Nature Pictures from Trout Streams, Page 7

Do you ever have so much fun trying to fool a fish that you're almost disappointed when you actually do? I got that feeling after who knows how many casts over this hungry little brown with a Trico imitation.

I love the look of this tiny wilderness stream in the Catskills. It hasn't cut any sort of stream channel down into the ground. Instead, it just bubbles down over the boulders on the surface of a hill.

Here's an underwater post-release picture of a 15" brown trout I caught in a clear Catskill river.

This was my first Atlantic Salmon ever, a 23" landlock from a Finger Lakes tributary. It rose up from the murky water, gulped my bright streamer near the surface, and sank down, almost like the rise form of a trout sipping a tiny bug. I set the hook and landed the fish after a fight that exceeded my high expectations.

This beautiful 20 inch brown put up one heck of a drag-screaming fight. This was one of almost a dozen big trout that hit my flies this evening... and the only one I successfully hooked and landed. That was partly my fault, though. I cannot complain about the action!

Here's another beautiful trout, a 17.5 inch stream resident rainbow. He took a grouse & brown soft hackle during a Hendrickson spinner fall over a riffle--probably as a drowned spinner, but maybe as one of the caddis pupae that I suspect were hatching earlier in the day. This fish was in amazing condition, and it leapt clear of the water at least three times.

Here's a 12" brown trout on the line with a size 14 Royal Wulff in his mouth in a small, very clear northeastern trout stream.