HIGH, COLD & CLEAR
We had scouted the old river channel the day before. For the most part, the water was low and clear in this high-mountain reservoir. But here and there we found deeper and darker water, narrow in places and widening out to sunken pools.
Among the branches of drowned timber along the shore, torpedo shapes hovered—some with dark spots, some with light speckles on dark green backs. Rainbow trout. Cutthroats. Brook trout.
I bumped my one-man pontoon boat into a stump and stood up to cast. Off to my right, my teenaged nephew was already fighting the first trout of the afternoon on a spinning setup.
My line lay stretched out before me on the still water. Nine feet off the end of it, on a gossamer tippet, a foam ant tempted a brook trout. The fish sipped, there was a swirl and the line straightened out with a 14-inch brookie on the business end.
Although this was a
