Close Encounters...

[Water_boy]

I went out trout fishing last night after dinner, beautiful warm summer evening but with limited daylight I made a bee line for one of my favorite trout holes. If you recognize the place from the video please don't shout it out but I'm always happy to give more specific information via PM's if anyone is interested. Anyway, as I approached the pool from down-stream I could see a decent fish rising near the tail end of the pool so I put a parachute adams on and crept up very slowly, finally in position I made a perfect presentation (which is rare...) but something small grabbed it which turned out to be small fall fish... crap. That was it for the tail of the pool so I worked my way up along the main part.

The water was murky from the recent rains but the volume was about average. By now I had gone back to my old faithful Black Bugger and I could see small fall fish dimpling the surface and I'm about 3' off the bank of the river trying to keep a low profile. There are a lot of overhanging trees here so I made a small false cast to get some line off my rod, the fly went further than I expected so I let it sink. I was sort of twitching the rod to get some more the line off the tip when out of nowhere, not even 5' of fly line off the rod tip the biggest Brown trout I've ever seen makes a swipe at my fly but missed it. I twitched it a little toward me and the Brown was lit up and followed but wouldn't commit. It was less than 5' off the bank in 1.5' of water, I even did one of those figure 8's you see musky fishermen do and he did a figure 8 trying to find the bugger before finally drifting back into the murky water. Wow, my heart is thumping so I quickly made another cast but nothing, next cast got picked off by a 3" pumpkin seed, crap so I carefully let it go.

So I'm just standing there trying to figure out what to do and I hear SKERPLAASSSH and out of the corner of my eye, about 12' from me I see the splash in the center of the pool like someone had just thrown a brick off a 3 story building. I'm like wtf, did that trout just blast that sunny? So I'm just standing there scratching my head trying to figure out what just happened a beaver surfaces and starts cruising down stream looking back at me, ok, got it, that must have been him. OK, I say to myself, pretty cool but this pool is spooked but then out of the corner of my eye I see movement under the overhanging tree and root system so I got out my phone to start filming what I expected to be the beaver but it turned out to be a whole family of Otters under there.

I always see Otter footprints on the banks and I've seen a few from a distance but never like this. There were at least 4 of them but maybe as many as 7. Sorry for the crappy video quality from my phone. Pretty cool, I just stood there for about 15 minutes while we checked each other out. Next time I'll come better prepared with my good camera but they probably won't be there... The whole scene felt like something out of National geographic. I didn't catch any trout but between that big fish and all the wildlife this has to be one of my more memorable trout fishing experiences. I'm guessing that brown trout was about 20" or more and thick as my arm, I know exactly where he lives so can't wait to get back to catch him before one the otters does.

[chrisdetweiler]

Cool video, but I'm not sure a family of otters living at your fishing hole bodes well for future fishing!

[Water_boy]

Yup, hard to believe anythign could survive long in there with all those critters. I'm anxious to get back there for another shot at it but all this rain is probably going to mess things up for a while.

[saltfly]

I love otters. I have fun with some that are on some of the ponds around here. I also see them on the back bays. The good thing for you, is. They won’t stay long. Their just isn’t enough food in most streams of that size for that many. And the stream will bounce back. In the ponds over here. They are feeding mostly on crayfish. I’ve watched them get them and eat them. They do feed on the fish. But so far are not hurting the fish populations. They are always on the move. Up and down the streams to the main river and in the ponds and out again.