Wild Brookie fishing with my four year old

Trout fishing outside of NJ
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martalus
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Wild Brookie fishing with my four year old

Post by martalus » Mon Mar 30, 2020 10:51 am

Thanks to the current pandemic, my wife and I have been working from home and school is closed for the foreseeable future. I have taken a few days off to take my four year old daughter brook trout fishing in the Catoctin mountains of Maryland (about an hour north of DC, near Camp David and near the PA border). There is a large swath of state parks and wildlife management areas with thickly forested hills from 1000-2000 high and several streams with wild brookies in the headwaters and wild browns lower down (very similar to NW NJ actually). In terms of wild brook trout fishing, it is not quite as an extensive series of watersheds as in Shenandoah national park, but is only a one hour drive instead of a two hour drive.

My four year old has shown a real interest in being out on the water with me and we have logged two 8 hour days of hiking and brook trout fishing. I take my 3 wt as well as my UL and we mix and match depending on the regs (some are fly only, some are artificial only, some have no tackle regs). Some times she fishes and sometimes she just plays in strategically placed areas that I pick so she doesn't spook fish. This past Thursday, we found a great stream with over a mile of public water with wild brook trout with no tackle regulations (the only reg is that you can keep only two fish over 9 inches, but we as most people were catch and releasing). Flows were great and water temps were probably in the high 40s-a bit chilly, but very fishable. I was fishing nymphs and she was slumming it with a trout magnet jig head with a small garden worm. In the beginning hits were fast and light and we lost lots of fish but as the day wore on we caught dozens of small wild brookies from 3-7 inches. My daughter caught the trophy of the day in a big deep pool-I didn't have a ruler, but I would say it was in the 10-11 inch category. All in all some great time outdoors with my daughter! She has more patience than most for sure!
Brook trout.jpeg
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BiggerThomas
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Re: Wild Brookie fishing with my four year old

Post by BiggerThomas » Mon Mar 30, 2020 7:10 pm

Nice catch, even nicer that you took her. Beautiful colors on that brookie.
"Most anglers spend their lives in making rules for trout, and trout spend theirs in breaking them."

-From Letters to Young Fly-Fishers, (1926) Sir George Aston,

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Twism86
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Re: Wild Brookie fishing with my four year old

Post by Twism86 » Thu Apr 16, 2020 8:53 am

Beautiful fish and so great that shes into fishing so young!! I hope she gets the life-long bug like the rest of us!
"Stupidity is scary but genius can be frightening.
Genius built the atom bomb. Genius topples nations."

martalus
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Re: Wild Brookie fishing with my four year old

Post by martalus » Mon May 04, 2020 6:19 pm

Twism86 wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 8:53 am
Beautiful fish and so great that shes into fishing so young!! I hope she gets the life-long bug like the rest of us!
She is definitely hooked-Even after 6-8 hours of fishing, she still wants to 'try one last spot'! Not bad in the way of an attention span for a four year old!

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