Fishin' under Craig

I spent some time strollin up the East Inlet for an evening. A Stellar Jay greeted me at the trailhead with a NASTY scream. It was a scream that was able to make our blue jay sound as nice as a warbler !!!

I wondered in the direction of an unknown destination with my camera and a flyrod. I was very satisfied with the simple beauty of the mountainous environment. It was often that I was distracted by a rock or fungi, and a large window of mica was the highlight of my hike until I rounded a sharp hairpin on my rugged trail. the creature which I then encountered seemed not to have seen me, and at the blindest point of this switchback I had not seen it.
For the first split second of our exciting collision I saw a cat. Then it was a rabbit. The tiny orange canine looked as surprised, excited and confused as I was.


He stood, stunned, with me- facing me; the moment lasted long enough for me to recognize the little fox as such: stunned.

He bolted- split, the instant his harmless mind registered the situation. Its huge brown eyes and bushy little tail slowed to a mild trot when he felt that he'd achieved a worthy distance from me.
The fox looked back curiously a few times and continued down the trail at a leisurely walk. It had been my first real encounter with such a beast and I was still confused about it several moments after he'd disappeared from view. I spent a few minutes regretting the fact that my camera was fastened to my back instead of fulfilling it's purpose on my face. The extreme detail of his beautiful face is still burned into my eyes.

About 40 minutes into my one-way adventure I came upon a favorite familiar viewpoint. One atop a jagged granite berth from which you can absorb the inspiring scape of the large second meadow. The meadow is now the green of the grasses, with a bit of yellow and grey blotched where the water has been sparse or otherwise unsuitable for plant life.

A creek, my fishin' creek, weaves a nice, thick line through the open area before the bald mountain; its surface is smooth and dark where and when the fish do not break it.
It was only another ten or fifteen minutes before I made my first cast in a deep, slightly red pool next to the trail. A small blob of muskrat dub, a few fibres of pheasant tail, a bit of thin copper wire and a size 18 hook made for a nasty snack. My fly dangled a tad under a cubit from its tiny orange float. a half hour yielded 3 little trout, two of which were brookies.


I was certainly not disappointed with a fish every ten minutes, but as an angler, I am very vulnerable to temptation. When I noticed all of the surface activity upstream, I was forced to exchange my tasty mayfly imitation for a floating one. A large, pale Dunn fly completed my flexible weapon.


The first cast coaxed a small cutthroat into a double-flip. His limber body flopped through the air with my dunn on his sharp tongue. I set the hook as soon as my reflexes kicked to life- after he'd returned to the stream. With any good strike, my heart made an extra half-beat and I was fighting the little beast.

By the time I lost my dunn to the bushes across the creek, the mountain overhead had shaded me from the falling sun and I had successfully captured and released more than a dozen other fish. Taking clear photos became difficult in the lessening light and I considered callin' it a day.

None of the fish that I'd seen or caught exceeded a foot in length. They were small, averaging around 9 inches, bu they were beautiful and certainly fun to catch. Maybe eight out of every ten fish I caught was a colourful brook trout until I tied on a small red streamer. An occasional cutthroat or brown had nabbed at my lure until that little subaquatic treat entered the water. It was then, on every cast, that I found a brook trout.

I sugar-coated the afternoon with a spacey saunter back to the trailhead. Dusk was comin' quick and the trees and stones cast a soft radiance over the trail and surrounding terrain. A bright amenita caught my eye; not even the thick vegitation could hide it's red. The brilliant light dimmed until a more tired, quiet aura was had. I passed through the smaller meadow above the falls- spotted a cow moose and a pair of lady-deer. Mt craig's smooth dome rose over the entire valley, and even he was dulled by the disappeared sunlight.