Winter hit haahd—as the Mainers say—this year; the pond at Colby was frozen solid until well into spring. Waters were high and cold, and the Fishing Professor had little luck tromping through some snow. Sanity was preserved by remembering his Ofishal Colby Hookers trip to the Owens Valley, California in January—see and hear the adventures:
Ofishal Colby: With Sierra Trout Magnet, Bishop, California
Those memories of California streams and hills kept me going:
- Photo courtesy of Kevin Walls
But didn’t hold me back from colder Maine waters in March and April:
Cold Toes in those Floes!
There were times exploring new water with Ya’akov the Yank, without fish to hand or even a bite:
The Chalk Meister
And even this beautiful run remained fish and almost bug-less:
A Tough Spring Gets Tougher
So there was only one thing left to do: go back to a spot already fished with the dynamic duo at higher water and try again. When I got to the spot, flows were down considerably. It was easier to get across to the spot I needed to fish. Some exploratory streamer casts rose no fish. Then I saw it–huge rises. Large fish–pink bellies. Like the bricks of brookies I had scored here in previous spring. I was started to feel better about coming here three weeks earlier with several feet of snow on the ground. Repeated changing of dry flies, fished wet, produced nothing.The soft hackles I tried to fish in the surface were like prayers to an absent deity. I was right on the spots. It was getting dark. So I took out the mysterious “White Ranger” fly I had acquired from the Yank in a parking-lot trade that looked like a drug deal gone right. On the third drift, the strike indicator jiggled and the hook was set. After a fight with three runs, a nice wild brook trout was in the net. I hope there are more to come:
Welcome Brook Trout
