Hardy natives

This afternoon I took a drive to the local farm stand for some corn and tomatoes.  As luck would have it, my trip took me past one of the two streams in town that are designated by NH Fish and Game as wild trout streams. Since the season on my little gem of a stream closes after this weekend, I thought I would see how the wild ones fared this summer, considering the heat and lack of rain.  We have had no appreciable rain in weeks, so the  flow is incredibly low, and there is almost no current. The water is crystal clear and if I had the patience, I could have counted the dozens of brook trout holding in the pool.  I had a small Alder fly dry on my 6'6" 2 wt rod, since I had one of my grand-kids using it yesterday fishing for sunfish. I tossed the fly into the center of the pool, gave it a couple twitches, waited a couple seconds and WHAM! Little wild brook trout came to hand.  Although there were plenty of fish and I had seen a couple of them take insects off the surface (ants?) I was concerned that I would be stressing the fish.  I stuck my stream thermometer into the inlet of the pool and it showed 58F.  No wonder this stream qualifies as a designated wild trout stream.  I caught a couple more, just to see these little gems up close and then cut off the fly and went home. I'll be swinging by there every now and then to make sure nobody is poaching them, and let them spawn in peace and quiet this fall.