October Surprise

Today I caught a rainbow trout in my favorite municipal lake. That trout has got to be one of the luckiest fish in the lake as it is a survivor of the cold water urban strocking program the Iowa DNR has. The latest it could have been stocked was in March when the water was still cold then this summer I registered surface temperatures as high as 80 degrees and maybe even a bit warmer. Not good for trout survival but this lake is reputed to have some springs in it which may be cold enough to support trout. To carry this speculation a bit further this years cool & wet summer may have increased the flow in one of the springs enough to enable this fish to survive. I'll admit that's a boatload of assumptions but it looks reasonable to me.
But the thing is he survived and I caught (and released) him. We both hit the jackpot.