Sibling Day

I didn't know that Sibling day was a thing, and I certainly didn't lose any sleep worrying about how I was going to celebrate this obscure 'holiday' (if you want to go as far as calling it that). So, it wasn't as if I planned a solo fishing trip as some clever slight aimed at my siblings, it just worked out that way. 

I started before light to throw some streamers and had hoped to find the huge nocturnal trout that we all hope exist in our local water. Not just a little bigger, but the behemoth fish that feeds on the best fish you've caught from that undercut bank. Probably a brown with a hooked jaw and no qualms against cannibalism or attacking skinny-dippers.

Of course after fishing an olive bugger in every way I could think of through the first couple of holes and stumbling around in the dark I still hadn't found any fish. Light was starting to show on the horizon so I used the small amount of light to tie on a black bugger in hopes it could change my luck. I managed to somehow miss the first two hits and was just wondering about maybe changing out the fly for something smaller, or maybe a lighter color, when I finally made the connection. A good, healthy fish, but not the cousin from loch ness that had gotten me out of bed so early.

Apparently I needed to use the flash

When I came up on the undercut bank that had held so much promise in my imagination it didn't seem like any fish lived there. Only when I had worked my down, so I was standing over the top of the bank, did anything resembling old nessie come out to play. A nice fish took the bugger and tried to keep it in it's sheltered run. Once I had him in the net I began to wonder if this was the same fish that I'd caught about a year ago (read the post here). If it's him he's growing up nicely and it won't be long before he's a fish like the one with the scottish heritage. 

A beauty of a fish

Maybe it's just too early in the year for the fish to be out in force before the warmth of the sun hits the water, or maybe I'm just not that good, but I didn't see any fish for a while. I snuck down where I could swing a fly into the top end of a pool. It took a few passes, but the nicest cutthroat I've seen from this stream didn't like his territory being encroached upon and slammed my fly. 

I'm a sucker for a pretty cutt

When streamer fishing I prefer to work downstream, so I fished down as far as access would allow then turned around and re-fished my way back up. The streamer got replaced with a couple of nymphs and I started picking up fish right away on a orange bead head Hare's Ear. 

Glowing

The fish in this small stream seem to be extra pretty, and with the approaching spawn the cutts seem to glow. I tried to keep moving in hopes of working my way up to some water I haven't seen in over five years. The fish seemed to prefer the Hare's Ear over any other nymph I tried, and as the sun made it's presence known the fishing seemed to slow down quite a bit. I kept moving and noticed that the water seemed to be getting a little cloudy, once that happened the fishing picked up again. Maybe I was spooking the fish? 

A Chunk

Gotta love 'em

 A lot of the holes I used to fish are gone now, completely silted in, but there were still a few spots that held fish. One spot had several fish that were willing to play. Once I reached the top of the hole and was about to keep moving on nessie's cousin showed himself. I hooked the beast just long enough to see that he was quite a bit bigger than anything I had caught in this stream, then he came undone and slipped away. I tried a few more casts, but knew he wouldn't be coming back today. Makes me anxious to get back and try to arrange for another meeting. 

Hope you're as lucky,

Kidder

This mink (?) didn't seem too scared of me, probably just worried I was going to steal his duck