Brook trout

Saturday, I headed to Giants Mountain and the Washbowl. This time, I decided to do the full hike before fishing. 4500 ft of elevation over 9 miles and 6.5 hrs was pretty good. I had to carry 2 backpacks, dropping my fishing pack with about 20 lbs of gear at the pond 800 ft up, before continuing the hiking until 1. The fishing was pretty good. I was being stupid for the first hour and trying a bunch of different tactics, streamers, nymphs, large hopper droppers, and nothing was working. Then, I switched to the same fly that was working last year at the same exact time, and big suprise, I started getting action. Another 30 minutes of fishing, I probably missed 5 fish on the dry fly. I realised that my dropper nymph was grtting in the way of the fish, and immediately after taking this off, I landed my first brookie. Until 4, there were a ton of fish rising, and I managed to land 5 total, all in the 8-10" range. The bite turned off like the flip of a switch. There were fish rising every 5 seconds, and it just stopped immediately. I fished for another hour with no luck. There was also a guy with a float tube there at the same time as me. I was pretty annoyed, not at him, but because my plan was also to use my paclraft to fish. Unfortunately, there was a hole in it from the last time I used it, and I spent 2 hours late friday night trying to find it, and I failed. The guy in the raft was catching more fish than me, and he said he caught a 13". He also said he was using a white crystal wooly bugger. I know I would've had a lot more success and probably would've caught bigger fish if I was also able to get out in the middle of the pond. My plan earlier in the week for Sunday was to go splake fishing. The weather for the day made me think twice, as I didn't feel like dragging my kayak 1.5 miles into the woods in 55° and rain, to potentially suffere and get skunked targeting a fish I know very little about. I then wanted to go streamer fishing for big browns, but because I stayed up so late trying to find the hole in my raft, I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep, and I knew that waking up early again would be brutal. I have a gut wrenching feeling I couldve gotten on some nice fish, because the conditions Sunday were just so perfect. I'm heading back to Maine next weekend, probably for 2.5 days of fishing. This time, I am going to attempt to catch an arctic char, and if I don't succeed the first Saturday, I might spend the weekend targeting them. I'm not able to go to the ponds that have trophy fish, which I am a bit dissapointed by, but any fish in general, especially if they had a bit of orange colo,r would be a great success.

PB brook trout

Don't mind the AI adjustment for my face lol This fish was untouched.

Fished 3 spots last Saturday. Was rather cold in the morning, dropping to 38 before the sun was up, which I wasn't totally prepared for. First two spots were places where I thought I could find some larger fish. The holes definitely looked juicy, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky, which typically doesn't make for great streamer fishing. With only a few hours left, I headed to one of the many quality brook trout streams in the area, and landed a pair of fish. Both fish took a p-tail under an extra small indicator. There were a ton of really nice looking holes, but I had somewhere to be, so I was rushing and probably spooking most of the fish. Planning on heading out the next two days, and hopefully can get a new species this weekend if the weather allows Sunday.

First time fly fishing and I caught that nice brook trout