Want Wild Trout, Will Travel

As promised, here's some photos from recent outings with my buddy Sam, in search of wild trout.  While some like to add narrative, often, I find that the photos speak for themselves.  So without further ado, here are the goods:

In this hole, Sam found a stocked brown that had wandered up from the creek that this blue line emptied into.  We were there primarily for wild trout, but who could resist the opportunity to take a larger fish on a light line?  Sam managed to turn the fish, but never did bring him to hand.  There's always next time, I suppose.

This is what we were after...check out that yellow spot at the corner of the mouth.  That's on the fish, not a trick of the camera.  Not sure what's going on there, as I didn't notice it until I uploaded the photos from my camera.  I took several shots of this fish, though, and the spot is consistent throughout.

Brook trout are way prettier than strictly necessary.

This was as far upstream as we went on this particular stream.  That hole is surprisingly deep, considering the typical nature of the streams in the area.  We'd have gone farther, but there were some posted signs about (even though according to sources, it should be public land...and anyone renting has no authority to prevent passage...still have to look into that one...)

A few days later, Sam and I met up again to further explore some water we'd only briefly visited in our last adventure.  I had to take care of some errands at home first, but Sam got a good early start, so I found myself hiking to the water to find some indication of whether he was up or downstream from the access.  Along the way, I found some interesting fauna...

I think this guy is a millipede as opposed to a centipede, but being unsure, I wasn't about to risk a painful sting by disturbing him.  I saw a few more like this later in the day too.  Pretty exotic-looking for southwestern Pennsylvania.

Far less exotic, this is still the biggest snail I've ever seen in the woods.

Cahills were hatching sporadically, which is perfect for a small stream, as the naturals are big enough to get the trout looking up for food, but not so heavy a hatch that they really key on anything specific.

Not sure what left this shuck, though I suspect it's a dragonfly, from the shape of the head.