The walk and the reward... Part One

A story from May 2014 of two friends, who walk into the wilderness and are rewarded with some gems and left with memories.

As the sun rises between the clouds, the sleepy fisherman crawl from their sleeping bags and throw a plan together for a day of fishing. It was a warm and muggy mid-May day, the opposite from last year, when this weekend the snow was falling from the sky.. Friends armed with fly rods got in their vehicles and drove to their planned location, each looking to find the biggest fish. I was with my friend "Hatcher", a skilled fly fisherman who had fished in Alberta, New York's Catskills and Newfoundland. We had been to this place before as a group, but it was quite early in the spring and the weather was not exactly perfect. This time we accessed this location from a road that was took us within 1 km from where we wanted to go, but we didn't take the easy way... We decided to walk the rocky and heavily wooded riparian zone of stream y... We caught a few small brook trout in the pocket water on dry flies on the way to the stillwaters. We knew of the set of falls on this stream, so we continued upstream and found what we were looking for... It was beautiful, as the cool mist from the falls washed over us, I thought to myself, this was wilderness.

April 2013 Falls on stream y, with Hatcher to the left.

 Just as we were about to start fishing, something rolled off to the left side of the falls of a steep bank of moss and tiny black spruce. It was a beaver, obviously confused to what just happened it swam around the pool many times trying to find a way back up.... We decided to start fishing, I was fishing a small streamer fly, and "Hatcher" was fishing a dry. We both hooked a few fish in the dark, foamy waters beneath the falls, and as I was retrieving a smaller  brook trout and the fish started swimming around very erratically. As I peered into the water and kept with my retrieve I saw a brook trout about 12 inches attacking my smaller trout. This was odd to me I've never experienced this before,  I got the smaller fish in and looked at Hatcher with a smile and released the small dark backed and red coloured gem.

 I yelled at Hatcher over the roar of the falls that I was tying on a larger streamer to try and land a bigger fish. He was fishing a foamy eddy where he had hooked a few fish and one with some size. I toss in a #2 Slumbuster and immediately had a fish take, it was an odd take, not aggressive like the earlier takes it was a grab and hold take. I missed the fish, I take another cast and hook a brookie about 12 inches, no doubt the one that was attacking my smaller fish earlier. These fish were dark, but a deep red colour on the belly an odd colouration for May as these fish were not spawning. I continued on to catch a few fish around 11 inches which was an average for this pool, all with deep red bellies and a few fish with jaw shaped bite marks under the body near the anal fin. A clear indicator that what I experienced earlier was not uncommon for those fish. It was still early in the day and we decided to make our way up to the stillwaters we came to fish, little did we know what was in store for us...... 

To Be Continued...