I Touched a Trout

Oh the photo stinks but ever try shooting into the surface of the water and under a rock?

But I went to the creek to sit for a while. I decided to let all those crappy things stay up at the house on my to do list.
I needed the sound of water and some fresh air.

One of the very first things I noticed when I got down by the creek was a water ripple that splashed around and stopped. I stood stock still. Trout fish are so shy and quick to hide. I saw what I thought was the body pattern of a trout, it had to be a very small one to get up into this shallow place.

Slowly I squatted down and stayed there for a while, just watching and waiting. I took a few shots with my tiny camera. The trout didn't move though I could see him/her. It was a fingerling. As long as my pointing finger. I set the camera on the rock above it and slowly reached in with my finger.

I touched a trout.
Hmm.
That was amazing.
So I backed up and moved the large rock that it was under.
Quicker than the eye could follow... the trout flitted and went downstream.

I decided to find another spot to just squat and peer down into the creek bottom. It took a while but I started to see movement below me in and about the rocks and tiny granules of sand.

I found a pouch snail. Note the tiny Caddisfly stone houses around it. I dipped the camera into the water for this shot. [I like that it is water proof!]

Below is one of the more curious finds in a while. I found the Scud Bugs, they were scuttling about and Caddisfly larvae were not far off.
But this creature was really bizarre looking.

....
and it was pretty darned ugly in a way.

I got out my handouts from the Master Naturalist course. The chart from the book Wonderful,Wacky, Water Critters helped me figure out the creature. Six legs, 3 tails....

The tails got me closer to it. I 'googled' 3 tail Mayfly larvae and found much better photos of it.

I studied this Mayfly larvae to see where in the stream it was staying and decided to come back and see how many more times I could see them until they morphed into something else.

I walked up stream and stopped in another place where the water was not rushing.

Another new creature!

Well, obviously not 'new'. But new in the sense that I'd never examined the creek's bottom before like this.

A beetle of some sort. A Riffle Beetle? A Whirligig Beetle?
Nope.

I kept up my search of images and settled on a Crawling Water Beetle. The images matched as did the description of where it liked to live.
They don't swim, they crawl.

It's name or bug family is Haliplidae. I like the Crawling Water Beetle better as it describes how it moves.

I finally decided to head home excited about my finds.

And

I
touched
a
Trout!

Amazing.