A brief encounter …

With a few hours in hand on Saturday, Jan. 14, I voyaged forth, looking for fishable water.

Stream number one was raging, which is what I was afraid of.

Stream number two I skipped, because getting in and out would require more time than I had.

Stream number three was just right, with only a dusting of snow and no shelf ice to make the going tricky.

I strung up the trusty little fiberglass 4 weight, and in keeping with the Official 2023 Tangled Lines Mantra (“Carry Less”) I brought one small box of flies, heavy on the bushy dries and size 12 beadhead Wooly Buggers.

Nobody would come to the surface, and my fingers were too stiff to fool around with dry-dropper rigs.

Instead I tied on a piece of clothesline, aka 3X fluorocarbon tippet, and sent a black Wooly into the depths.

Long story short, tickled three, landed two, including an exceptionally fat one for this time of year.

Proper catch and release demands proper handling of fish. We get our hands wet before handling a fish. We smash down the barbs on our hooks and avoid “grip and grin” photos. And we keep the time the fish spends out of the water, gasping for air, to the absolute minimum.

This last bit is especially critical in cold weather. We do not want the eyes and gills  of the fish to freeze.

On this day it was about 34 degrees out, so that wasn’t likely.

But it is something to keep uppermost in the mind when indulging in winter trout adventures.