Today was a classic early season Maine fly fishing day. Cold, gray, drizzly and the brookie streams are in full force. Everyone from Maine knows that early season fishing means bouncing around to different streams/rivers/ponds and finding the fish. That’s exactly what I did today and I found the fish. I checked several of my standard spots and nothing was doing, so I tried some of the brooks and ponds that I never fish. I lucked out. I found a great stream that runs into a little pond. There were fish in the stream, but more in the pond. I tried fishing from shore, but it was tuff going and all of the fish were feading in the middle. I ran home, strapped the kyak on my car and I was in the middle of the pond in no time. Keep in mind, it is a very small pond and I found out why the fish were feading in the middle. It was shallow in the middle and very small bugs were coming off the water. I saw some huge fish rising and rolling. So, I tied on an olive wooly bugger and laid out a long cast to a rising fish. As soon as I started to twitch that little bugger, BANG! A big Rainbow hits my fly. The water was crystal clear and it was fun to play this fish and watch him come to the side of the kyak. I snapped a photo of him and let him go. The hatch died off and so did the rising fish. I fished the little outlet where the stream meets the pond, but nothing more transpired. So, I strapped the kyak back on my car and scouted out some no name streams. The streams were in great shape and I drifted nymphs through several holes. I ran into one of my fishing buddies, Dave P, and we fished the stream for the remainder of the day. We each caught brookies, lost alot of flies and just enjoyed some easy fishing on a small brookie stream. It was so much fun and very relaxing! The brookies loved wooly buggers, but they had to be on the bottom. So we threw on a couple split shots and got our flies to the bottom. It felt just like fishing for steelhead. In fact the method was identical. Cast upstream, feel the weight tick along the bottom and “fish on.” The only difference is that the brookies were 10-12 inches as opposed to 10-12 pound steelhead. That is what I love so much about flyfishing. Somewhow, we are able to adjust our perceptions to meet our fishing environment. A 12 inch brookie becomes a monster when fishing in little brookie streams. Everything is relative. So, I get equal amounts of satisfaction catching brookies in small streams as I do catching big Striped Bass on the salt water sandbars. Each form of fly fishing has a certain magical appeal that is unique unto itself. So many fish, so much water, so little time. I don’t think it would ever be possible for me to get bored with fly fishing.