Ah Grasshopper…

     In the middle of August the grasshoppers appear, droves of them. When I mow the lawn a wave of the critters flees ahead of me. Some appear as large as humming birds. Even our bird dogs sit and watch the hoppers fly about.

     During a late afternoon break I trekked down to my favorite brook below the house. A couple of hundred yards downstream a field is on the opposite side. Over this bend in the water grasshoppers flit about and occasionally land in the water. It was pretty obvious which fly to tie on, but all my hopper patterns were back at the house.

     The closest imitation in my boxes was a big alder fly I’d tied a couple of weeks before. The body was dubbed a light gray on a number ten hook and the wing was just deer hair tied sort of muddler style. The colors on the real insect went from gray to yellow on the abdomen, but this one would have to do. Bigger would have been better.

     The fly landed with a splat, much like a real hopper falling into the stream. It didn’t drift a foot when it was inhaled. During the next hour I caught and released over three dozen trout all on the same fly.

      A few days later I went back with an imitation tied with a yellow body and the same seen repeated. A week after that I couldn’t catch a trout on any fly I floated.

     That’s fishing, isn’t it?

Upstream A Bit

     Topographical maps show an area of slack water with no contour lines crossing the stream for a very long ways. From the nearest logging road it’s more than a mile in, five times that from the asphalt. It’s grouse and woodcock country, so there’s bound to be alders and woodcock come fall. But it’s the promise of brook trout that draws me in.

     It’s a stream noted for wild brook trout and it weaves through back country, most of the way tumbling down bony grades. But one stretch in the middle is slower, where the water winds through a valley with high undercut banks shouldering the stream. Large brook trout aren’t usually found in the pocket water of tumbling streams. It is more likely they are king of the meandering streams, hiding in the deep holes or under overhanging banks.

     The place needed a closer look.

     With backpack loaded and accompanied by my dogs, following a compass course to the west from my parked truck, I headed into the woods.

     It was easy going, mixed softwoods and hard. Often the ground became soggy enough to warrant detours. Moose tracks turned up the mud. In a gully more than ten feet deep, we encountered a stream too wide to jump. Downstream a couple of hundred yards a half dozen rocks provided stepping stones to cross. Soon we came to alders and the progress slowed. We had to be close to our intended goal.

     So many things in life are like that…you get close to your goal and the progress slows. Finally we broke from the alders onto a bony beach. In front of us water tumbled over rocks after funneling between boulders. Upstream the water appeared a glassy slick lined on either side by alders.

     It appeared to be exactly what we were looking for.

The Stream

      Moss under foot silenced my feet. The path slipped through shade beneath very green maple leaves then turned down into the darkness of softwood trees. Where the ground flattened, woven roots formed a bridge over a tiny trickle, then waist-high ferns shouldered the narrow trail between tall straight spruce and fir trees. 

     My dogs bounded ahead and I hoped they weren’t cooling themselves in my favorite fishing pool. The water would be low and those brook trout spook easily. Colby, the older German wirehair trotted back looking for me. Maggie, ever the hunter, was standing atop the bank by a bend of the stream, looking down into the water. Frogs? Maybe.

     The quiet babble said the stream was low long before I saw it. Stepping from the trees, I noticed that one channel was completely dry and what was once an island in the stream had become part of the far bank. Shoulder high grass grew where only pebbles lay before. After reminding the dogs that stealth was required, neither entered the water, much to my relief and surprise.

     Studying the water and hoping for some inspiration, I missed my pipe that I hadn’t smoked in almost thirty-five years. Which fly? No insects were on the water, but the water was mighty thin. I opted for a tiny caddis dry.  

     Where there used to be a deeply undercut bank a tree stretched across the stream. Gravity had taken its toll. The water still swirled against the far bank, where the water piled against the log. I floated a fly in. Nothing, and then several nothings. I contemplated changing to my trusty wooly bugger, but upstream a kingfisher burst from a dead spruce. The pool beneath that bird’s tree looked promising.

     With light footsteps, I crossed a stony shallow riffle to wade through the tall grass of what used to be the island. Both dogs snuck along with me and, when I stop next to the stream to fish, they sat to watch.

     Through the glassy surface it was easy to see the brown silted bottom of the pool. Trees over the left bank blackened the water with shade, but bright sunshine lit most of the pool. Dark cigar-shaped shadows on the bottom came from holding trout, possibly a dozen with one or two longer than the spread of my hand.

     Nervously, I worked out fly line. A fleck of water from the line hit the surface and the trout flinched. My next forward cast landed short and the trout twitched again, but did not move far.

Can you see the trout?

     After the fly drifted back I lifted it off the water and false cast over the weeds along the stream. When the distance felt right, I let the fly drift down ahead of the trout.

     Pandemonium! Some dashed left, others right. One snatched the fly off the surface.

After a short battle and a sniff by the dogs, that trout was returned to swim again. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

An Expedition

What Makes an Expedition?

Merriam-Webster defines an expedition as a journey or excursion undertaken for a specific purpose. That definition covers a lot of territory. It could mean traveling to the North Pole to see what is there. Or flying to the moon. Or it could mean a hike into the forest, searching for a wilderness trout stream to see if brook trout swim in its water or if woodcock live among the alders on its banks.

Looking for a remote stream sounds better than the cold of the arctic and much safer than flying to the moon.

There’s a locally well-known stream that has no easy access and long has been an interest of mine. The logging road that parallels part of it is gated and the headwaters are more than a dozen miles from that gate. Hours have been spent pouring over maps and aerial pictures trying to find a reasonable way in.

Finally the pieces fell together. An accessible logging road leads to a grown in logging road that shows up in aerial photos. It should only be a few miles down a long grade to find the stream. What would it be like? The expedition was planned…lunch, fly rods, camera….

The hike in was uneventful. Icy cold water flowed over a gravelly bottom, in spite of the hot August weather. Alders covered the entire wide bottom of the valley until the land started to rise into hardwoods on the hills. The remote place felt like we were the only people on Earth.

And I am not going to tell you more than that.

The Middle of May

The grouse are pounding, literally. Some days it goes on all day long, others less so. Seldom during the day can you not hear them for long. The leaves aren’t out, but the red maples are pink on the hillsides. Distant pale green patches mark clusters of poplars. Water seems to be rushing everywhere. Only during the past week has the ice gone out on the lakes and the streams are still swollen.

Most of the logging roads are blocked off and they feel none too hard when you walk on them. It is spring in the North Country, a time of waiting. Luckily, the last week so so the weather has been spectacular, with blue skies and bright sunshine.  Woodcock are already nesting and maybe some of the young have already hatched. The woods will dry out soon and the streams will settle and warm. Warblers are already singing from the trees. Soon the trout will be feeding on hatching mayflies.

The Brook

     A woodcock fluttered up and away my very first time there. That was eleven years ago and it seemed like a pretty good omen. Barbed wire buried inches beneath the bark of softwood trees told it once was a pasture. In places, remnants of old fields still border the stream, but alders and poplar are squeezing the grasses away.

     Every year the brook changes when the spring runoff chews away at its banks and tumbles streamside trees. One favorite bend used to be around a narrow gravel bar, but has grown to nearly the size of a tennis court. The stream is a property bound and someday it will be interesting to sort out who owns what, but that isn’t a worry now.

     On the north side of the stream, softwoods cover the flat valley bottom. Soft needles and moss muffle footsteps, and moose and deer keep a path well trampled. 
      In places the ferns are waist high, easily tall enough to hide dwarfs, elves, and forest creatures. It is a magical place. Farther from the stream, the land abruptly climbs and the forest changes to mixed hardwoods. Along this edge is where the exploding ruffed grouse live.

     Brook trout hide in the stream’s shadows, beneath undercut banks and fallen tree trunks. In the fall they slip up some of the tiny feeder streams to reproduce, sometimes in places that are so shallow their backs are out of the water. It is best to give them some privacy then, so I stay away.

     Fishing downstream, sinking flies in the deeper holes or among the shadows along the banks, you will eventually come to the alder flats. In October, when the weeds finally lay flat, the woodcock will be found feeding in the soft soil beneath those alders. Some great memories linger in that tangle. But by mid-November the place feels as empty as a ghost town.

     Further downstream a bit, beavers keep trying to dam the stream, but always disappear after the dams get started. Possibly someone traps them out, but the abandoned barriers create lovely tranquil pools. There, a tiny dry fly often coaxes a trout into doing something stupid, or at least showing its location. The trusty old green woolly bugger usually catches the biggest fish.

     Most of the trout are gently put back into the stream. A whopper would be as long as the spread of a man’s hand, but those are rare. Occasionally, a couple medium sized ones will come home to be cooked in bacon fat for breakfast. A kingfisher might protest, but he can catch his own trout.