Winter brookies

I did a little snowshoeing with Mayu on my back close to home recently.  We came across a tiny little stream where I've seen some little brookies in the past.  After carefully looking around for a while we saw 4 small brookies in one little pool.  They were a little spooky and difficult to see so I wasn't able to get any decent pics of them.  I don't know how they are able to survive the winter or even the summer for that matter in such a tiny trickle of a stream but they do.  I wonder if a few little changes to the stream to create more pools or adding some structure would help them out.  They seem to be making it on their own and I wouldn't want to do anything that would adversely affect them.

Little natives

On the way home from some family stuff Saturday Yudi asked if we could stop by one of our favorite little ponds to try and catch a few little native brookies.  Between gusts of wind fish were rising all over the pond.  At this particular pond the fish seem to be rising almost all the time.  There wasn't any obvious hatch of insects so I tried a small parachute.  I got a couple of strikes but the fish didn't seem too interested in it.  There were a few midges around so I gave a tiny midge dry a try without much luck either.  I went to a softhackle with a little more success and finally what really worked was a natural hare's ear nymph slowly fished subsurface.  They aren't big but they sure are pretty.  Yudi and I worked on her casting for a bit.  Any casting on the pond doesn't necessarily put the fish down but moves them away from shore so she didn't have much luck hooking any fish on her own.  After a while I would make a long cast and let her retrieve the fly and she hooked up a few.