I had originally set out to catch a particular minnow which I have not yet identified. I had caught a minnow with bright red fins earlier in the year at this spot, and I wanted to revisit it to add it to my lifelist with a picture. Two trips later, I have failed to find this particular fish… but I have come across so much more!

I was lucky enough to happen upon a smorgasbord of salmonids (among a few other things). A size 20 parachute adams dry fly and a small bit of worm on a small hook were my tickets to the following fish.

The first evening I happened upon a few resident rainbows, a common shiner, and this made my night:

At first, I was confused by all the spotting. I showed the picture to Ken and he told me it was a Brook Trout! I had not expected to find a pure brook trout where I was fishing.

It had some sort of parasitic infection, and it had it bad. Regardless, looking past the black spots you can see just how gorgeous this fish was.  Red spots and blue halos.

On my next trip to the same spot I started off by sight-fishing this white sucker:

I returned to the pool I had caught that brookie to find resident rainbow after rainbow. I noticed some micros in the pool and tied on my size 24 hooks to get my first Blacknose Dace:

 

I worked my way upstream, catching rainbows along the way:

In a shallow and fast eddie, I hooked into something different!  I noted the deeply forked tail as indication of a salmon.

Additional identification assistance from Ken revealed the fish to be an Atlantic Salmon par.

I was stoked! I had never caught a salmon parr before! I caught another one out of the same lane but it shook out of my hands before I could get a sharp picture…

I’ve read that salmon parr prefer faster water than trout parr. Well, in another shallow area further upstream I caught another atlantic salmon parr.