You can contact Dennis at: DSmith7136@msn.com

 

    

    I don’t fish much in the fall, but I think about it a lot. Once autumn rolls around, I tend to rack the rods and get the hunting gear out; conditioned, no doubt, by having spent my formative years in the Catskills where they still have a trout season that opens in April and closes in September. Comes autumn, I start thinking “deer.” Some habits really are hard to break.

     I do take a fly rod to deer camp, though, and this year the boys and I spent a couple of warm October afternoons ripping buggers through the weed beds on North Michigan Creek Reservoir and sneaking up on trout in some of the little feeder creeks that meander through our hunting grounds. I had a chance to take a couple of fat brook trout with the .30-30 one day, but passed on that opportunity. First off, I think it’s illegal. And then, of course, it’s stupid to fire a bullet at a flat surface like water. Even if one were persuaded to ignore the law and common sense, there’s little satisfaction in taking a trout with a 170 grain soft point. There isn’t much left of the trout either.

     A friend of mine once shot a brook trout with a .357 magnum - a Colt Python, as I recall. He was only a few yards downstream from me but hidden from sight by thick brush when that hand cannon roared.  BLAM! I damn near went into cardiac arrest at the blast. A few seconds later I heard him mutter, “Got im.”

     Whether he actually hit the trout is a matter of conjecture, but he sure enough did “get” it. The poor thing was hanging in tatters from a willow snag about three feet over the creek bank, blown there by the concussion.

     I told him I could think of simpler ways to gut a trout, and cajoled him into taking what was left of it back to camp for the skillet. I reminded him you should never shoot game you don’t intend to eat, and that includes brook trout. 

      Dennis Smith is an Outdoor Writer and Photographer. His articles and photos have appeared in numerous outdoor publications, catalogs and newspapers. Dennis can be reached at (970) 669-6074. Want to know more about Dennis?

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