Things that hit stoneflies

Another day of exploring tiny, forested spring creeks. Well, 1/2 a day. We marched for 3 hours through an old series of beaver ponds, through spruce and pine forests, with a keen eye out for any sign of life, movement of a dark shadow. None was found. Bugger. It isn't until it's time to walk back to the car that you realize that you've walked across 3 quarters and 2 range roads, now only to have to pick a line and walk the lines proper to not trespass, meaning the hypotenuse just walked becomes simple math of total distance of height + length to get back.
After the stroll through the countryside, which included only seeing one car go by on quite out of the way roads, turning out to be friends of ours that live a long way from where we were. Yet, there they were driving, taking photos of random nature things, and there we were, sweaty, geared up in waders, carrying rods still in their tubes, nowhere near any kind of water walking a Twp road. Naturally, we were 300m from our car when a likely ride showed up.
After lunch to recover and rehydrate, we made our way back to a creek that we knew held a few fish, then moved on to a favored spring creek later in the day. The surprise of the day wasn't the number of fish on the dry nor how easily they were fooled, it was one pocket of water AJ fished blind, having me yell to her to set the hook for missing the take due to glare. The fight was hard, the fish heavier. The fish was a 24/5" bull, having just taken a stonefly riding the surface. A pleasant fish on a great day of working good browns.