Breakfast

[Driftless]

This is what I saw this morning. I have caught numerous pike here through the years and I was geared up for pike. I chase pike after the trout season closes. This small feeder stream is close to my hometown.

There is a mud delta here that goes out in to the main waterway a ways. The water is shallow near the stream flowing in to the Kickapoo River and slowly gets deeper in the main channel.

I cast upstream with my size 3/4 ounce nickel colored little cleo. I ran the drop off edge looking for a big predator. About halfway back I had a big fish swirl but not hit my cleo. I fired right back in there. My lure placement startled a frog on the bank and it jumped in with a big splash upstream.

The instant the frog started swimming the predator from the earlier swirl took off upstream directly at the frog. It cut a swell like a motor boat heading straight at the large frog. I thought to myself that pike was going to get a large frog for breakfast.

At the last second the fish diverted back out in to the main deeper channel. The frog floated/swam downstream towards me. I smiled and thought that the pike was not having breakfast this morning.

I retrieved my cast and was preparing for another when the water erupted not 12 feet in front of me. The predator had returned and it was a huge brown trout. The whole fish was out of the water. The tapered delta from deep to shallow had launched the male brown trout as it attacked and it landed in 4 inches of water.

The brown was in its full spawning colors of bronze and yellow and had the big frog in its mouth with only the legs hanging out one side of its mouth.

The huge brown readjusted the frog in its mouth with a violent head shake and the legs disappeared into the gaping hooked jaw and mouth The massive brown vanished back in to the depths of the Kickapoo River with one swish of its tail.

I stood there in awe.

A trip to this small feeder stream is in order for March 2015 when trout opens again.