A Little Trout Flair

Painting a pair of coasters was part of an evening event my wife and I recently attended. When I pick up a paintbrush, markers or other art supplies, a fish — or at least something fish related — usually forms.

In this case it was a square of the side of a brown trout. Mostly anyway. I went a little off script with some of the spot coloration. I was mostly content with the result and ready to try something else. 

My wife suggested another kind of trout, and that would have been best. Instead I went for a what was supposed to be a Bob Rossish “happy little scene” with mountains, a little stream and some flowers. Not too far into it I knew it would be dreadfully lame and that I’d paint over it at home. That became the rainbow.

We ended up with a couple of extras, so I decided to add a brook trout to the set. I’ll probably stop there, but it’s not impossible that a cutthroat will eventually join the set.

The coasters are now part of my little basement studio area. I can’t say it makes perfect sense to have only one chair and three coasters on a chest that serves as an end table. However, I like having a few of my own fishy scruples as part of my video set.

Marvelous Maine

Continuing with fishing travel updates before returning to "favorite destinations" posts, I drove directly from the Pennsylvania Crappie Camp to Maine to spend a few delightful days with Doug Teel of Northridge Outfitters. I also got to visit the home of Old Town Canoe and even picked up a new boat while I was in Maine, but that's another story for my next post.

Doug operates a modern lodge in rural Penobscot County and outfits adventurers year-round. He guides hunters for everything from rabbits to bears to moose, but from mid-May through the end of summer, he turns his attention to fish. Smallmouth bass are the main attraction, but Doug also fishes good waters for pike and largemouths and occasionally, he'll hit beautiful backwoods ponds and flowages for native brook trout or lead other types of fishing excursions. This was my fourth time fishing with Doug, so I admittedly arrived with high expectations.

I wasn't disappointed!

Doug and I squeezed in big variety for only 3 1/2 days, spending one full day running ATV trails and backroads for colorful brookies and splitting the rest of the time fishing two vey different sorts of lakes and the Penobscot River. The river, which is where Doug spends the most time during the summer, was the one "must do" part of the trip, and as a spoiler alert, you'll learn more about it if you continue to follow my list of favorite fishing destinations. Smallmouth fishing is crazily good and highly predictable, with lots of topwater action.

One lake we fished was new to me and about two hours away. Doug promised it would be worth it and was right. Of course, I never doubted that as I've learned to trust his judgement. We spent the whole day catching and releasing chunky smallmouth bass from ultra-clear water and only saw one other boat on the lake while we were there.

I guess my favorite outing was a short, early-morning river stop on the final day. I had plans to be at Old Town at 9:00, so we hit the river from about 5:30 till 8:00 and caught oodles of smallmouths in that short time, mostly on topwater, without ever running anywhere. Doug dropped the trolling motor as soon as we launched, and we just started fishing. If we even got out of sight of the boat ramp, it wasn't by much!

Of course, we ate well. You're supposed to do that in Maine. And if anyone ever asks, I can say without hesitation, that if you have haddock chowder to dinner, lunch the next day is not too soon for all-you-can east fried haddock, and the leftover chowder makes an excellent dinner that evening!

Whole Lot of Packing Going On

Asher and I are in full packing mode because tomorrow we leave on this summer's biggest adventure. We're pointing the car north this year, instead of west, and headed for New England. I suppose the primary targets would have to be the beautiful brook trout that live in the ponds of northern New England, but we'll be hitting a variety of waters in New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine for brook, rainbow and brown trout, along with smallmouth bass, pike and whatever else wants to cooperate, and we'll even spend a day or two saltwater fishing on the Connecticut coast. If you followed last year's Rebel Trout Trek, this one won't be quite that grand. We were gone nearly a month and traveled all the way to Olympic National Park just outside of Seattle on that trip. I think we'll end up being on the road a little less than two weeks on this summer's trip.

At one point I thought we'd fly and get a rental car, but the more I thought about all the junk I wanted to tote and the scheduling freedom that comes with driving, the more I became convinced that the hours behind the wheel would be well invested. Now I just have to decide which wheel. My Ford Fiesta has been a mighty fine "trout car" and handled last year's cross-country trek, and it is the most likely choice. I need to check logging road conditions in one area of Maine, though, to make sure ground clearance won't present a problem. If that's too iffy we'll spread out more in the Expedition, and I'll just have to spend a little more time squeezing gas pump triggers.

I'll be sharing stories and photos from the trip on the Rebel Lures website and Facebook page beginning Aug. 1, which is around the time we'll likely be returning home. In the meantime, I'm sure I'll post a few travel updates here, on my Facebook fishing page and on Instagram and Twitter (@jeffsamsel on either).

Beautiful Backpack in Sight

I couldn't convey how delighted Asher and I were to see my backpack lying exactly where I had left it on the final morning of the Rebel Trout Trek.

Our plan that day included a couple of hours of fishing in the Snowy Range before we got on the road, with the primary destination being a small stream that was maybe 5 miles from where we had camped. However, we'd started the morning with a few casts into the lake that was closest to our campsite and then had driven to the nearest town, where I had a cell signal and could send my previous day's blog and photos. It wasn't until we got to the creek and began getting ready that I realized I'd left my backpack beside the other lake, which was right by the parking lot for a popular recreation area. By that time it had been at least an hour, and the morning was progressing, so the area would be getting busy. I feared the pack might be gone, but we got back in the car and hurried back to the other lake.

From a practical standpoint, of course I wanted my backpack back. It's a good fishing pack that I've had for many years, and it contained three boxes of lures and my multi-tool and had very nice Cabela's net attached to it. It also had my Wyoming fishing license in it, and there was no time to get a replacement copy. So if the pack had been gone, I'd have been done fishing.

Far beyond the practical reasons, though, I was delighted to find my pack right where I had forgotten it simply because I was glad that people had left someone else's stuff alone. Almost certainly a few people saw it and suspected it had been left but chose to not take it, and I'm thankful for that.

By then, our time window had narrowed, and we weren't able to fish the little creek. Instead, we just fished a while in the little lake that was right there. That wasn't all bad, though. Asher caught two brook trout to cap off our fishing before we got on the road. And before we drove away, I made sure the backpack was in the car, not on the bank of the lake!

Catch & Keep Requirement

I've been researching fishing regulations in various places, both in preparation for the summer's Rebel Trout Trek and as part of a writing project, and one type of regulation I've found in a few places seems so odd to me. In some waters where introduced game species compete with native species or where some specific species make-up is desired by game managers, it is illegal to release the less desired species. I'd seen this with species like the northern snakehead, but it wasn't until I started looking more closely at the rules in various places that I realized there were places where you had to kill species like smallmouth bass, northern pike and walleyes (Utah's Green River), brown trout (parts of Shenandoah National Park), and brook trout and rainbow trout (part of Yellowstone National Park).

I understand the regulations' intent, and in truth using normal angling activity as a tool is probably a really good way to remove an introduced species and allow the native fish to thrive. It just seems so weird to think that if Asher and I fish the Lamar River in Yellowstone this summer, we'll have to keep any rainbow or brook trout we catch. I have to admit that I'd be cheering for all cutthroats. I'm not a huge fan of trout as food, and cooking fish wouldn't be super practical, but I sure wouldn't let anything go to waste.

#RebelTroutTrek

Ghost Minnow Return

I have to tell you that I'm pretty excited about the return of the Rebel Tracdown Ghost Minnow. There may not be another single lure that I've caught more trout on than a Ghost Minnow in its original form, and it has been out of production for several years. The returned version is slightly modified and has enhanced new colors.

Most notably, though, it comes with barbless hooks, like some of the other lures Rebel has come out with lately. That means I can use it in barbless hook/artificial lure streams, which is important because my 10-year-old and I are making a huge western swing, the #RebelTroutTrek, this summer, and many of the best streams in much of the West allow only barbless hooks.

I admittedly got caught up in the Taneycomo jig craze today and was enjoying learning the proper technique, so I waited too long to tie on my new Ghost Minnow. I did get to see it in the water, though, and it looks great, and you can bet it's in tomorrow's starting line-up. The Ghost Minnow is a slow sinker with a tight wiggle that darts erratically when you twitch it, and it's an absolute gem for catching trout!

Chattooga Trout Slam

My first trout outing of the new year yielded my first trout slam of the year, with one or more brook, brown and rainbow trout all having cooperated. All came on a Kenneth Bug, which is what I call any hair jig tied primarily with fur from our dog Kenneth.

Nathaniel, Brian Latimer and I fished the Chattooga River, which forms the border between Georgia and South Carolina. The rainbow and brook trout were Georgia fish, which means that the first four fish added this year's species list (bluegill, largemouth bass, rainbow trout, brook trout) all came from Georgia. I have the brown trout listed as South Carolina, as of now, but the jury remains out about how it should be counted. I was standing in South Carolina, close to the bank, but I cast across the river into Georgia and the fish hit right away.

It was a fun and productive outing, and I'm glad we were able to slip out. Next fishing for me will be next week on the ice in Pennsylvania. I drive north on Monday and expect to be on the ice first thing Tuesday morning. Seems likely that my species list will grow a bit more next week.

Celebrating 10 Years with 10 Trout

Asher's first fish of the morning, this brook trout, took an Ugly
Bug I had tied with fur from a stuffed dog named "Shad Fly."

The final trout I caught yesterday afternoon was nothing special, except that it was number 10 for the day. Asher and I been on nine for a while and really hoped for one more. We were celebrating Asher's 10th birthday, so finishing with 10 fish just seemed right. We were getting hungry and little chilly, though, and it was getting kind of late. I'd called last cast and truly was not planning to make another, and I probably had 10 feet left in the retrieve when the fish hit.

Trout No. 10 for the day came on the
called final cast of the afternoon.

I had wanted to take Asher to a trout stream, instead of doing the regular local pond outing, for his birthday, but on the actual day I was battling a prohibitive bug and he was on his way downhill quickly. Yesterday, one week later, we both felt a lot better, so we made our birthday trout outing and had a big time climbing rocks, wading in the river, enjoying spectacular fall colors and even catching some brook trout and rainbow trout.

If you happened to read my post about "Shad Fly," the stuffed dog I recently bought from Goodwill for $1, a jig tied from her fur produced Asher's first trout of the day, which is the one pictured above. My best success came on an Ugly Bug that combined Kenneth fur and peacock hurl.

We capped the day with a dinner stop at a Chinese buffet in Murphy.

Pleasant Change of Plans

The plan this morning was to fish a section of delayed harvest trout waters on Big Snowbird Creek that I'd never before seen. I knew trout would be very well stocked this early in the release-only season, and I'd heard a paralleling gravel road provided plenty of places to get in and out of the creek.

A rainy morning I assumed would be a good thing because it would lessen crowds in waters I expected to be very popular on a Saturday. As it turned out the rain made mush out of a freshly graded road that was actually dirt, not gravel, and with my gocart (Ford Fiesta) I dared not try to make it to the delayed harvest section.

We were to the stream, though, and wanted to fish, so I pulled over when I could and we stepped into hatchery supported waters that probably hadn't been stocked for more than a month.

It started slow, and we wondered at first if we were among fish at all, and when Nathaniel caught a brook trout after 15 or 20 minutes we felt like we'd found success. When he caught another on the next cast, hope grew that we'd find more.

As it turned out we caught quite a few more. By our best tally we caught 19 trout, including two really nice rainbows that Nathaniel caught. Maybe the best part, though, was that the many trucks that came up the dirt road all went right past us to the delayed harvest section, so we fished through about 3/4 mile of stream and never crossed paths with another angler.

I don't know what we would have caught had we gotten to where I'd meant to, but I can't imagine it would have been a better day.

Changing Gears (and Gear)

Today I'm trading 12-inch worms for 1/32-ounce hair jigs, 50-pound braid for 4-pound Nanofil, and a Revo Beast and heavy baitcaster for an ultralight spinning outfit. Last week's fishing was from a boat for jumbo largemouths in Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains. This weekend, my boys and I are head for the Great Smoky Mountains, where we'll wade clear mountain streams and cast for trout and smallmouth bass.

I enjoy fishing for everything that swims, and variety in the gear, the techniques, the terrain and the fish themselves is part of what keeps every trip interesting. In Mexico's fertile lakes, my lure disappeared a foot or so down in the water column. In the Smokies, I'll be able to count rocks on the bottom of a 10-foot deep pool.

I actually haven't figured out our specific plan yet. We may do a little smallmouth fishing in the North Carolina mountains before we get to the national park. Within the park, we may fish bigger streams for browns and rainbows or visit some headwaters branch with wild brook trout in mind. If we do go for brookies, any fish we catch is apt to be smaller than most of the lures I used in Mexico!

We're staying two nights in Townsend, Tennessee, where Nathaniel will play music on the Pickin' Porch at Wood'n'Strings Dulcimer Shop on Saturday evening, and we'll fish our way there, spend some time in creeks on Saturday, and then fish our way home on Sunday.

No Georgia on my Species List

Saturday's catch on the Nantahala River included a couple of brook trout -- my first brookie of this year.

When I added brook trout to the written list that I keep I couldn't help but notice that I've added fish from five different states, but not my home state of Georgia. Don't get me wrong. I've caught fish in Georgia this year. As recently as Friday, in fact. I only record the first fish of any give species, and none of the first fish have come from Georgia waters.

The brook trout, which came from North Carolina, was species 15. I've also caught "first fish" from Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New York. I also noticed that so far I've added at least one new fish each month of the year. Given fishing travel plans to South Dakota, Wisconsin and Mexico in June, it seems likely that streak will continue.

The Black Hills region, where I'm headed next, offers a big variety of species, so I won't try to guess what kind of fish I'll get to add next. Of course, I might end up slipping out and fishing somewhere close to home between now and next Monday, when I fly to South Dakota. So maybe Georgia will be next!

Surveying Speckle Waters

Walking beside a North Georgia creek, fairly high in the mountains and on Forest Service land, I was reminded yesterday of how much I enjoy crawling up little creeks and pitching or shooting micro jigs into pockets and pools for wild browns, rainbows and especially brook trout. Specks, as our native fish are most often called, usually aren't big at all. However, their colors are spectacular, as are the streams they inhabit, and there's something super fun about creeping up a remote high-country creek and trying to put the sneak on totally wild, native fish.

My wife and I were hiking to a waterfall and enjoying the creek and the Appalachian forest, but the creek we hiked beside is speckle country, I'm pretty sure, and it's not terribly far from home. I even spotted trout holding in classic feeding lanes from the trail, way about the stream. I couldn't tell the kind from our high vantage, but I'm guessing brook rout.

The creek is pretty full right now, which is good for that type of destination, and I'm guessing it's cooler than normal for June because our spring progressed so slowly this year. Nathaniel and I might have to slip out there some day soon to try our hand at truly wild Georgia trout. If we do, I'll let you know how it turns out.

Brook Trout Added

My 2012 species list continues to grow at a seriously slow pace. The most recent trip to western North Carolina that Nathaniel and I took added a single kind of fish, a brook trout, to this year's list, bumping the total from three to four. I also caught rainbows and browns on the trip, but those were already on the list. I sort of think the balance of April will provide a decent lift to the species count. Looking at travel plans and likely local fishing plans, I could see black and/or white crappie, bluegills, smallmouth bass and rock bass at least getting listed before the month is through. That's guessing, though, and for now the species list remains at four.

Strangely Striking Stocker

The location where Nathaniel caught this brook trout leaves no question in my mind that it was a hatchery-produced fish, but it's colors were spectacular and totally unlike those on any other we caught that day. It wasn't a giant fish fish -- maybe inches. However it's brilliant orange belly, thick profile and very slight hook on the jaw easily made it our favorite of the dozen trout we landed during a short afternoon outing on Tuesday. It's kind of funny to me how little things like brighter colors can make one fish seem like so much more of a trophy than another -- even a fish of the same size caught from the same waters and with the same approach. It definitely does, though. At least in my mind. I guess its sort of like a banded duck or a gobbler that has extra long spurs.