Credit River Alton Branch

I wanted to check out a stretch of the Credit that I hadn't tried before, but it seemed like getting there by 7am was not early enough. The targeted spot along with all of my other credit spots were already taken. I picked another saved spot, which didn't look as good but figured I'd try it. On the way, I passed the road side parking for the Forks of the credit trail and decided to hop off and take a look. The water still ran a bit high and I tried go upstream. It seemed to turn into flat low gradient waters, and I didn't catch anything here. I got to the not so great looking spot, and the 15ft wide shallow water was running clear. I carefully crept up to the edge of the bridge and peered over the edge, and immediately saw a nice sized fish holding near the side. A nice wide tail convinced me it was a chunky brookie. I pulled out my tenkara rod and dropped a fly in, and he showed interest immediately. I tried to set the hook, but only pulled the fly out fly out of his mouth. This happened 1 more time before he learned to be careful and stop eating my flies. At one point, the cloud cover broke and the sun shined on the fish, and revealed the fish was actually a bass, and there were a few of them hiding under the bridge. I spent quite a bit of time, trying to get them to eat. I hooked one which spat the hook, then finally got the one in the photo. If nothing else, I was not going home skunked. After spooking all of the bass, I decided to go back to one of my credit spots, and hit a side stream which I was pretty sure no one was at, hoping for a couple of brownies before I end the day early. I took a detour around another spot that was occupied and luckily the previous person had left so I decided to fish there instead. It started out rough. I tried all the runs that looked amazing, but didn't have a single nibble. All the plants had grown huge and I had to bushwack through thick growths taller than me. From this point on, I dialed things in and started pulling in little brownies one after another. After getting frustrated at snagging trees and losing many flies, I called it quits and headed over to Tottenham. For some reason, most of the tall weeds had died off, and replaced with floating green stuff, and the water was streaked green with algae. The giant bluegills didn't seem to mind though. I have still yet to pull a big largemouth out of this pond.

Checked out a new spot on the credit. Very beautiful and looks to be perfect trout territory, but only managed to pull 6 brookies and a lot more chubs. Most of the river is very shallow with only a few slightly deeper pockets sprinkled in.