September 30, The Last Day of Brook Trout Season

On our way to the beaver dam.

We take our Red and Sugar Maples for granted up here.  We shouldn't.  Tourists travel hundreds of miles to see them.

Looks like a portal to a Japanese Temple.  It isn't.

It's too bad that this only lasts several weeks.  It's not hard to get used to cool weather, gorgeous scenery and no biting insects.  The woods are very pleasant in autumn.

Ground pine.

Sometime when you're in no hurry and able to be unproductive without feeling guilty, get down and take a close look at a bed of moss and imagine that you are very small and the moss is a forest.  It is an amazing and beautiful world in miniature.

This summer I caught several frying panfulls of brook trout from this beaver dam, and was hoping for one more good meal.  Crisp-fried brook trout are one of the finest delicacies you can ever enjoy.  My father regarded anything other than brook trout and steelhead as trash fish.  I grew up on brook trout, for my father brought home a creel full of brookies at least once a week during the summer.  The concept of catch-and-release, had he ever considered it, would have been as absurd to him as eating soup with a fork.

Brook trout and beaver dams are synonymous.  A small creek can only support a few small fish, but when beavers dam it the trout population will explode.  These dams usually last only a few years.  Once their food supply diminishes, the beavers move on, the dam falls in disrepair,  the pond silts in, and the brook trout diminish or even worse, are replaced by chubs.  A big part of brook trout fishing is exploring creeks for new dams.   I think my father spent as much exploring as he did fishing.

Brook trout and beaver dams were the primary male conversation topics whenever the extended family would gather. The men would typically gather in the living room while the women remained in the kitchen,  and the discussion would begin with a  question like, "Did you find any new beaver dams last summer?"  My father's two brother-in-laws, John and Arvid, were also brook trout purists, so you never heard words like pike, walleye or  bass in these gatherings.  Anything with scales or spines rated about as low as carp or suckers.

For better or worse, I have inherited my father's prejudices toward other fish.  You will never find me in a bass tournament.

Unfortunately the fish were not biting and this little brookie was the only thing I caught.  I was not very surprised.  Brook trout bite best in the evening, and the biggest ones just as it is getting dark.  This day was too bright and sunny.

 

My father left me several boxes of wet flies, many tied by his brother Hugo.  I often think of them when I am fishing.  My father was a hard worker, but he always made time for fishing.

Time to try a new spot.

No luck from here either.  The dam was in disrepair, a sure sign that the beavers have left.

We walked downstream to another old beaver dam.  The beavers had not rebuilt this one either.  We headed downstream again.

Eureka!  When I saw this standing water among these trees I immediately knew what I would find, a newly-built beaver dam.

 Marja is standing on the beaver hut, a structure made of mud and sticks with an underwater entrance.  The beavers will live in it through the winter and go out to feed  on their cache of cut branches piled on the underwater near the hut.

The dam itself.

Stumps of small trees cut by the beavers.

The heavy brush made fly fishing impossible, but once the beavers harvest more of this it will open up.

The important thing is that the beavers are here now.  If they remain this dam will produce fish.   I have something to look forward to, which makes this last day of the season a marked success.

Red maples, also called soft maple, are some of the first trees to change color.

Tundra swans taking off from a wastewater treatment pond.  These ponds afford excellent resting places for migrating waterfowl.  Unfortunately these birds were just being shot at by a couple of young trigger happy boys wearing orange hunting vests.

Happily neither bird was hit.  I hollered at the boys and they took off running.  Hopefully they have given some thought about their actions.