Of bow waves and brownies

I was thinking about the events that unfolded before I snagged the first brownie yesterday. The water was uniformly shin deep at the tail of the run I was approaching, and I definitely had my mind on the eye of the pool where a rainbow would lurk. I waded the true right of the stream, and in the water as at this point the bank was steep, which combined with heavy cloud made spotting almost futile. The bow wave that shot away from the bank told me I'd disturbed a good fish and I knew it was a brown simply from where it had been sitting. The fish appeared mid stream and held in a small channel, I covered it with the dry/nymph combo and she smashed the klinkhammer as it drifted over. It fought hard, so it was good to have the little XP bent to the butt. I got to thinking about that fish on the way home. I definitely disturbed her, or at least I think I did, although I was being quiet (yeah right tungsten carbide cleats on the boots on algae covered rocks...). Yet she still gave me a chance to hook and land her, and that's not the way a disturbed fish is 'supposed' to act now, is it? The stream gets pressure too... maybe the high water and need to feed switched the fish from shock to attack mode. The take was savage too, not a gentle sip but a splashy grab.

Second brown was a bit of a trap. I knew the pool and knew the fish (if the same as past 2 seasons). Spotting from the high bank was useless. The pool is the second longest in the stream, and one of the deepest. I tied on a heavy nymph, rigged an indicator and prepared for the 15 m cast required to hit the foam line and cover the pool. The strong upstream breeze was actually a hindrance as it turned my line at the last second, dropping the fly to the right of the foam line, twice. The third time I corrected and the nymph swam in the zone. The indicator twitched rather than dived and as I hit the fish and felt the weight I knew it was the brownie.

So one fish surprised me and one I set a trap for. Some say that brownies are shy and cunning. I say that they are hungry and need to eat. Why else would a creature who had been wakened by a potential predator eat the next morsel it saw? So, next time I'm stalking a stream and see a bow wave, rather than curse my clumsiness, I'll wait, watch and see if there's a chance to chuck the fly. Maybe I've missed more fish than i'd care to think about through thinking that once they're disturbed, they are off limits. We'll see.