I won’t lie. I was a pretty cranky guy most of last week, culminating in a temper tantrum on Friday when I couldn’t find my 3wt reel.

Alpine Meadow, Bluff and Stream
A meadow, a cliff, a stream, and a fly rod. Tough place to go? Nope.

Losing a reel (given my somewhat haphazard organizational style) isn’t exactly earth shattering, but it is a good indicator that I’d better go fishing somewhere. Anywhere. Soon. (And that I should pick a rig where I haven’t lost the reel.)

Local guide Steve Bertrand called, suggested a stream I hadn’t fished in three years, and we were off. Simple as that.

I brought my 8.5′ 4wt Diamondglass rod (I knew where my 4wt reel was), and we got to work. For purposes of not being too cute, I’m just going to call it Stream X — a small alpine springer running through an absolutely beautiful part of the country.

Mountain Brown Trout
The browns in this small, alpine stream are brightly colored. Check the red spots.

Populated mostly with brown trout, it’s one of those streams I should fish far more often than I do. I can’t explain why I don’t, being as I’d suggest it’s the kind of thing I love to do.

Yesterday, I finally did.

It’s not the easiest stream to fish; even though Bertrand and I had both been here multiple times, finding it amidst the maze of dirt roads involved a bit of “Braille pathfinding” — that process where you try a road because it looks like might be the one, get lost a little bit at a time, and then backtrack as soon as it becomes clear you were wrong.

Steve Bertrand on an Alpine Stream
It’s not big. It’s overgrown (this is an easy stretch) and tough to fish. Still, brown trout. Hmmmm, brown trout

Once you’re on the water, you find yourself crawling over and under seemingly miles of deadfall, fighting your way through tall weeds and hooking our flies on every possible obstruction (many times).

Steve Bertrand fish over a log
You gotta be sneaky. These fish run at even a hint of weirdness.

Due to the mild winter (I think), the browns were a teensy bit bigger than I remembered, and I caught way more 9″-11″ fish than I thought possible.

Both Steve and I landed browns in the 12″ range, but the big fish of the trip was a butter yellow 14″ specimen.

Mountain Brown Trout
We don’t get a lot of Brown Trout around here, so even the small ones look cool.

It’s not refined, elegant fishing — you’re doing pretty much whatever it takes to get the fly on the water, and once you do, you’re faced with the problem of a hookset (and whacking your rod tip against a limb).

And all that assumes you were sneaky enough to get near ‘em in the first place. Fish that grow up in small, shallow creeks don’t forgive shadows, splashes or loud approaches; marching up to this little stream is a useful exercise, if only because you get to see how fast fish can swim.

Once you realize that you’re a predator — and that you’d better start acting like one — things get a little smoother. Still it’s also humbling when you don’t spook the trout, hook one that runs through the pool that just stumped you, and see a dozen trout flush from cover.

Predator? A pretty poor one.

Once you’ve actually hooked a fish, the trouble’s just beginning; the fish seem determined to throw the hook or wrap your leader in a downed tree, grass, or tree roots in undercut banks.

And don’t think it only sounds like fun. Hell, it is fun, and it gets to be even more so when you hook what can only be described as a Bonus Fish (The Official Char of the Trout Underground):

Alpine Brook Trout
Yep. A Brook Trout. Hmmmm, brook trout.

We both caught a single brook trout. We have no idea where they came from, but the existence of a brookie in a spring creek only an hour or so from my door means plans have been hatched, though execution remains uncertain.

The details aren’t particularly important (#14 yellow stimulator), but the overwhelming sense of being largely free of the pressures of everyday “real” life was definitely reviving.

This week, I plan to fish one (or more) of the local lakes. Naturally, you’ll be among the first to hear about it.

See you on the road to mental health, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing, fishing, spring creek, brook trout, brown trout[/tags]

Posted in Backcountry, Fishing Report.