First and Last Fish of the Day

A week of 60 degree weather, I figured, must have had some impact on the fish of the region, so I headed up today to the closest brook trout stream to Trenton, arriving around 1 PM.  Water levels were fairly high, but very fishable.

Tied on a tiny, black bead-head hare's ear nymph, figuring they'd take it for a early black stone fly.  And so it seemed.  This lovely brookie took my 3rd cast.  I did see a few stoneflies on stones, but did not see any fish rising, so nymphing definitely was the way to go.

Of course, the problem with fishing a deep nymph in a small stream is that there's very little structure suitable for it.  You're restricted to a very few structures with the right depth and flow (basically slow and deep), large enough to sink and drift a nymph through.  You're always in a quandary whether to fish just the really good structure (which means you can fish only one pocket in 10 or so), or fish marginal structure (which means you're fishing maybe 30% of the pockets).  Today I found the success rate on the good structure was close to 100%, and on the marginal structure more like 10%, but still it was a surprisingly good day of fishing, and I probably hooked into 8 or 10 fish in 90 minutes.  You can see a photo of the last fish if you scroll down.

All in all, an auspicious first outing for 2010.