You can contact Dennis at: DSmith7136@msn.com

   

    The boys and I have finished preparing our October deer camp menu, and this year in addition to the pots of spicy meat chili’s, pasta dishes, thick, hearty soups and venison steaks, we decided we’d try to add fish to the board, so we’re packing fly rods along with the rifles.

     We’ll be camping for a week in North Park in close proximity to any number of tiny mountain creeks chock full of fall spawning brookies and browns. We won’t take the full armada of dry flies, nymphs and emergers with us, but will rely instead on a handful of small streamers and a few soft hackled wets. The idea, of course, is to enjoy a couple skillets full of tasty brook trout; we’ll release the browns and any cutts we may encounter. No trout tastes like a brook trout fried fresh from a high country stream.

     The creeks up here have colorful names, but they wander through some of the most God-awful willow tangles you’ll ever see. Casting will be close to impossible, so we’ll probably have to be content feeding line downstream through the tunnels on Porcupine Creek, The North Fork of the Michigan, The Canadian and others, and hope for the best. Trout can be particularly aggressive this time of year, so fancy presentations won’t be necessary (we hope).

     With any luck, we’ll get our deer early in the game and then concentrate on the brookies. We hunt strictly for doe deer now, having decided long ago that we prefer steaks on the grill to horns on the wall. We also like brookies and home fries cooked in bacon fat over a nice bed of coals.

   

   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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