The Timeless Art of Seduction

[Mark Griffin]

I was in the Poconos yesterday and spent some time crawlin' around on my belly shooting some video of pre-spawn trout. They're not building redds yet, they're just sorting out who'll be dating who.

The first one is a large brown defending it's date by chasing away a small fish.
WMV File - 1.35 mb - 5 sec.

This one is a close-up of the same two fish.
WMV File - 1.25 mb - 4 sec.

This one is a brook trout nuzzled up to a brown trout. I used my binocs to confirm that they were a brown and a brook.
WMV File - 1.29 mb - 4 sec.

I'm still learning this video stuff. The original footage is crystal clear. The quality dropped off a little during the capture and transfer process. I'll have to work on that. Next week I hope to get some shots of redd building.

 

[BigBrownE]

awesome video

Mark

Can you email me your contact information. I have a feeling I know where you were but I have some questions.

I dont want exact locations but your information will be useful for a point I am trying to make on a local water way with our beloved Fish Commission

info@flyfishpa.net

Thanks
Dean

 

[dcabarle]

Mark,

Absolutely beautiful! As usual, your stories and photo's are great. Please spoil us with more video!

Dennis

 

[Fly Ty R]

Cool vids. Nice fish!

When you transfer video to MPEG, the quality reduces dramatically. It's like going from TIFF to JPEG in pictures. It's a compression thing. The only way to preserve the quality is to capture the video in AVI or straight DVD format. But then your files get astronomical, so MPEG is still the best for putting on the web. You can also do them streaming in WMA (or WMF, I can't remember) format, but the quality REALLY goes downhill doing that.

What type of media are you shooting? Mini-DV, High 8, regular 8?

 

[Mark Griffin]

What type of media are you shooting? Mini-DV, High 8, regular 8?

My camera uses Mini DV tapes. I was using a lot of zoom which may affect the final quality as well.

 

[Mark Griffin]

I went back today to see what those fish are up to. As expected, they're now starting to build redds.

That brook and brown I saw last week are still together. The brown is the one building the redd.
WMV File - 940 kb - 3 sec.

This is pair of nice browns about 13-15" working on a redd.
WMV File - 956 kb - 3 sec.

The big brown I saw last week has moved down slightly into a riffled spot. It's hard to tell what he's up to. He's just constantly chasing other trout. It's incredible how much energy these trout are using, chasing each other around, defending their spots, and building redds. This must go on all day for a couple weeks. I get exausted just watching 'em.