"Healing"

I spent a few hours yesterday fishing a stream I have not visited in some time. Well I should say i visited it several weeks ago but it was so high that I could not effectively fish it. Yesterday was some what more tranquil, and the few hours I spent here were very enjoyable. This river has given up some rather large brook trout in the past, in fact one of my best brook trout came from one of the delightful pools that I fished yesterday. A couple of our annual New Years Day meetings were held on this stream. This stream had some issues I'll not go into these here but lets just say they were not the best. I will say this the river fished as good as it did several years ago, and it is as beautiful as ever.

The morning started out slow, a fish could not be located. The air temp overnight as well as the morning time was cold. I don't know what it was but I guess it was in the mid thirties. A few times I had to remove ice from the guides. I dropped my thermometer into the stream and was surprised to such a low reading 33...that makes for poor feeding.

I fished several flies, from dries to streamers and soft-hackles.

I finally got a brookies to take a slow drifted black spider. In moments the spunky brookie was at hand. She was lacking color but a few spots were quite nice. I eventually took a couple of more fish from the pool above. Time said I must head home.

On the way back to the car I noticed these trout lilies pushing through the dry leaves, a wonderful sight on a cold April day.