This blog is a continuation of this blog.
DAY 4: Upper South Branch Pond to Russell Pond
This fat native brookie fell for my “psychedelic” spoon
The cold front, which announced itself yesterday evening, definitely arrived overnight. The wind is blowing hard from the northwest and the sky is completely overcast with a low cloud deck shrouding the nearby Traveler Mountains. But that doesn’t stop me from crawling out of my tent at the crack of dawn for a morning troll on Upper South Branch Pond using lead core line. I’d like to repeat the experience from last evening by catching another brookie. I do hesitate for a moment about fishing alone when I get to the lake shore: paddling the canoe by myself into the stiff wind will be quite a chore. But what the heck: how often do I get to fish this gorgeous pond? I’m richly rewarded in three ways for my tenacity. I land a healthy 13” native brook trout after about 30 minutes trolling with two spoons fished in tandem one color down (just like yesterday evening). I also experience a unique sound effect: the resident loon calls out twice in a row as I pass it by; its haunting song echoes off the surrounding rock cliffs! I stop paddling to soak in this precious moment… Finally, I see a dark shape ambling in the shallow water along the southern (downwind) shoreline of the lake as I troll back towards my starting point. It’s a young bull moose grazing on the aquatic vegetation! Wow, that’s really awesome except that the wind is pushing me straight in the direction of the animal. The canoe acts like a sail whenever I try to turn it sideways… Then one of my lures decides to hang up on the bottom. F*ck!! I paddle backwards like a madman to retrieve my lures and then turn the canoe sideways and paddle like a maniac to stay away from the moose but parallel to the shoreline. Fortunately, the beast gives me a long dumb look, completely ignores my grunts and paddling shenanigans, and slowly moves on. It’s now 6:50 am and I don’t have the strength left in my arms to battle upwind for another round. I call it good, glad to have caught two nice brook trout in less than 1.5 hours of trolling between yesterday evening and this morning.
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