I spent some brief time with a local biologist who tried (God bless his soul) to explain the diet of these fish. This resulted mostly in confusion and nausea on my part, but I managed to extract “hellgrammite” and “some other surface bugs” from the conversation. Basically, these are small, beautifully colored fish that subsist primarily on insects with a propensity for looking up and thriving in cool flowing rivers. Which kinda sounds similar to another highly sought after fish that thrives in cool mountain streams. But these are, you know, in Alabama…
For years I have been jealous of another city located about 200 miles east of where I live and work. There is a large, cold flowing river that runs through it and rainbow and brown trout and shoal bass and striper thrive and are caught regularly. The citizens post pictures of rose-cheeked fish and fish with dark spots surrounded by rings of bright red. And I was always jealous of those anglers and what great opportunity they had. To stop by after a day at the office to see what beautiful creatures they could conjure out of the water by using small flies and small tippets and complicated drifts. But there are days when I sneak out of the office and drive down the interstate, past the Jet-Pep with the bathrooms connected to the car wash, and I stand in the cool waters and toss small patterns to skittish fish who view 4x like it’s rope. And sometimes I catch them and look at their bright blue sides and angry red eyes and I’m not really jealous of anyone.