What have we here? This is big brookie haven! Careful now, approach silently from the upstream shallows and make sure the sunset stays to my right.

As far as I could tell, here was the best hole in this stretch of the creek. Just two hours before, I had painstakingly fished this hole and worked my way through the babbling riffles and all the way downstream of the meandering Cook’s Run. In fact, this is where I entered the creek those hours ago. At the time, I hadn’t a clue that this would be the feature brookie hole having never fished this portion of the creek. With thirty minutes remaining before sunset, I hiked back to the start to get even with Mr. Squaretail and his guardian Mr. Dogwood. These two join forces to prevent the casual fly fisher from an easy cast into the hiding spot of the elusive brookie. The fourteen inch brookie rolled on my fly and on my very next cast, the overhanging dogwood kept my hand-tied as a souvenir. What I needed was to set the record straight.

As the sun played its third set, I noticed the brookies slurping the surface as sparse duns floated with their pale green mast unfurled and held straight together. Ephemerella Dorothea they’re called by entomologists and Latin speaking fly fisherman, but to me they’re little sailing boats, steering a course with the current in a journey where only a few make it thirty yards before the subsurface toothy devils make them disappear.

The mayfly journey is fraught with peril. Life in the silt bottom for a year, then off to the races as you grow from nymph to adult in your incomplete metamorphosis until the big day comes. With an exact prescription of time and temperature and sun and wind, nature’s most delicate winged creation attempts its maiden voyage as it sheds its pupal shuck on surface. Flight, sex and propagation is often a 24-hour stem to stern affair. If Mister Squaretail doesn’t get you on the way to the surface from your wintry incubator at stream’s bottom, he probably will as you wait to dry your wings and break the surface tension. The meadow birds perch nearby to grab you in-flight if the Spotted One doesn’t get you. Your cruel reward for cheating death is another end-of-life sacrifice for the Hungry One as you lay egg on water at the end of your adult day. To wit, you cheat death and fly with fleeting life to freefall to your demise on the water surface; eggs sprinkled upstream of the site your kind has chosen since the evolution of your species. Your God who swims consumes your dried body but has no interest in your eggs, just your life. He’ll deal with your progeny shortly.

I peer into the world’s smallest fly box with hope that I have a little dry look-alike to entice the cold water sharks. Only my #20 Adams sits waiting its turn. Tied years earlier for practice more than play, I’ve since learned to stick with the fly I can actually tie to my leader. The #20 Adams requires a 2-lb. tippet and the precision of brain surgery to thread. I realize that a 10-foot leader will grow to 12 feet with the new tippet material, but this is a good thing. I’m upstream of the run and hole with the setting sun nearly behind me. The long leader will keep me away from the keen eyes of the Speckled One. The three-weight, seven foot rod will show well with a sneaky roll cast  to Master Dogwood’s foil.

With Adams to tippet I hoist my right arm to the prelude of the silent roll cast. Line lifting from the riffles I bring down my arm in judgment to all things final in fly fishing. The Sentry to the Royal Highness strikes first. The boys will not be hungry tonight I think as I delicately handle the world’s most ferocious nine-incher. The Elder has taught him well. Run for the deep current, figure-eight while rolling and twisting then make a mad dash to the sunken brush. Will this be the entire repertoire of family tricks? Trout to net. Brookies flop all the time. I have figured fully fifty percent I lose between net and creel. 

With only ten minutes remaining before dark, I must hurry. Both fisherman and Brookie understand there will be no sport after sunset. Unlike his fat and lazy distant cousin the Brown, the Speckled Trout does not bite after dark. What he does no one knows. I suspect he retires to his cut-away grass covered bank. He has a roof over his head and all the security he needs. He dreams in Technicolor of his breakfast at sunrise – caddis larvae and little green things only the Wormy-Marked can identify.

I put down my best roll cast, pulled at the last second to create a little slack so the drift can be setup just above the pool. The splash tells me that it’s His Honor. He displays his white underside and shows his sunset hue as he wastes no time to engage the fight. Straight to the deep current and a quick figure eight. He holds for a second as if to contemplate the exact angle to the submerged brush and maybe to gage his competition’s skill. Then it comes – a mad rush to the brush. I know what’s on his mind, so I brace to keep him from it and anticipate the move. But he knows me too well. I am the impatient one he has bested earlier and he has a plan for me. Just as I pull rod to side and lower my angle, he abruptly turns directly towards me and kicks on the afterburner. The combination of my lower angle and the fish induced slack causes my Adams to take wing.

He flaps his square tail and leaves me with my mouth open and feeling just a touch luckier to have fought Old Squaretail a little bit longer this time. 

The sun sets and the wilderness of Iron County feels even more beautiful tonight.

That moment between deep sleep and awareness is a precious, fast thing. Waking in the Cabin of Iron County with the new found knowledge, lost once in the night, that a morning of Brook Trout hunting awaits is a glorious feeling. Enthusiasm remembered from youth redevelops, providing ample energy to rise from slumber into the cold of a predawn, spring morning. 

An unexplored stretch of the Paint River awaits the new three-weight. Just enough early morning light shines through the cabin’s hazy-glassed east window for a quick fly-tying resupply. This time I will tie a few caddis imitations to arm my three companions. The morning in Iron County rarely brings a Mayfly hatch, common to more southern areas, so the Caddisfly is the Brook Trout and fisherman’s mainstay until the warmest part of the day restarts the mayfly activity. The companions agree the Diving Green Caddis pattern should be just what the fly fishing doctor ordered. With a white sparkle yarn wing over a few wisps of partridge underwing adorning an olive rabbit dun body and two winds of a brown neck hackle, the Diving Green Caddis takes merely a few short minutes to tie. The aroma of fresh brewed coffee mixes with the audible heckle of my companions. Coffee and kibitzing combine to unsteady the hand. 

The Caddis is always a good bet anytime of the year and anytime of the day. Unlike his more primitive and much heralded stream-living buddy the Mayfly, the Caddis is considered to be a more advanced insect. He undergoes a complete metamorphosis from egg to larva to pupa to adult. We fisherman meet-up with him in his nymphal stage as he leaves his little stick house or his handmade sand palace. The Speckled One meets him earlier and often as he grows in his little worm house and then feasts on him as he ascends from the bottom to his winged mature state. The fisherman fools the Slippery Devil with winged imitations of the emerging adult. Little expertise is needed by us as we fish wet, semi-submerged or dry. The brookie figures it’s a caddis and he’ll eat it without much fanfare.

Blustery winds and 30 degree temperatures side with the Brook Trout this morning. I remind myself to be patient as I work down current . Extreme caution is required to provide ample room between fish and fisherman. Again, I take to the 10-foot leader and slowly pitch across stream, allowing the #16 Diving Green Caddis to start a float. I pull him down-under after a ten foot run to allow him to look “emerging” as he reaches his downstream end, rising rapidly from the bottom as the current accelerates the movement provided by the line drag. I “pan” for strikes from the 2-foot depths of the rocky bottomed Paint. This technique works to entice the laziest, foul weather brookie from his midstream hiding spot. Usually, the brook trout holds behind a rock or a stick peering upstream for his breakfast. When it’s cold and rainy, he is not inclined to move far for his food. My panning technique brings the fly to his face. It is my trickiest, last ditch effort to persuade the Speckled One to give me a try.

The persistent roll cast, retrieve and concentration keeps my thoughts off the biting cold and rain. As a doe crosses creek not more than 10 yards from me downstream, I’m reminded that I am not alone in this weather. She pauses to give me a quick glance, then curiously looks to her downstream side and continues across. For a moment, I ask myself if she is giving me a clue that these few rocks ahead are holding the day’s game? I too would be eager to point out a meaty alternative if I knew that it was not my time to be hunted.

I approach her suggestion with renewed enthusiasm and the stealthy concentration borne from it. From my three-weight blooms a fancy crossover roll cast to stream’s center, calculated to follow the drift to quarter upstream of the promising boulder. The 10-inch Sentry strikes hard. He takes his signature run to the deeper water with a figure-eight and a gallant leap. Not often does the Brookie jump, but when he does it’s in acrobatic style! He doesn’t jump out of desperation as his cousin the Brown. Nor is it an unconscious habit like his native cousin the Rainbow. With the clever Brook Trout, it is always a calculated, knot producing strategy which works much of the time. To the fly fisherman, it’s a moment to hold your breath and see what happens.

With a perpetual wiggle he comes to net. My intention to dine high this lunch wiggles away in a blurry flop out of the net and into the stream. I reformulate a new, spontaneous plan designed around the Senior member lurking in back of the boulder. Trout, like most animals, have a hierarchy. The younger set take to the upstream side of the rocks and logs, while the mature members of the family hold with less effort behind. If you get a strike ahead of the structure, make sure to go after Big Brother. He has had a chance to view the game a little, but in his senile ways he will quickly forget if you give him a little time.

I take rest at stream’s edge, with self doubt for my middle-aged endurance of the elements, just long enough to catch the brief, low-flight splendor of the Bald Eagle making his way along the stream – a kindred spirit who no doubt has witnessed my loss and shares regularly in the same frustration. But alas, back to the Senior Member and into the stream I wade with partially thawed feet.

One, two, three and four passes of the #16 Diving Green Caddis. The fifth, and my best, is a roll cast to stream center using a stacking technique to bring my fly as close to the bottom as possible. I start the pull and lift as Mr. Caddis rises on his mock emergence. I pull to break water with fly along side the eddy of the rock’s lei side. Too much for His High and Mighty!

With an attack uncharacteristic of the otherwise sluggish, cold weather brookie habits today, he snaps at my caddis. With the preplanned mindset to shake the life out of whatever is hanging on to his food, he circles the rock. Through the slack water behind the boulder and one circle around it, he cannot lose the invisible competitor. He changes direction in the blink of an eye and runs upstream to his challenger. My slack is taken up in a jerky response good enough to hang on to this one, but my frozen fingered reaction would have been surely too slow for a larger fish. Fat as a football, this 11-incher goes to creel to feed four of us this lunchtime. The battle, as old as cat gut and bird feathers, is the only cure for thawing the frozen fly fisherman.

Brookie action! My spirits are lifted and I’m eager to rendezvous with my companions to plan this evening’s strategy.