Dumb, Stocked Trout

More glorious afternoons could not be dreamt.

There was a time a few years back that I was in the back woods of Pennsylvania fishing a remote stretch of a popular water. As I drove down the one lane dirt track one morning I saw a rather large truck coming towards me. Naturally, I yielded.
 
What followed the truck was quite the spectacle. Easily two dozen cars on a track that probably saw that many cars in a day. Apparently, the State of Pennsylvania announces the when and where of the stocking event and meat anglers follow taking as fast as the putting occurs. When we returned a few hours later, passing by the stream that was stocked, no anglers lingered. I don't think any trout lingered either.
 
Last Tuesday the Housatonic was stocked.
 
Now I'm not a truck chaser but when 9,000 fish get dropped into ten miles of water it attracts my attention. To be sporting I gave them a couple of days to get really, really hungry acclimated to their environment and decided to hit the stream on Sunday afternoon.
 
English texted me while I was at church and with a brief après worship consultation we agreed to meet up at our usual spot mid-afternoon.
 
The water levels were perfect and the weather spot on for fall fishing in New England. Jonny swung the wet as those from his country are wont to do and managed six to the hand before I had my first. After that we were into fish with regularity, most on the surface, though the occasional trout would chase the sunken fly.

Jonny making it look easy

Jonny managed the gem of the day -- a holdover with buttery flanks and a tail like an oar blade -- though he also managed a fall fish which those in the former colonies generally deride as not worthy of the angle.
 
All my fish were eager and cookie cutter from the hatchery. Late in the day, as Jonny decamped, I did hook a fish on a sunken fly. The befouled bit of deer hair refused to float and I caught a hint of a suggestion of a flash near where it aught to have been and with a lackadaisical stroke managed to hook and loose a fine fish.
 
But then there were more eager fish to salve the mental wound.
 
I suppose a better title for this article would have been "Desperate, Stocked Trout". Regardless, it was good fun for a few hours on a splendid fall afternoon with a good buddy.
 

Pink seems to be the elastomer color of the year. Very stylish.