Today I didn’t get to the river until noon, so I did not beat the heat. It was around 100° and the air was so humid that it didn’t feel much drier than the water I was walking in. I hike up to the same hole that I visited for my previous blog entry. I take a seat at the same sandy beach. Instead of immediately starting to fish the hole, I start to observe the animal tracks on the sand. I see my footprints from the previous excursion and within my footprints are more beaver tracks. The other tracks were hard to date, I wasn’t sure if they had appeared since my last visit or if they were there and I didn’t notice. This makes me wonder if I had disrupted that beaver’s plans. I was hoping I would see him again.
On the bank were a few crayfish carcasses. This even furthered my excitement about the crayfish fly that I created. These were new and must have fallen victim to a raccoon, which I found tracks going from the forest edge to the river bank and back again. I forced myself to sit and observe the animal tracks for a while longer before the excitement overtook me, so I pick up my rod and cast the fly into the same location I had last time. The fly didn’t even hit the bottom before my line went tight on a very large small mouth bass. A very long fight followed before I finally landed the fish. It was the biggest smallie I’ve ever seen in this river. I have always been fascinated by the camouflage of small mouth bass, against almost every river bed they are nearly invisible. The only time you can spot them is when they make their regular prowls looking for an unsuspecting meal. Smallies are clearly the dominant predator species here and they thrive in this area. Brown trout are in a close second place, the trout in this river are wild but where did they come from? Turns out, trout have never been stocked in the western run. It turns out that they were originally they were stocked in the larger gunpowder river, but they eventually made their way up into the western run.
While taking these photos, I could not stop thinking about how well small mouth bass blend into the stream bed. After I released the fish in the first photo, I stood up and from my standing point of view I the fish completely disappeared into the rocks below. This is one aspect of photography that I would not be able to capture in a sketch.