Pine River

First day of trout week was fun. Hit the Pine which had quite a number of people on a nornal monday lol. I went downstream and fished the amazing pocket waters, and strangely didn't find a single rainbow, unlike last year. The brookies seemed to congregate in a select few pockets and it was strangely difficult to catch them. I found my way back up to the dam and realized I could sit on the dam itself and wasted some time casting a bobber with an UL rod with 0 action. After seeing someone to my side catch something with a spinner, I decided to give it a whirl too. I attached a mepps aglia long #4 and bombed a cast out, and immediately hooked up. A few more fish were then caught the same way. I made my way to the inlet, where again many people lined the banks harvesting the staging fish. I struggled a while with fly fishing while others had easy success with spinners and minnows, but eventually I found some success.

Had a spontaneous adventure today, and wow, it was a good choice. Went to the pine river fishing area today, which I wanted to try during my vacation, but was too tired to do so. I heard this place was stocked with brookies, and Gmaps showed a meadow stream, which I've been looking for, feeding into the lake. I started the day with trying the outflow stream, which produced more rainbows than brookies. I was also eaten alive by biting flies... After wasting too much time trying to catch an elusive big brookie, I climbed back up to the lake. This is when I realized the fact that lake fishing is quite a bit different from river fishing, especially on the fly. It was still early in the morning, and everyone else was fishing with conventional gear, catching a fish here and there. I blindly casted out as far as I could, hoping the fish would come to my fly, which produced no results. Unfortunately with bushes behind me, I had multiple hangups which I had to waddle through mud to untangle. A guy across the dam started heckling me seeing my plight, as he caught a fish. After I ironed out my cast, and aimed toward where I saw some fish rising, I seemed to figure things out, if only by accident. I started pulling in fish after fish as the heckler watched, feeling a smug smile form across my face. Of course, my complete lack of experience lake fishing for trout came back and knocked me down a notch, as the fish seemed to move on from my honey spot. I stopped catching fish, as people all around me started catching them. I tried in vain for a couple more hours, switching things up, however it wasn't meant to be. I decided to move on to the stream feeding the lake. At the inlet stream, I found quite a number of people already fishing. Many were very inexperienced, using less than ideal gear such as giant reels on super heavy rods. I proceeded up the meadow stream and fished with my tenkara rod. There were a good number of baby trout, but the clearly well trodden paths explained the skittish fish. I doubled back to the actual inlet of the lake to check it out, where I saw people harvesting the stocked trout one after another, processing them on the spot. Right above the inlet, there was a small pool with numerous trout, rainbow and brookies, stacked up like salmon waiting to spawn. I casted into the pool with my tenkara, and pulled in a few. On one of my last casts, I hooked into a bigger one, and decided to end the day by taking him home. What I thought would be an average day, filled with more exploring than fishing, turned out to be filled with much more fun than I thought stocked fish could be. I think I'll bring my kayak here at some point.

Decided to go for another hike and this time I got lucky 🍀 I really liked this place lots of options. You can stay on the reservoir or follow the stream river which is awesome also I found it a lot more challenging fishing on the river then any lakes or pond but again my experience with river fishing it’s almost 0 none .. does anyone has the same issue ? Able to fish at a lake or pond and not able to be as good when it comes to river ?

Small but mighty 💪🏼, caught 7 of them today. One even gave me a little show jumping out the water 😂