The year 2014 will go down as one of the better years...other than the demise of brook trout on most waters. They try to blame it on global warming but its the brown trout...they just took over. I suppose that was to be expected when much of the driftless restoration simply favors brown trout. There is no special technique or structure to favor brook trout...other than an all out protection of them in brown trout favored water. And, higher limits for the browns. Its not like most fly anglers are keeping any, anyways. The problem as I see it, is the few that do keep trout are keeping the larger ones. Some protection on larger fish through a slot or one per day limit is needed...I was always in favor of slots for size limits. The future of our part of the driftless looks like increased bag limits and extended season...After the great blue winged olive hatch yesterday, I might be able to put up with two more weeks of fishing in October. Strictly catch and release, though...big fish in particular but all trout are susceptible this time of year. Remember, catch and release is a management tool, not a religion. It works both ways...
Like an earlier post...the good old days is now. With numbers of 5-7000 trout per mile on some of these spring creeks, stunting is to be expected. Its why I don't fish those waters...finding larger fish is simply a matter of finding less of them. And, after all these years I feel a pretty good handle of those places...all streams have them. Focusing on those waters has made the year one of the better ones...I also find less anglers. Although I did run into one yesterday who also fished downstream sections and said he had caught trout as long as his arm all summer and particularly the last couple of weeks. Throwing jerk baits...which I can believe were taking bigger fish. There is a lot of water and its only getting better. I only hope it doesn't turn into too much of a good thing which always seems to turn into more and smaller fish.
Anyways...I finished out the season fishing almost every day the last couple weeks. Even if it was only walking out back with Otis...the dry fly fishing was as good as I have ever seen it. Bigger fish, and more of them. Here are some of the more memorable trout from late summer through the last days of the season...
