Nature Pictures from Trout Streams, Page 172

A pretty small-stream brookie.

Two dear make tracks across a frozen trout stream in the deep snows of early February not far from Lake Superior. I had hoped to sample nymphs in the stream (which later turned out to be quite fertile) but it wasn't open.

A large spring's short outlet enters the river here and keeps it open during even the deepest cold spells.

This tiny spring creek is extremely fertile, and I sampled many interesting insects I didn't find anywhere else. The water was completely open even though other nearby spring creeks were frozen over and the snow was three feet deep.

Here's another of my very frigid early nymph sampling sites.

This school of young-of-the-year brook trout was basically trapped in a pool in a remarkable little brook trout stream stricken by drought. The adult trout population seems to have been wiped out by the drought and a previous flood, but the young trout are as thick as minnows.

The picture is taken from above water with a polarizing filter and a telephoto zoom lens. There is one other picture of them.