Driving down a country road in the Adirondacks, window down, seventy degrees, North Country Public Radio in the speakers, listening the the Dean’s List radio show playing some old school acoustic indie-rock style music… I felt like I had traveled back in time. I love moments like that. I had a similar experience last fall in Greybull, Wyoming, as I walked across the street of a one red-light town to eat breakfast with my Dad in a little diner.

I researched trout waters before arriving in the Adirondacks, and of course the Ausable is on the list of “hope to get to” streams. For this evening the destination was the East Fork of the Sacandaga River. The EF of the Sacandaga has its headwaters in the Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area and eventually flows into the Hudson River. You can not pronounce the name of a river like “Sacandaga” without getting curious about its meaning. It is Mohawk for “Land of Waving Grass.”

The headwaters I fished today were more like “Canyon of the Broken Ankles,” as I carefully picked my way from boulder to boulder fishing each cascade I came to on the lower reaches.

I managed to land a singe 10” Brook Trout on a Chartreuse Royal Wulff, which is quickly becoming my go-to Brook Trout fly when nothing else is working.

I tried a BWO dry, tried a dry-dropper, and even swung some wet flies. Finally, after watching a sulfur hatch with no risers to be found, I went from “It’s not the trout, it’s me” to “It’s not me, it’s the trout.” Even if it wasn’t true, it made me feel better. Either way, I landed my first Adirondack Brookie, perfectly completing an evening in the North Country.