Nature Pictures from Trout Streams, Page 7

Who knew purple was a fall color?

A black bear cub stares down at me from a large pine near one of my favorite trout streams.

A great blue heron does a flyover on a flock of young common mergansers. I wonder how many hundreds of young trout go into the creation of a great blue heron and fifteen mergansers... hmm, where's Dick Cheney when you need him?

Photo by Elena Vayndorf.

This nice brown trout was so well-camouflaged at the bottom of the stream that he required a zoom lens, polarizing filter, and digital contrast enhancement to photograph. My friend Ian and I watched from the bridge as this big trout fed on nymphs for several minutes, and then we took turns trying to catch it. The selective brown practically laughed us off the river.

When the lead 9" brown grabbed one of my three wet flies and started zooming around his buddy couldn't resist grabbing one of the others. This is an underwater picture of the two of them together on the line.

This porcupine seemed to be feeding on the filamentous green algae that had accumulated around the tip of a fallen cedar sweeper on a classic piece of northwoods trout water.