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| A Little Arnot Run Brook Trout |
As soon
as I realized that the first weekend in June was free from any prior
obligations, I immediately called up my two buddies from college. My hope was
that they’d have an interest in backpacking into a small freestone stream to
fish for native Brook Trout. As I suspected, both were more than happy to make
the drive to northwest PA from the Cleveland area.
We
arrived at the gated forest road #241 early Saturday morning. The plan was to
reach the confluence of Little Arnot Run and Arnot Run. We followed the forest
road for several miles carrying our fishing rods and camping gear. Eventually
the dirt road came to an end and we could see both the Little Arnot Run valley
and the larger Arnot Run valley. We headed down the hill, crossing several
lease roads, and found the confluence of the two runs.
After a quick snack, we were hitting Arnot Run with spinners
and flies. It wasn’t long until we noticed an abundance of Creek Chubs, but no
Brook Trout. Our fishing efforts shifted away from Arnot Run and we honed our
efforts on Little Arnot Run. We hiked up Little Arnot for several hundred yards
until we came to a nice log jam that had “Brook Trout Inn” written all over it.
I drifted a #14 caddis close to the log jam when a small reddish-orange missile
came darting out from the woody sanctuary. The small Brookie made a swipe at the
caddis but failed to get hooked. The Brook Trout darted back to the confines of
the log jam. We all smiled. We were in Brookie habitat now.
We hiked upstream and decided to make camp along a wooded
bend in the small rocky stream. After our gear was dumped, we continued to trek
upstream while fishing rocky holes and log jams.
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| We fished our way up Little Arnot Run |
The Brookies were voraciously
attacking both dry flies and my buddy’s small silver rooster-tail. All of the
trout that were brought to hand were small, but they had gorgeous orange and
red vibrant underbellies. Their red spots sparkled in the clear water as we
carefully held the caught trout in our palms, marveling at their natural color.
The heavy foliage overhead darkened the valley and made for
an early night. Once back at our camp, we made a campfire supper of couscous,
avocado, tuna, and canned sardines. Afterwards we broke out the cards.
For a
couple of hours we sat around the fire playing cards by fire-light and the
lights of our headlamps. The valley cooled as the stream ran on and on over the
rocky cascades. Our ears hummed with the crackling of the fire and the gurgling
of Little Arnot Run.
