Connecticut Hatcheries in the Crosshairs

Editor's note: Time and time again, Connecticut's state fish hatcheries have been threatened with ill-advised cuts or closures. It's time for anglers to stand up and fight once more. The following letter, written by Aaron Swanson, a good friend and field editor for The Fisherman, explains why we should reach out to Governor Lamont and our state legislators to put a stop to the latest plan to cut hatchery funding. 

Governor Lamont’s proposed FY 2026-2027 Biennial Budget includes a $500,000 cut to state fish hatcheries. This cut, while it may seem small, will ultimately do more harm than good to Connecticut residents, small businesses and executive branch agency staff. Connecticut’s fish hatcheries provide its residents with a reason to get outside and take advantage of a range of diverse angling opportunities. These fishing trips in turn drive positive economic impacts across a variety of businesses. Please join me in urging the governor and his staff to reconsider, the trout stocking program is worth a lot more to the businesses and residents of Connecticut than saving $500K in their yearly budget.

Here are some bullet points…

Cutting hatchery funding sends a negative message to anglers and undercuts trust in executive branch agency staff.

For better or worse, many anglers do not believe their license fees and trout stamp funds are returned directly to fisheries resources here in Connecticut. Despite DEEP’s clear communications that 100% of these dollars are used for their programs, many anglers remain skeptical of this claim. While money from fishing licenses and trout stamps may not be tied directly to the funds that are being cut, the message these cuts send to the folks who are skeptical of how these funds are programmed is clear. Cuts to the hatchery budget will be interpreted as vindication that the state and DEEP mislead anglers about how money generated from licensing – and more importantly, trout and salmon stamps – is used. This, in turn, breeds mistrust in messaging shared by our hard-working executive branch agency staff who often work directly with anglers, advocacy groups and sporting associations. In short, cuts to hatchery funding hurt fisheries staff.

Our state hatcheries and fisheries staff provide opportunities to anglers and get people outdoors year-round.

Our state fish hatcheries provide Connecticut residents with plentiful and diverse reasons to get outside. Examples of the wide variety these opportunities include everything from the survivor program that stocks big healthy trout into the Farmington River, to expanded urban fishing areas giving residents, especially children, opportunities to fish for trout where they live. Fisheries staff have used our state hatcheries to provide unique opportunities to residents regardless of the season. For example, this year we had a cold winter that froze many of our lakes and ponds. Fisheries staff recognized this as an opportunity to provide enhanced ice fishing options to anglers. They stocked 10,000 brook trout into lakes and ponds across the state giving anglers even more incentive to get out and fish.

Connecticut hatcheries are unique and create fisheries not available in other places that are an economic driver for small businesses. 

Connecticut state fish hatcheries are unique and part of the diverse environmental culture that sets Connecticut apart from other states. These unique opportunities that our hatcheries provide, directly affect small businesses. Connecticut’s hatcheries are some of the oldest in the nation and produce species of trout and salmon that other states do not. Specifically, Connecticut hatcheries produce a strain of fast-growing, beautiful brown trout known as the Seeforellen strain. These fish are popular among anglers. Talk to any Connecticut tackle shop that’s open year-round and they will tell you that there is a corresponding spike in sales that comes right after DEEP posts Seeforellen stocking updates online.

Eliminating funding to our hatcheries will ultimately lead to the loss of programs that drive economic benefit, and not just to tackle shops. The upper West Branch of the Farmington River is a well known blue-ribbon trout stream and destination for anglers not just from Connecticut but across the region. If you need proof, just take a ride along the river – any time of year – and you’ll see vehicles tucked into pull-offs along the way with plates from all over the Northeast, who have come to experience this top-tier river fishing experience. This fishery relies on our hatcheries to bring out-of-state tourism revenue into Connecticut. Cuts to hatchery funding could negatively impact this resource that drives positive economic impact to a diverse group of businesses.

I often encounter DEEP fisheries staff conducting “creel surveys” at various locations across the state. Part of the survey questionnaire includes a question about how much I spent on the day’s trip. My answer is always the same – $100. That answer is truthful, if not overly conservative when I take into account food, gas, gear, bait and more. Loss of hatchery funding leads to less diverse fishing opportunities, which ultimately, may lead to fewer fishing trips and less money spent at businesses along the way.

Contact Info for Governor Ned Lamont

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Headwaters

The first open water fishing I did this year was a pair of trips to a familiar stretch of stream. It's close by and I have high confidence in finding willing wild trout every time I go. On a warm lunch hour in March, I hooked and landed four beautiful browns all from the same riffle. The biggest of the bunch came up for a dry fly, which really made my day. Just over a week later and a mile upstream, I got into a few more quality fish thanks to a piece of hot pink chenille tied on a hook that resembled next to nothing in their diet. 

Over the years, I have explored a good chunk of this watershed, learning a little more of her secrets with each visit. Yet for as much as I thought I knew about it, there is always more to uncover. During a recent night on the couch with a laptop and Google Earth, I stumbled upon some new access points north of where I normally fish, a long five miles upstream. 

The following day I found myself along a brand new-to-me section of stream. The waterway was noticeably smaller than the one I knew downstream. It was also fed by natural springs as evidenced by patches of thick vegetation that looked like water cress. I walked the bank just observing for a while. After a few minutes of seeing no life, I finally spotted a trout as it bolted away from me like I was Godzilla. A few more paces and a few more dark shadows darted in the opposite direction. It was clear these fish were easily spooked and I would need a stealthier approach. 

Eventually I snuck up to a pool that looked like it could hold some trout. On the first drift with a dry-dropper, something grabbed my nymph. I pulled tight and a small fish somersaulted across the surface and shook off before coming to my hand. Over the next several drifts, native brook trout of varying size took turns attacking the dry fly and pheasant tail below it. Finally I was able to cup one in my hand for quick documentation. That single pool must have harbored at least two dozen brookies. 

Fifty yards further I stopped at another run and experienced similar results. It was like this was the first time these fish ever saw bugs. Interestingly they were all brook trout and the lower section of the stream was predominately brown trout. The scouting trip was a success and just the tip of the iceberg. So much more water and woods to explore, all seemingly unspoiled and uncrowded. Sometimes in pays to do a little research and break away from the comfort zones on our favorite rivers and streams.  

Indigenous Fishes

Editor's note: Tradition has always been a common thread on this blog. The following guest post is a fine example of that, as Aaron Swanson details a unique camping and fishing trip that he and Tommy Baranowski have been going on the same weekend for years. They both captured great images that help tell the story.

Some friends and I make an annual overnight trip on Columbus Day weekend.  We hike into the wilderness and camp near a small blue line on a map, a stream far from any paved roads or signs of human development. 

I wonder what the mountain stream we fish each year on the weekend named for the fabled, if not modernly controversial, explorer looked like at the time he first stepped foot in America Hispaniola. If I had to guess, the river and its inhabitants look very much as they do today.  It isn’t the fish or the stream that has changed, but the humans that live in the area.  It is a tired point, but valid, that since European settlers colonized the place we call home the landscape has changed drastically. Much of our environment has been altered to the point where the kinds of life that once thrived here can no longer do so.  This remote mountain stream and its inhabitants are special. They have largely escaped the consequences wrought by discovery, exploration and settlement that create our shared history.

The point of this story is not to dissect the past.  Instead it is to share the enjoyment of being able to take what feels like a step back into it. The boulders and gorges that outline and dictate the flow of the stream seem so permanent.  We hop across them and find in their pools the fish that bring us to such a wild place.

 

Mind you, during this hike, we enjoy plenty of modern day comforts.  What started out years ago as a bare-bones hike and overnight fishing trip has, as many traditions tend to do, grown a bit more extravagant over the years.  The quality of the food and beverage we pack in has increased sharply. Yet the core of the trip remains the same; the trail, the scenery, that noticeable start of the change of the season, the fishing, the bullshitting, the laughs and the quiet remain the real draw.

 

A neat thing about a tradition like this one is the variety of conditions you get to observe at a familiar place as the years pass.  This year we have been blessed with plenty of rain to fill our streams, reservoirs and water table. The stream this year was full, and it made for better scenery and fishing than found in prior years when low water made the stream but a trickle.

The fish seemed energized, they were healthy and bright in hand and quick to take our flies in the water.   The fishing was fun.  If you looked at a spot that looked like it held fish, it did.

As we prepared for this year’s trip, we agreed that this little overnight has become something we look forward to and cherish. It has a special feel. Much of it can be hard to adequately describe, but can be easily seen in the pictures we take to remember each individual year. As fall is now fully upon us I’m thankful I could spend another night in one of the most beautiful places found within our state’s borders. I take comfort knowing that not much has changed here and that each year we can mark the passage of time by paying a visit to one of our state’s most beautiful indigenous fishes.

The Tale of Alan's Tiger

Editor's note: This is another good story from my friend Chad Wilde in the Quiet Corner of CT. It's about tiger trout, a sterile cross between a male brook trout and a female brown trout. Most of CT's tigers are raised in hatcheries and stocked as adults (3,768 tigers stocked in 2017), but once in a blue moon anglers will catch wild tigers in streams with good spawning habitat and populations of native brookies and wild browns.

Chad noted that listening to this song while reading along will enhance the story. 

Living on the brook, I sort of got to know some of its fish.  Like a particular tiger trout that found its way into a prime hole.  It’s an angler’s culvert sort of place.  Easy to fish, consistent.  I got him there three times over the course of a year.

The funny thing about that particular tiger is that I caught it on three different flies and three different fly rods.  So after a while I just stopped fishing that hole.  I started saving it for a friend.

Each time I caught him over the year, he looked a little more colorful, a little more robust.  I could swear he had grown an inch. Vermiculate back like a convolute network of misevolution.  Black pupil that looked oddly innocent.  But it was a brawler.  Not leader shy, this fish.  He fought well, and ruined the hole each time I got him with his ruckus.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me three times, ah fuck it.

I knew my friend Alan had never caught a tiger trout.  So I held off on the easy fish to hopefully put him on it.  Alan is a good friend, and a helluva rod builder.  He can tie a good deer-hair bug, and he’s handy with a stick.  I haven’t fished with him as much as I’d like, but I have fished with him enough to know that he could figure it out pretty quick, whatever it was.

In the past I had brought him to some of the places I knew on the brook, but never to the hole with the tiger in it. 

I debated the tiger, mind you.   I knew and know there are wild fish in the brook.  I knew this dude was voracious and would eat just about anything.  Maybe I should have offed it.  But of the stocked fish in Connecticut they are perhaps the most interesting.  And I struggle with killing anything.  Even for a good reason.

We got up one day, went directly to the spot with the tiger in it.  I gave him the tit water.  I said, “Right out there buddy.”  I was already proud of myself.  The water was low.  It was late November.  There was ice in our guides.  Naturally, since I had talked the hole up so much, we didn’t catch shit. 

Now, I had been thinking about the Fenton River for some time around then.  It was badly damaged when UConn sucked it dry in 2005.  Where I used to find wild fish in high school now I only found stockies.  But when I’d catch them in the winter I’d tip my hat to them and say go on and lay down some roots.  I’d hope for them.  Against hope.  We’d try it anyway.

On the drive, I wondered if the tiger was dead.  I have always handled my fish with utmost care, but after you release a fish you never really know if it survives unless you catch it again.  Do the chances of its life decrease with subsequent catches?  I know there is stress in catching fish, but I do my best to reduce it.

My friend Dave caught a dubious fish in the Fenton years ago.  A 29- inch brown trout.  The hypothetical fish that could be.  A leviathan of a small stream.  A beast.  He caught it out of an out-of-the-way hole.  I wanted to check out a series of these type of holes I knew of and they weren’t buying what we were selling in the brook.  Alan was game.

I secretly hoped the tiger in the brook was dead since the thing would gladly eat a two-inch fry.  I secretly hoped it alive, stalking some deadfall or tucked into a bathtub sized two-foot deep plunge.  Treating it like a conveyor belt of forage, chasing off all others.  Eating them.  Grown fat and greedy, and strong.  I just hoped for fish.  So we’d try the Fenton.

I couldn’t get it out of my mind that the tiger wasn’t there.  I was disappointed, they’re pretty rare to catch and I thought I could put a buddy on his first.  Maybe it wised up, went feral as stocked fish will and learned to hide better.  Find deeper culverts to haunt.  Mice to eat.  It had, after all, grown an inch in a year.

I had just begun to tie flies at the time and was working on a squirrel leach pattern.  I gave a couple to Alan.  Purple squirrel with a green bead head.  “Broom Hilda-style,” I told him.  Halloween and all.  These flies were the first of my own that I was successful with, and they remain a staple in my box 10 years later.

I worked some water below him and he found his way up to a nice cutbank.  He approached it from below and took a small trout.  After a while he put on the squirrel leach and began to fish it.

I called his cell to find out what he was doing.  He told me he saw a big fish go for the squirrel leach and miss.  I began to head up.  I had just arrived at the cutbank to watch him roll cast upstream along the deep foreboding grey November cutbank.  He began to take short strips.  I looked away.  He said aloud, “I got ‘em.”

I turned and saw Alan on a nice fish.  It’s always exciting to see a friend get a good one.  You want to help, share in the experience.  I saw the fish boil the surface.  It was very light in color.  Was it a huge washed-out brook trout?  I couldn’t tell.  We had a great view of the fish, in the deep colored late fall water.  I enjoyed watching him fight it. 

It was a good fish.  After he fought the fish, I was able to slide a net under it.  This too is special, to help a friend net a fish. 

“No way,” I said.  I couldn’t even believe it. 

It’s a big tiger.

He released it and I never saw it again.  Though no doubt I went looking for it.

Alan's tiger

The Fight for Roaring Brook

Editor's note: Whether its fighting for hatcheries on the chopping block, historic homes facing demolition or precious natural spaces at risk of development, I'm all for taking a stand for what you believe in. That's why I'm happy to share the following piece form my friend Chad Wilde, who makes a heartfelt call-to-action to help protect a special blue line in Northeast Connecticut. 

“According to Indian legend, brook trout were not always the speckled beauties we know today.  “Once, long, long ago,” said old Jesse Logan, of the Cornplanter Reservation in Warren County Pennsylvania, the last (in 1928) of the Shikellemus tribe, “when Manitou visited the land of the Iroquois to lead His lost children back to the Happy Hunting Ground in the Far East, He grew weak with hunger and cold on his long quest.  Toward night He stopped beside a pool in the Seneca country [New York] which was overshadowed by colossal white pines and hemlocks.  Noticing that it was full of handsome trout, as black as ebony, He reached in His hand and easily caught the largest of the superb fish.  Looking at it He was struck by its beauty and agile grace, and decided to control His hunger and let it live, so He dropped it back into the deep pool.

“The trout went its way, but instantly its sides took on a silvery hue where the fingers of the Great Spirit had held it, and all of its kind became marked with the same silvery sheen and many colored spots and halos, as a token of their having been handled by the kindly Manitou.  For that reason, the Seneca Indians and others of the Six Nations would not eat brook trout.  Brook trout were sacred to the highest instincts of their race.  But what the redman spared,” said Logan, “white men destroyed by the millions.”

                                                                                                                     ~From Nick Karas' book Brook Trout

As an angler, I have seen first hand what mans intrusion into our wild places can do to fish.  I have watched it with my own eyes.  Over the past 4 decades, if you looked in the right places, these subtle but nefarious changes were impossible to miss.  Today, we must protect what natural resources we still have.  One such resource in dire need of our stewardship is Roaring Brook in Willington Connecticut.

I grew up on a circle of tract housing laid into the side of Village Hill just upland from Roaring Brook.  I caught my first trout in our backyard.  It was a brook trout, and I caught it out of a drainage pipe.  This was sometime in the early eighties when I was a child.

There was a small stream that flowed into a culvert at the top of our road.  The water ran through a storm drain under the street to another culvert in front of my house where some of it spilled out.  From there this trickle flowed behind our home, through the woods, downhill and into Roaring Brook. 

My brother and I had been fishing with our father before.  I don’t recall how old we were but we were old enough to go out on rainy nights and harvest night crawlers to fish with.  I remember walking and exploring the stream and coming to small pools where the rocks were covered in green moss, in them we saw small fish dart about.  So quick, and then hidden.  Gone. 

We caught these fish, on bits of worm, cast up into the drainage pipe from the mouth of the small culvert.  We didn’t know what they were.  Naturally, we put them in a bucket with stream water.  When our father got home from work, he identified them as brook trout.  As we grew, we followed the stream down through the woods, it was a tributary of Roaring Brook.  When we were old enough to do so we rode our bikes to this slightly larger stream and spread our wings in exploration.

We would swim in the deep pools and explore the stone foundation of Eldredge Mills, a site recognized by the National Historical Register.  To this day you can see the great stone circle of its turbine pit, which I tell my children is a castle.  I show them the stone walled sluiceway that the early millers used to divert the water and power their saw and grist mills.  Above these links to our colonial past rise tall hemlock, oak and maple trees.  Below them flows Roaring Brook.

As a child my friends and I would find crayfish and hellgrammites below stones in the brook.  There were great mechanical looking stonefly nymphs that would leave their molted husks on the streamside rocks.  We found salamanders beneath moldering logs in the forest, their skin slick and their tiny hands so delicate.  There were brook and brown trout in the water.    

Most people don’t consider the link brook trout have to our heritage as New Englanders.  Brook trout are native to waters throughout New England.  This means that their lineage developed indigenously in the water that drains our region.  Their natural range encompassed a good portion of the eastern United States, extending from Canada to high mountain streams in northern Georgia and west to the Great Lakes basin.

This habitat range has been drastically reduced by mans infringement.  Brook trout require cold, clean, well oxygenated water to survive.  They require highly specific pristine habitat conditions.  These native fish developed in the place that was right for them and they were entrenched in these places long before European men set foot on North American soil.

Like brook trout, some people develop in the right place.  When it was time to buy a home with my wife and start a family I chose to do so in the neighborhood where I grew up, in Willington.  I was elated to do so.  I envisioned my children exploring the same watershed I did in my youth.  I was back on Roaring Brook, our home is less than a mile from its banks.

I consider this my home water.  Throughout my life, I’ve always lived around Northeastern Connecticut.  As an angler I have spent more time on Roaring Brook than any other stream.  I’ve always caught fish, and many wild fish.  I have walked and fished a good portion of the brook from its mouth at the Willimantic River in Willington to its headwaters in northwest Union.  Throughout its entire length it contains good trout habitat.

I know there are no more brook trout in the small stream that flowed behind my parents home.  There is sand and water grown too warm to support fish.  Sediment and warm water are lethal brook trout.  Sediment obscures their spawning gravel and chokes eggs.  Warm water carries less dissolved oxygen than cold water.  Luckily, Roaring Brook is still suitable to support wild fish. 

Not truly trout, brook trout are actually considered char.  Trout and char are both members of the Salmonidae genetic family, but only char are native to the Eastern seaboard of North America.  Char differ from trout in appearance in that they have lighter colored spots against a dark colored body where trout generally have darker spots against a light one.

Brook trout are gorgeous fish.  Their backs are shades of steel blue and olive, they have tan vermiculate patterns descending towards their flanks.  Their spots are yellow, and they also carry vivid red spots haloed by blue.  Their fins are tipped with white.  In autumn, when they prepare to spawn, the male bellies take on a deep orange hue. 

As I have fished roaring brook over the past decade I have caught wild brook and brown trout.  I always approach my angling here with trepidation.  I realize we stand at a pivotal point in our species development with regards to protection of our natural resources.  Each time I set foot on its banks, I hope deep in my heart that there are still trout swimming in the brook.  To this point, my hope has been confirmed by my catches and release of wild trout.

I am always relieved when I see one at the end of my line.  These aren’t huge fish.  A mature wild fish will often only be 6 to 8 inches long.  Coldwater fish are the litmus test of a New England stream.  Where they are found you will find clean water and a healthy natural environment.  Connecticut has classified Roaring Brook as a class 3 wild trout stream, meaning that there is natural reproduction occurring, and populations are supplemented by stocked adult and fry (infant) trout.

Roaring Brook’s habitat is currently threatened by a proposal by Love’s Travel Stop to build a truck stop and restaurant off of exit 71 westbound on route 84.  This facility will be 40 acres and will cover parts of roaring brook and two crucial wetlands that drain directly into its water. 

In 2012 Love’s received approval from the Willington Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission to develop land off Polester Road.  In 2013 they were granted additional approval from Willington’s Planning and Zoning Commission with certain conditions applied.

At that time, senior fisheries biologist Brian Murphy of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s assessed and documented the proposed building site.  What he found was a site bordering a brook that is deeply shaded by thick woodland, helping to keep the water cool for trout to live in.  He saw cobbled gravel on the streambed, creating a place for trout to spawn.  He found riffles and runs that tumbled the water, creating oxygen and places where trout could feed.  He found woody debris and boulders, hiding places, what is known as a micro-habitat where juvenile trout make their homes and where insects provide forage. 

In essence he found the heart of my home water, a nice healthy little trout stream.

Murphy observed 2 wetlands that directly fed Roaring Brook.  In one of them, he found yearling brook trout.  This indicated that in the fall of 2012 brook trout had successfully spawned in the wetland channel.  Brook trout eggs are laid in fall.  They incubate until early spring when they hatch.  The fry emerge from their gravel beds and seek out microenvironments to live and grow in.  Wetlands are crucial to trout streams.  They provide spring water, which is cool, clean and well oxygenated.  They provide nurseries for trout. 

The project as proposed by Love’s Travel Stop will amount to a 40 acre development within a stones throw of this delicate ecosystem.  Any habitats health is directly tied to that of its immediate surroundings.  Symbiotic relationships develop between waterways and surrounding areas.  A riparian habitat refers to the buffer zone between any open water and upland areas.  These areas act as filters where vegetation absorbs pollutants and sediment.  They also prevent erosion, and offer shade to the waterways they protect.  This will be compromised by the truck stop.

Love’s proposal will damage this environment through the removal of forest, disturbance of soil, and creation of runoff into the brook.  Runoff from rainwater that falls on asphalt is warm.  It collects gasoline, oil, heavy metals, road salt and silt.  All of these harmful substances will find their way from the proposed truck stop into Roaring Brook.  This will damage the health of the stream. 

The proposed development features construction of a leaching field capable of handling 6,000 gallons per day of wastewater.  This leaching field will be roughly 120 feet from the wetland where Mr. Murphy observed wild brook trout in 2013.  The actual construction of the leaching field will bring development to within twenty feet of the wetland.  It is difficult under any circumstances to believe that measurable damage will not be done to this watershed, my home watershed.  This septic system will adversely affect the water quality of Roaring Brook.

I understand that the town of Willington will benefit from the increased tax revenue that this project will generate, however I cannot support it in light of what it will do to a pristine brook.  I have walked all my life below the forest canopy that shades this brook.  My family and I swim in its cool waters in the height of summer and I have fished it successfully in January snowstorms.  We must protect what native fish remain in our world.  Doing so is the golden rule embodied, doing to others what you would have done to yourself. 

I showed my daughter Marin her first brook trout from Roaring Brook in 2017.  I was thrilled I had caught it since I had again confirmed some few still lived called the brook home.  It was some ancestor of the trout my brother and I had found in a drain pipe all those years before.  This thought struck me: in a drainpipe.  There once were so many trout in these parts that they had permeated the very sewers below our feet.  And now I am thrilled to know that even one still lives in the watershed I so dearly love.

A shadow passed my face when I thought about the now vacant stream where I had caught those first brook trout behind my parent’s house.  It is my hope that my daughter will be able to show her own children some progeny of that fish I showed her, when she was 3 years old.  She will only be able to do this if we fiercely protect this resource.

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains.  You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow.  They smelled of moss in your hand.  Polished and muscular and torsional.  On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming.  Maps and mazes.  Of a thing which could not be put back.  Not be made right again.  In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

                                                                                                        ~From Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road

Please consider standing with me against the damage this project will cause Roaring Brook.

You can help support Roaring Brook by signing the petition to stop the proposed development of Love’s Travel Stop found here.

You can also write directly to the DEEP Hearing Officer to voice your concern: deep.adjudications@ct.gov

There is a public site walk on Monday April 23^rd at 10 a.m. taking place at the Polester Road development site.

There will be a public hearing held on Tuesday April 24^th at the Willington Public Library.  Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. for discussion with a formal presentation to begin at 6:00 p.m.

Lastly, follow Nectar Community on Facebook to stay in the loop about the fight for Roaring Brook and other things happening in eastern CT.

Wild Workday

I have mentioned here before how sweet it is that my place of employment is situated just up the hill from a stream with perfect wild trout habitat. A three-weight fly rod and Muck Boots are kept in my truck at all times. Though it sees decent angling pressure, I've been lucky to sneak the occasional weekday mission in before or after work when it's usually less crowded. Last week I was able to go on two such jaunts in the same day; once in the morning and again in late afternoon.

In the first round, I went to a familiar pool with easy access that has been consistent in terms of numbers of fish, but not necessarily size. A big trout for me from here is around 10 inches, which is a respectable wild trout from this stream, but they can get much larger. I frequent this spot more than others because it's a quick hit and I can always count on seeing fish. While this type of thinking has kept me from visiting other parts of the stream more than I probably should, that is beginning to change.

As is always the case in this run, I was trailing a nymph on super light tippet underneath a dry fly. In short order I hooked six pint-sized gems which of only half reached my net. The biggest of the bunch, a gorgeous brook trout, ate a Stimulator I had just purchased during a surfcasting event at River's End. After spending about $100 on saltwater gear, I couldn't resist picking three of the big dries from a lonely freshwater bin. The rest of the trout that morning fell for a small, tungsten-bead pheasant tail I tied last winter. The Stimulator/pheasant tail combo is deadly for me in this spot. It has't really mattered what time of year or what bugs are hatching or in the drift, the trout here respond well to these two patterns presented in this way. I'm sure other flies and tactics work, but if it ain't broke don't fix it. After a brief dose of fresh air and trout, the Muck Boots were traded for dress shoes and off to work I went...

After work I returned with a plan to fish a stretch I had never seen before. I went the farthest downstream I had ever been and kept walking. Hugging the edge of the stream, I entered a wooded area bordering some backyards. There was no worn dirt path here like more popular stretches and I got the feeling this water has been neglected by most anglers. Without much room to spare on my boots, I crossed a riffle just upstream of a shaded, deep pool. Now I found myself across the stream from the residential area and in better position to present the dry-dropper rig I still had on from the morning trip.

There wasn't much space for a backcast, so I perched on a rock a few feet from the overgrown bank to buy me a little breathing room. Now I had brambles behind me and directly across the stream was a large backyard with no fence (which would come into play soon). I begin casting and on the third drift through the money zone, my Stimulator disappears. I set the hook and knew in an instant it was a nice fish. After some heartbreak on this stream in the past, my mind immediately went to negative thoughts of losing another big one. Despite the tight quarters, I was able to keep a good angle and pressure on her. When it finally broke the surface a few yards from me, I stumbled from my rock to close the gap getting water over my boots in the process. The lively brown trout slid into my net and I was a happy man.

The fish had vivid red spots over a buttery underbelly and a notable battle scar on its tail from the past. Just a beautiful specimen and my largest wild trout from this particular stream in a few years. Without a tape, I guessed the fish to be about 15-inches long. The term 'trophy fish' is very relative to where it was caught. This was a trophy to me. 

After the release, she sulked in the water beside me for a photo before bolting to the confines of the deep pool. I collected myself and got back on the rock to make more drifts in hopes there were more where that came from. But before I could get another cast off, two huge German Shepherds came into view in the yard across the stream. Everything was cool for a minute. When I started to false cast, they spotted me and ran over barking like mad with just 10-feet of water between us. Needless to say I left, but knowing there were more, and possibly bigger, trout in that pool, I came back the following afternoon. This time the dogs were in view from the start and when they saw me this time, I found out there was no electric fence keeping them in the yard. The bigger of the two jumped in the stream and I ran like hell.

I have a feeling those German Shepherds keep most anglers from fishing there. Looking back, I'm fortunate that I even had a five minute window of peace there or I wouldn't have caught that fish at all. The stream has more water to explore and more trout to catch, but I won't give up on that guarded pool just yet--I'll just have to get lucky with my timing. Before or after work of course.