of the swamp, but you cant fish a lot of that section without a canoe or kayak... either to soft to wade or to deep, and the swamp is largely floating grass hummocks.  If you went in... You may not come back out!  A MDFW employee friend has told me that there are a surprising number of wild trout in that section due to the amazing overhead cover offering protection from predators, and from the heat of summer...  The latter was not an issue this past weekend when 3" of snow Sunday was followed by 6-7 Monday!

Can brook trout not live here?  Deep holes among the rocks, oxygen rich waters, shady hemlocks offering lower temps in the summer... And best of all, several spring seeps which contribute cool to cold water even on the hot dog days of summer when flows are much lower than this picture suggests.

Another quarter mile up and you are at the end of the big swamp.  I didnt have time to fish the whole way up on this day, but enjoyed the heck out of it non the less.  The deep valley and hemlocks cut the wind I felt way down, and it made for a cold, but really pleasant morning.

This is the same spot as the pic above, but show's a feeder stream coming in from the west (left).  That feeder has a few brookies in it too.  Most people don't believe me when I tell them I have caught wild char along it's course... It's not super fishy, but they are there.  It's ok that people don't believe... Keeps it quiet.

I didnt catch a fish on this morning.  I didnt have a tap.  I didn't really think I would.  Not with the huge shift to cold weather and the snow... But I left fulfilled for certain.

Ill be back.

Thanks for the time valley, I needed it.

Will