Delaware River Trout at Hancock: Centerpin, Spinning, Baitcasting, Fly Rod

Mark's best brown. This one has nice red spots.

I really felt curious about the two Delaware River branches and main stem at Hancock for the fly fishing, but not only did I know little about that, I learned more about it yesterday than I had on my previous two Branch ventures. 

To begin with, I had gone online and scoped out what hatches to expect. From the readily available information, I bought a dozen tan Elk Hair Caddis dry flies, already having at least one Isonychia, a Light Cahill, and a Blue Winged Olive, though the BWO is size 24, not 22. It wouldn't be a bad idea to carry a few of each of them, and I'll probably splurge so I'm better prepared in the future. 

And yet, despite "being ready" for the river (I'll explain at the end) with the fly rod, I really began to feel the coming outing from the gut instead of the head. I just hoped the substance of my desires would prove out, and they did, because Mark caught fish, when a skunker under the general rubric of the outing as a whole would have really rankled. I bought three dozen nightcrawlers and intended to use them on my favorite St. Croix spinning rod, even if that would mean smallmouth bass, which I love to catch. Mark had armed himself the same, though he spoke of nothing but trout, and I felt impressed with the degree of focus he exercised out there.

In the pale predawn light--we had met in Flanders at 3:50 to drive up there--we passed over a bridge. It already felt like we had done something right by getting there so early after a two-and-a-half-hour ride, and events would indeed soon put the balance in our favor. From that bridge, the West Branch looked high and off-color to me. We found it had about two-and-a-half feet of clarity and generally appeared light brown. Not only that, but the choppy surface where we had elected to start fishing made me think slow-rolling--in this case rolling it a little fast--or putting a nightcrawler out there in any way conceivable for a big brown wasn't a bad idea. It would prove to be a pretty good idea for Mark, even though no two-footer got caught. There were no insects in the air. No trout rising, but from what I had read, one shouldn't expect a hatch until the afternoon. (As I'll tell, I should have been prepared.) 

As Mark had driven north in the dark, I had the unsettling experience of realizing I didn't remember putting my waders into the SUV. I had also realized I had no memory of even putting them in my car, though I was certain I had put them downstairs at home in position to put them in the car. When we got there, I just told Mark it was OK. I'd wet wade.

I wouldn't wet wade that early with temps in the mid-50's, though. I got ankle deep, but no more. Mark headed upstream where he got in position to explore the seam between faster main current and slower water nearer to the bank with his float. As the day would prove, he fished the sweet spot at the right time, using a centerpin outfit and live nightcrawlers under a 7 gram Raven float, catching two rainbows and a brown. Then he went downstream to an area I had already fished. There he caught another rainbow, and he told me it came from the main current. I had already drifted nightcrawlers through that current more than thoroughly. It's possible he had let his float drift further downstream.

A few other spots awaited us. I fly cast an olive Wooly Bugger into the East Branch, wet-wading in earnest now, where the water was clear and not moving so treacherously fast. We spoke to a couple of guys rigging up their fly rods, who told us extra water had been let out of Cannonsville Reservoir due to the drought, and that the West Branch flowed even higher and more off color the day before.

Wow, I thought. If things were different by a day, we might have been screwed. 

Neither Mark nor myself got a hit in the East Branch; the main stem would interest us more. 

Right in front of us the clear water--not quite as clear as the East Branch but clear--dropped off into depths of six feet or more, and the water moved slowly. I cast a Bomber Long A in a smaller size while wet-wading. I cast it shallow and deeper, and I didn't get a hit. I put nightcrawlers out there in that deeper water for what seemed a long time and didn't get hit, which astonished me. My guess is that the smallmouth bass population is very limited. Even walleye will take nightcrawlers, and I've seen pictures from Lordville. In that slow water, Mark's drifts by float amounted to yards rather than football fields. He had no use for the centerpin, using a long baitcasting rod and relatively light line. 

We watched a couple of drift boats operate by rowing back upstream and drifting down near to the opposite bank while keeping an indicator float in the water alongside and ahead of the boat. I suppose they suspended nymphs underneath. One of the lessons learned yesterday is that fly fishing can amount to drifting rather than casting on the river. We observed that there are definitely some trout out there. We saw two hooked. A nice rainbow got netted. Mark had said the other side looks better before the action ensued.  

We were just about ready to leave, when Mark said, "It's big!" I saw his rod bent double, but the fish turned out to be a sucker of about 20 inches. "I thought it was a big brown, but I wasn't sure, because of the way the fight felt." 

"Kind of like a walleye," I said.

"Yeah!"

One can only wish, but I wouldn't have minded catching a sucker.

We began fishing yet another West Branch spot where I cast the Bomber, catching nothing, though I noticed three guys and a guide in a driftboat coming to the ramp. They had jerkbaits tied on their spinning rods. 

"How many did you catch?" I asked

"Twenty-five or thirty," the guide said, "but we've been fishing since 5:45."

Another incident of learning; it left me perplexed as to why nothing hit mine. I should have tried another variety. I can just see my Rapala Sinking Minnow being more effective. I tried a nightcrawler, and at least when Mark came back from upstream--reporting his best brown of the day--I did, finally, have some action to report. At least I'm sure it was a fish that took line, and when I tightened up and set that hook, I felt nothing, reeling in nothing but the head of the crawler, the tail bitten off. If only I had let the fish take line longer. 

Hours had passed when we arrived back at the West Branch spot, planning on leaving it at 4:15. Mark got into position again, where, as events proved, he had left the sweeet spot suspended in time behind us. I noticed a trout rising persistently, and though I saw nothing but what looked like almost infinitesimal midges hatching for only a few minutes--a confusing situation--I believed sometimes a hatch just isn't evident. The trout splash rose, so I felt convinced it took something off the surface. A few other trout did, too. Mark upstream and difficultly accessible. I passed on getting the key fob so I could get my fly rod from the back of the SUV.

But clearly--in the afternoon, have a fly rod at the ready. Lesson learned.   

Brown from early in the morning.

Me wading the main stem Delaware.

One of three rainbows Mark caught.

Notice the centerpin reel, too.

Pretty Fish

Mark thought he had hooked a big brown.

West Branch Delaware at Hancock

Above Cannonsville

 

Scouted West Branch Delaware River Above Cannonsville Reservoir

 

West Branch Delaware River miles above Cannonsville Reservoir.

Every summer, my brother David camps near Roscoe, NY, with his wife, Carol. and his friend Steve Cane and his family. Last week he invited me up, and I got there Saturday at three p.m., after stopping in at The Beaverkill Angler for a couple of size 24 blue winged olives, a size 14 Isonychia, and a sulfur-shaded Cahill, size 16. David had our destinations planned, referring to a map that shows parking and access. Steve would stay behind.

I felt surprised at how narrow the river. Smaller than much of the Farmington in Connecticut. We drove for miles upstream before we found one of the spots. What I saw felt unpleasant, as the stretch accessed by descending a thickly vegetated bank on a narrow trail was muddy with carp visible near the surface. The water barely moved at all, low because of the drought. I assumed carp had muddied it. 

A little non-plussed, I turned back, got in Dave's truck with him ready at the wheel, and from there we rode to the next spot, photographed above. From the bridge, we spotted a smallmouth of about 16 inches--and more carp. At the least, the water wasn't muddy. David wanted me to get the temperature with his thermometer. He knew something was amiss, and he did not want to fish trout if the water was above 65. 

It was 23 Celsius. Way too warm. And why was that when Pepacton Reservoir, I thought, was not far upstream?

We drove on downstream to the next access point where the thermometer read 25 Celsius. The stretch was about a foot deep. Dave spotted a sip riser. I saw it when the fish came up again.

"It's a rainbow. About 11 inches long," he said.  

David had a little blue winged olive tied on, too, and either of us could have casted for the trout, but neither of us was really tempted to.

David had checked the latest fishing report from Hale Eddy, which claimed the water temp was 55 degrees F. That I couldn't wrap my head around, given that I believed the cold water release from the reservoir was upstream, but I wanted to find out what was up as much as David did.

On the way there, we passed by Cannonsville Reservoir, so I figured the East Branch Delaware flowed pretty close to the West Branch at this point. We got to Hale Eddy not very long after, and before I could even get the thermometer in the water, I felt the coolness of the water in the air. I let the thermometer sit a while, not convinced it worked, and then read 12.5 degrees C. About 55 degrees F. It works. And I clearly understood--at last--that of course it's the West Branch flowing from Cannonsville Reservoir. We had been scouting the river where it's not a tailwater, but there are trout up there, as signs nailed to trees indicate, though I'm not altogether sure the trout David saw was a rainbow. I found information from the State of New York only on the stocking of browns up there, the information also stating that a wild brown trout fishery exists.

We walked the bridge and otherwise observed the water, finding no bugs on it, seeing no rises at all. So we fished pheasant tail beadheads, at first about five feet under indicator floats, then freestyle. I took my float off when I approached a couple of big rocks creating slack water and seams where it's shallower but interesting. On my second drift, I felt a knock and reared back on nothing. I drifted that run inside and out about 35 more times and never replicated what I had felt, and I swear I had seen the line jump, too. Maybe I got hit. 

We continued to fish the deeper run, both of us without indicators, but nothing happened. We had pretty much run out of time. I guess we could have tried to dig up another access point, but not only is it clearly evident why fishing the river from a drift boat is advantageous; it proved best we got back to camp when we did. I ended up arriving home in New Jersey just before dark.  

Below Cannonsville Reservoir the West Branch Delaware is a much wider river.

My New Website

Farmington River, Connecticut, Blue-Winged Olives in July

Connecticut's Farmington River is known as a world class tailwater river, so you can be sure it's pressured hard. It's full of fish that don't yield. At least not in July. It's also located close to where my brother David lives in West Hartford. I don't remember when I started talking about the two of us fishing it this summer, but David spoke about the possibility of fishing together there sometime long before. I guess it was Easter at my other brother's house here in New Jersey when Rick expressed desire to fish with us, so we made that the plan. A couple of months ago, I suggested July 20th as a possibility. We refined the date a little so we'd be fishing on a weekday. Monday the 21st. Rick and I drove up Sunday.

A tailwater river is a stream that flows out of the bottom of a dammed reservoir. The water for miles below is always cool. We began fishing maybe nine miles below the dam. Somewhere down that way, we got a water temperature of 62. (Just below the dam, it's about 55.) Temperatures had reached the low 90s on Sunday.

We had got light takeout breakfasts and coffee, getting to the river before any sun was on the water. Rick managed to wade just a little below the bridge, but the boulders were big and the depth inconsistent. Wading further downstream where trout rose wasn't practicable. I didn't have any idea what they rose for, but I didn't think to ask my brothers, either. The scene bore an aura of mystery in the early morning lack of light as if I weren't fully awake yet, and I felt at loss for not attempting to wade, but I knew doing that was useless. As I remember, which isn't perfect, my boots stayed on dry land. We drove upstream, spending an hour-and-a-half or so in a stretch with a few series of riffles and flatter fast moving water about a quarter mile or so in total length, finding nothing deeper than our thighs, not finding any trout anywhere, although just as I was leaving to catch up with Dave and Rick waiting for me at Dave's truck, I saw a splash rise under trees. I had thought the spot looked inviting within the first five minutes we had fished the area. Rick and I fished it with stonefly wet fly/pheasant tail nymph dropper combinations. After Rick moved out and headed downriver, I got casts even closer to the bank, as if maybe trout hung back in shadow. 

And maybe a few did. Although Rick got two hits on that combination of wet fly and nymph after we had driven on and he had worked his way upstream from where we next parked, that was all underwater presentations produced for us all day. I think of how eagerly California trout hit nymphs last summer and in April 2022, but those fish weren't nearly as pressured. Not even those of the South Fork Merced River. When we got to the Church Pool, we contended with four other anglers. A weekday flourish in July that probably is the usual. I watched one of the others catch a brown about 18 inches long, later learning that he used a floating ant, casting near the bank where you would think that fly might be effective.

Dave and Rick fished downstream in the same vicinity. Not only did Rick catch an 11-inch brown on a Hendrickson dry fly, he witnessed a big trout crashing the surface "like a bass going after bluegills." We understood big browns exist in the river, but no accounts could have impressed Rick of the fact more than witnessing that fish. His enthusiasm for it never abated. 

In the meantime, I had taken my time at paying attention to some rising trout. David and I sat down on a bench and talked. He pointed out that "Rick fishes hard," and I readily agreed. Rick pieces apart a river while he fly fishes similarly as I piece apart the length of a cover-studded shoreline while throwing a Wacky rig or Chompers on an inset hook for largemouths. You undo the construction of the water, eliminating possibilities until you score at one of them, and then you continue on to another fish. It's all tied in a knot for you to untie. Dave also told me the hatch was probably correlated to the blue-winged olive dry fly pattern. He'd done his reading, and although we saw few bugs to make an even more informed guess, I knew, of course, that information in print is accurate. I had been casting a parachute Adams of about size 14 without any interest from the trout. I tied on a size 16 blue-winged olive and got nothing, but an old man in his 80s or 90s fishing near me caught a small rainbow.

"What did you catch it on?" I asked.

"Blue-winged olive, size 22, 7x!"

The three of us had got into an involved conversation with an older man when we first got to the Church Pool parking lot. He told us about 90-year-olds who take turns fishing the pool and using the bench, not able to stand for long. Since the old man who caught the rainbow alternated between the fishing and the bench, I suspected he was a regular who knew what he was doing. 

Dave had a spare blue-winged olive he lent me. It looked about size 22 and might have been exactly that. I had 6x tippet to tie to my 5x leader but not 7x. Just as well. Apparently, my first three drifts got hit, but I couldn't tell, because I couldn't see the fly. A few more times I might have got hit, but finally I did see a trout poke its nose up and take right where I saw my line ended when I tried to set the hook. I never got hook grab on any of them! 

Rick and Dave felt ready to move on. I wanted to return here later, but for now, we had more river to explore. Also lunch to eat. It was almost 4:00 p.m. when pulled up to the Riverton General Store about to close. They're open at 6:00 a.m., so it's a long day at that. David got a sandwich and I ate a pound of tuna fish salad. A sign on the door forbids anyone coming in with cleats, but Dave took that the opposite way than I did, as an invitation to come on inside with waders on, which we did. We didn't get chased out. The food was delicious. Rick felt breakfast bars we had brought along were enough and didn't want anything.

Afterwards, we found some water not too far below the dam that I thought looked really good. I had kept the little blue-winged olive on the line and began drifting it on a clean surface without suds, so I was able to see it. The water moved but wasn't riffled and at least four or five feet deep. On my fourth or fifth cast, I saw a trout nose up and take that fly. I set the hook, had it on, and fought the little 10-incher for a few moments before it got off. 

I fished the stretch hard, but I couldn't get any further interest from trout, even though I witnessed at least half a dozen rises. Upstream, Rick had witnessed a couple get caught by others on dry flies, but the quarters were too cramped for us to go up there and take position. We drove back downstream to the Self Storage Pool.

The water flowed fast but pretty deep, so I had tied on an olive Wooly Bugger. The water under the bridge situates in such a way that a railing exists along big rocks you can step down and back up along, tight to the concrete wall, descending and ascending some 15 feet or more. I think Rick used the nymph and a wet fly. Even though I catch lots of winter trout here in New Jersey on jigs that are basically the same as Buggers, the big beadheads seemed too clumsy in CT where trout seem to turn their noses on virtually everything. They were the best I felt I could try, though. The river had been stocked with 2000 trout early in the first week of July, but even so, catching anything would have surprised me. It seems to be a feat of matching the hatches this time of year. Not all of the trout are stocked, by the way. In addition to heavy trout stockings, the river has wild ones.

One more try at the Church Pool. I insisted on it. 

There we saw plenty of rises, but nothing at all came up for the size 22 blue-winged olive. An older man had taken position where I had got the hits earlier, and he did catch a rainbow about a foot long on some pattern or other. Another guy fished downstream, catching nothing. Dave and Rick had gone down there, getting hit by nothing, finally settling on the bench and watching me...until inevitably I felt it time to go. 

The effect of 12 hours fishing and moving between spots on the river felt great. We would have felt more gain in catching trout, but there was no loss in catching only one between the three of us; we fished hard, never gave up, and made a full day of exploring a beautiful river, finding interest in each place we stopped at. After it was done, either Dave or Rick suggested we make it an annual event, and on that we all agreed. I got some photos I'm not posting. Two of them I'm planning on getting prints made of, one for each of my brothers.   

Dave casts at the Church Pool.

Riverton Self Storage Pool Lot

Rick casting the Self-Storage Pool.

East Fork San Gabriel River

Book I'm Writing on Fishing Stockers

 

A Search Bait on the Slow Side

I wasn't expecting our success. I think Oliver asked me where we might fish, and I said Aeroflex or Furnace. I wanted him to choose, and he chose Aeroflex because he had hope for salmon. I had hoped we'd fish Furnace, water cool enough yet for muskies. Last I fished Aeroflex from a boat was June 2023. Brenden Kuprel and I fished about six hours and caught eight fish, most of them pickerel. A couple of Junes before that, in 2021, Jorge Hildago and I fished about six hours, getting skunked. Before that, in 2017, I fished Aeroflex with my son, Matt, and we caught three fish: two bass and a pickerel.

Given my lack of success in the past, it's understandable I'd feel surprised when Oliver quickly caught a trout on a trolled Hedden Sonic. We made another pass when my Phoebe got smacked hard, and Oliver caught yet another trout on a Rapala Countdown. We made another circular pass, trying to keep near the weeds in water deeper than 20 feet. I like the idea of trout and salmon attracted to the fertility. 

Nothing more happened, so we went through the shallows and into the deepest water beyond them, hundred-foot depths showing on the graph. 

Temps today never got out of the 50's. The water was 62, a good temperature for the trout and salmon, though I wasn't sure if it hadn't fallen too much and put the bass off. It definitely hadn't. We had a lot of rain. Oliver got chilled in the end, and I was glad we went in when we did, so he didn't suffer any worse. I wore a base layer under my pants, and another under a Woolrich shirt, a neoprene jacket over that, and a raincoat. I felt comfortable all day.  

As if we fished the steep shoreline drops of Tilcon Lake, I imagined the fishing as one and the same, only Aeroflex gets more pressure. At first I felt tempted to use a 1/16th-ounce jig with a little two-and-a-half-inch paddletail, That's how we fished two years ago, getting the jig down into 20-foot depths at the edge of the weeds, but only by using Wacky rigs to search out the weeds and wood in front of us did the fishing make sense today in the way it does at the other lake, and pretty soon, it paid off. The bass fought hard, and I measured it at 18 inches and imagined it must have weighed nearly three-and-a-half pounds. A fat fish. Minutes later, I caught my second, about 15 inches.

We worked our way down lake, catching bass. I watched Oliver hook one that we watched as he moved it from about four feet of water towards the depths where it got off. We believe that bass had to be at least 20 inches. No pickerel today, although one of them attacked Oliver's Wacky rig as he reeled it in to make another cast. I finished with a total of six bass; Oliver caught two. Most of mine were about 15 inches, though another one of them was 18 inches. You have to fish thoroughly. A Wacky rig isn't ideal. No rig is ideal for the weeds in May. If it were July, I'd have used an inset hook on a traditional worm. But the weeds haven't fully grown in yet, and even though a Wacky rig gets caught in the weeds, I can snap the worm free, and otherwise keep it from getting hung up by working it over the tops of the weeds. Fluttering the ends. Only one of my bass took the worm on the initial drop. The Wacky rig is a good one to use as a search bait, but a search bait on the slow side, and that worked very well today. I also caught a rainbow trout while trolling the Phoebe out over deep water on our way back to the launch ramp. We had fished a total of four hours.

 

2023

End of the Spring Season Trout

Fred arrived shortly after 11 when I worked on a poem set in the clamming life. I saved my work, shut down my laptop, and headed out the door, telling Fred he was free to ride with me. It took a minute or two to load his gear. 

I had told him we might do well because recent very high water interrupted the pressure on the fish, but it is Tuesday and the North Branch's last stocking day is tomorrow. Not to mention that Peapack Brook might not have been stocked in two weeks. But I believed in the possibility, though our first stop wasn't going to pan out. 

I began to think my worst fears might be the case. That the excessively high water last Wednesday meant the state didn't stock at all, and whatever few fish remained in the stretch got carried miles downstream! Fred had said we might get away with wet wading, but the drop in temperatures took us by surprise. I'm glad the temps got cold last night and never rose out of the 60s today, though, because the chilly water favored the trout, for sure.

So we put on our waders and walked into the AT&T stretch from River Road Park. I didn't even want to think of limiting the fishing to the spots and casting angles accessible from the bank. I catch a lot of trout there that way, but I wanted to reach the holding water from the bottom of the stretch to the head with no encumbrance. 

It was almost too deep with the camera slung around my neck and the bag getting a little wet. Fred pointed out, though, that the stretch has filled in a great deal recent years. We worked our way upstream. I got hit a couple of times. And then again near the end of our foray I did once, but suddenly, I saw a trout cut across my field of vision. And then shortly after I saw three or four of them holding on golf-ball sized stones where I would have stepped if I didn't see them first. I tried to get them interested in my salmon egg, and one of them seemed to take interest, but I never hooked up. I had already begun thinking of where to go next, and I caught myself thinking we should go directly to Peapack Brook. As if we'd catch nothing behind the police station. Instead, I told myself, "I don't know that."

Fred and I drove to Miller Lane and made our back to the river across the field. Conversation got our minds off the walk, which seemed to take a minute. 

I got hit right away. I kept getting hit. Finally, I caught one. We kept catching them. The action eventually slowed dramatically, but I still managed to lose another trout right out in front of me. By the time we felt ready to move, I had caught seven and Fred four. Fred got them on worms and maybe one on his favored jig. I was into a new jar of eggs.

The first series of stretches we tried apparently had no fish in them. I tried some very fishy-looking riffles and rocks with depths as much as two or three feet, but drew no interest at all and turned my attention to trying the waterfall before we would run out of time.

There we each caught two. 

Fred knew a bigger deep hole, and I was interested. There I caught one more, and Fred caught two, all four of his Peapack trout on the jig. 

Fred's been fishing the salt, hasn't caught a trout since he lived up here, I believe. He was very happy to do well today.

I happened to be framing Fred on the dam when he hooked up on the jig.

Last May

 

Always Good to See a Fly Rod Catch Stocked Trout

Back at it in Millington, I have to say the Passaic River really didn't disappoint, even though the lack of water clarity turned me off. Tannic when I came last year, the tannic quality there again today had somehow got stained a little by mud, even though it hasn't rained in a awhile. 

I began fishing with my red salmon eggs, but I had only a dozen or so left in the jar. I caught three recently stocked rainbows on those, missing hits from others, and then I climbed the embankment, crossed the road, and got more from my trunk.

They hadn't been salted. Three in a row departed from the hook on the cast. I thought I had salted all my eggs, and since that was the last of red ones I brought along, I switched to those off-white pale eggs I normally prefer. 

I caught a couple more trout when Brenden Kuprel showed up unexpectedly, introducing me to his cousin who had also come along. They took station downstream within distance of talking by raising the voice. We talked just a little about Shop Rite where Brenden and I both used to work, and where Brenden still does work as a manager. 

I wanted to get underneath the bridge, but when a father and daughter abandoned the spot right about when Brenden and his cousin showed, the guy who fly fished downstream took it. (Brenden and his cousin took position where the fly fisher had.) 

I said to the fly fisher, after watching him catch his second trout, "Always good to see someone doing well with a fly rod."

"I do better with the fly rod than with a spinning rod," he told me. Just before he had hooked his first trout, I asked him if he were using nymphs. "Yes." 

Downstream I watched Brenden catch a few on his Berkley Powerbait trout worm under a float. I had caught a couple more and lost another almost at my feet when I decided to go. After I would lose the last pale egg on my hook, which proved to be a very stubborn, perfectly salted egg. Staying on that hook as if destined to serve. 

And indeed. It amounted to one more rainbow for me. 

Millington Gorge

 

Water Slightly Stained, Pinkish Red Egg Made the Difference

I made up my mind to switch out my favorite pale eggs for pinkish red, since the water had something of an opaque quality, not running too high, but a little stained. I had caught one rainbow and missed another hit. It seemed to take forever to lose the pale egg on my hook, after I had decided to switch. Cast after cast. Today is Tuesday, and the South Branch Raritan Brenden and I fished got stocked. I figured they didn't stock many, but my judgment, I was about to learn, was a little skewed. 

Brenden had missed a hit and caught one on his Berkley worm--think it's Berkley--under a float. My red egg got hit on the first cast. Hits followed, almost every cast. I played two trout and lost them at the net. On my microlight rod and two-pound test--yes, Berkley Trilene XL, clear--every one of them takes runs. I caught another. Action halted after that, but I enjoyed having had some. Brenden had said about his worm under the float, "They're just knocking into it. They won't commit." 

The casts and the drifts I managed to get on that light tackle impressed me, given that wind gusts seemed to reach 40 mph. We heard a big dead branch above us crack, and we heard a tree trunk snap and watched the big tree fall downstream, everyone fishing in the vicinity awed by that event. I used the same snap swivel I had used at the North Branch almost a week ago, and I added two broken swivels to it before Brenden and I departed Bedminster. He had met me in the lot at my condo. If the air calmed, I would have removed those snaps, because even though the river seemed to flow a little high, the pace of the water would have allowed less weight.

As we continued to fish, we watched a couple of guys on the other side of the river and downstream of the bridge (we waded in the river upstream) catch a lot of trout. While Brenden and I slogged away after the trout stopped hitting, those two guys left. I guess Brenden and I had the same idea as we witnessed that happen.

"I'm going to go fish where those two guys left," Brenden said.

"So am I."

Climbing down the bank wasn't a breeze for me. I felt awkward at it. I don't know what happens as you get older, but it has to do with balance somehow. I feel like a young man, but then I'm confronted with a challenge like getting down to the river there, and it's stymying. When I'm writing, there seems to be zero difference between now and when I was younger, except that I'm even more skilled than I used to be. Life is kind of odd in the way that you can witness your own physical decline in a detached way that feels youthful. It's as if that decline is silly. And if medicine is allowed to continue to develop--if we don't become an authoritarian society and destroy progress--it's possible aging will be reversed. 

Earlier on, I had dropped my Egg Lug into the river when I pulled a stringer from my wader pocket. I reached for it with my net, soaking my right arm in the process. That contributed to my developing the shivers. Temp at 64 when we first descended upon the river, it had fallen to 56 when we left. I did have a light jacket on but shook in the heavy wind gusts. 

Not lasting very long at our second spot, I never got hit once, anyhow, but Brenden did catch one. I had planned to stay out to sunset, but the chill was enough. We fished two hours from the opener at 5 p.m.

Worm Under Float vs Salmon Eggs

 

Trout Stocking First Week After Opening Day May be Lightweight

                                                                                     

Relatively opaque water, given how clear it can be, but not stained, ran higher than I had expected after three days since rain. I got into a nice spot right at 5:00 p.m., figuring fish should be there and would hit. I cast tentatively, and as the egg drifted downriver with the help of several snap swivels attached to a snap for weight, I suddenly doubted anything would happen. And nothing did until I got a solid tap about 10 casts later. 

After four more takes of the like, besides once getting slammed and having the trout on for a second, drag screeching, I made my way upstream some 10 yards, working my body through tight spaces between tree trunks and a wooden fence. The trunks have dormant poison ivy vines strung on them. Walking on rocks on a bank sloping at a 45-degree angle, making sure my left knee didn't give out, avoiding the consequence of getting pitched into the river, that, I thought, wouldn't be so bad. It would be the loss my mobile device. That left knee had been operated on some 14 years ago, and it's not getting better. I felt surprised to see the same woman who had hooked the breeder last time. I said hi and made a cast. Then a few more. I missed another hit. She said, "Do you think they restocked?"

"I think they did, just didn't put many fish in."

"I don't think so." 

I'm sure the river was stocked, although the trout, for the most part, weren't committing to the eggs but managing to steal them from my hook. There were others fishing downstream and I hadn't seen a single trout caught. I continued fishing near the exit bridge, the bridge upstream of the former AT&T entry bridge where the trout get stocked, but I got only one more tap.  

I went downstream. There I found the water was a lot slower than I would have expected, given the power of the flow above. I downsized to a single size 14 Eagle Claw snap swivel for weight. Soon I hooked up and fought an average rainbow to the bank. I was standing about six feet high over the edge of the water, and I wasn't interested in climbing down to get the trout, so before I would have pulled it up on rocks, I hoped it would lose the hook and be on it's way, which happened a second later when the trout was about a foot from the dry edge. 

Now. I figured I might have some action. I didn't think ahead of how much I would have to work for it. At my age, it's not as easy; it's rather difficult, but if you're going to suffer for the fish, you'll get some satisfaction in return, even if you go home with some kinks to work out over long hours ahead. 

I paid keen attention to just where my egg was touching down, and I missed more of the same kind of hits right at the end of my rather short and definitely slow drifts. I set the hook on one of them and got repaid with a distinct visual of rainbow colors before the trout quickly disappeared under the cover of that less-than-clear water. Soon, I hooked another, and I played it, drag screeching repeatedly, before I got the trout--average sized--against the bank. And then I lifted it out of the water, which made me wonder if I could lift it all the way up to where I stood. Would my knots to two-pound-test Berkley XL hold? Snap swivel to mainline, hook to leader, overhand loop of leader to slip onto the snap. The knots held as I continued to lift, but the hook pulled free, the trout dropping back into the water and shooting away. 

I missed perhaps a few more hits. I had to repeatedly cast, working for these fish. I was deeply into the flow of the action and enjoying it with focused intent. When hits stopped coming to the right of me, I cast a little further upstream. I found there were trout there too, just not many. Downstream further yet, on the other side of the entry bridge, some eight or nine men fished fast water with just enough depth to hold a fairly large number of trout, although there were not too many there today. I saw one trout get caught. The only one I saw caught by anyone else the entire time out. I had only minutes left, though, having signed on for a Zoom photographer's meetup at 7 p.m. I hooked another, playing it with the same give of the drag, and once again, hoisted a trout towards me, the hook pulling out. Convenient catch and release. I tried just a few more casts, once feeling a cadence of taps...so compelling...before I set the hook on nothing. 

Someone who had been fishing downstream and caught nothing told me it was the same lack of action at the South Branch yesterday. (The South Branch is stocked on Tuesdays.) Possibly that has to do with Opening Day having been only days ago, still a fair number of trout in the streams. 

I headed home to meet up with my friends. 

Fishing Salmon Eggs  

Salmon Egg Jar Fused to Metal Egg Lug

I can't remember how long ago it's been since I fished Opening Day, and although I could riffle through my handwritten log to find out, I'll let that be. I believe it was 2016, when I fished for half an hour with my son in the afternoon, the water high and off-color, though I did catch one. Not really muddy but deeply stained. 

When I got out of my car, gathered my things and began walking, I felt pleasantly refreshed. None of that doubt scraping at my innards, generated from feeling stressed at work. I am done jobbing now, but as unambiguously as everyone else seems to think I'm retired, I can't think of it that way without being reminded I have more work to do than I can possibly get done...so I have to choose as wisely as I can. But work, yes, though I don't recall feeling reminded of it as I approached the river. Someone recently called that work my hobbies, but whatever, I do need to catch up, though it might be more important to slow down outdoors. For me, the prospect of building a website feels daunting, and while others say I should simply hire someone, no, I'm not interested in paying anyone to do what I can, at least, try to do.

I walked a rather long, paved walkway. It took me to the river between two bridges. I found the spot I usually do best at unoccupied. Surprised, I quickly made my way down to the river edge, feeling fortunate. The water flowed just a little high, not stained, but not gin clear. I needed to add a couple of snap swivels to my snap for weight. Then I stood there for about 10 minutes until 8 a.m. The first drift amounted to my salmon egg staying right near bottom where I wanted it, without the rig getting stuck on that bottom. Five or six drifts yielded no hits, and I thought maybe no trout made their way upstream from the stocking point a hundred yards below. But that couldn't be. Even on stocking days they're already up there. 

Got hit and played my first trout. Everything felt like cool air to breathe. Not too cool at 53 degrees. 

Near the end of my 50 or 55 minutes fishing, I noticed two breeders in close and upstream a bit. Neither interested in my salmon eggs, I told a woman who had come onto the scene in the interim that one of them followed her spinner for a bit. Five or 10 minutes later, she hooked one of them, but it managed to free itself from the treble hook. 

Fishing was slow compared to other times I've stood there. I caught four rainbows, lost a couple of others during the fight. Missed a few hits. Plenty of other trout got caught downstream from me, though it wasn't mayhem. I had decided not to bother with waders. 

The eggs had fished well; I had salted them just enough so they stayed on the hook. Got to my car and attempted to remove the jar--still almost full--from the metal Egg Lug. It's fused on there, but since I said the same in a couple of FB posts, I'm getting advice on how to remove it. Maybe I can.

The Egg Lug I purchased during the 1970's, when the metal ones were commonly used. I own another one, although it's possible it really belongs to my brother Rick, each of us having long ago forgotten. As the Reading Eagle article I linked to features it, Pautzke's plastic egg lug available online will work. I own one of those, too...and I don't remember buying it, either, although that was much more recent.

Jar of my favorite pale salmon eggs stuck on that ancient Egg Lug.

Comparison Between Eggs and Pink Worm

Book I'm Writing on Stockers

Last Days of Winter Trout Besides TCA Waters

One last try at the river trout as only two days remain before most waters close until Opening Day. Oliver Round and Loki the black Lab came today. Fifteen minutes less than two hours. Besides a couple of fish on for a moment I think were also suckers, I might have got hit twice from trout. Oliver had a sucker or carp on for a second. A big scale on his hook. 

Notice my sucker got hooked on the nose. 

I'm glad I caught trout this time around. October and November felt very discouraging, but December yielded just before extremely cold weather resulted in some ice fishing for some anglers. Pretty much for the months of January and February we ice fished. I saw some Facebook posts that prove not everyone gave up on the rivers, though there was a lot of ice on them. Naturally, fishing pressure got reduced. 

I caught trout in March for a change, though that might partly be owing to the fact of that ice covering spots like the one I've been hitting. Trout Conservation Areas will remain open. Last year I fished two of them, catching trout on the Pequest April 1st.

Doubt I'll do the same this year, as I'm eager to go bass fishing. Brian Cronk is out fishing Indian Lake as I write, trying a new glide bait for the big ones. 

After March 31st, I'm done jobbing. By all accounts I can drum up, I'll be done for life. That doesn't mean I won't return the form to the union that will allow me to return to work and preserve my pension for later, but as awful as the economy has become in recent weeks, I doubt it will become so devastating that I have to hold a job. 

I have important to work to do as a writer and photographer. More than I can possibly get done, so I have no natural interest in holding a job after I quit my present one. Only extreme devastation coming from aberrant leadership might mean I can't do that work as fully as I will be enabled by having time I currently have to commit to a low wage. Instead of that eventuality actually happening--amounting to a dystopian society no one would want: mass death, legal chaos, and so much unemployment I probably wouldn't find a job anyway--I tend to believe that things look worse when reflected by the media. 

Judging Differences Between Berkley Fishing Lines

Naturally, I returned to where I caught the trout over five pounds yesterday. I hooked up on my second cast and caught the rainbow photographed above.

I had walked hundreds of yards to get there, feeling positively expectant. I examined the feeling and judged that it didn't have to do with yesterday's catch. It was fresh and of it's own origin in things. Next, I wondered if that really meant I'd do well. Doubted that. But "of it's own origin in things," it easily could have had to do with the temperature rapidly rising to over 60, and more than that. It could have had to do with the approaching front, which, of course, I understood could mean active fish. The coming rain could have been just as important as the rising water temperature.

Spinning was appropriate again this morning. As it was the other day when all I did was snag a sucker, the wind even heavier. Fly fishing in 40 mph wind--or 25 to 30 mph as was today--is not easy to say the least. But you can spin cast.

I fished the 16th-ounce jig. Casting the Berkley Vanish fluorocarbon line I mentioned in the previous post was not as ergonomic as casting the Berkley XL. I had had my suspicions, when I paid five dollars more for a 250-yard spool of Vanish, than for a 310-yard spool of XL Oh, well. I like to pay attention to every increment in price and come up with the best value on expenditure, and whether or not I did this time? I think I did OK, but really, I don't like how it casts. It seems just as bad as the older fluorocarbon from Berkley I tried yesterday. Sometimes I can hear the stuff rasp as it goes through the guides! Face it, it's fluorocarbon and it will not be nearly as limp as a monofilament that is specially made to be limp. That's what the "L" of "XL" means.

You can buy Berkley XT and good luck with that stuff, although I've read forum threads and it does have a large fan base, so you might like it a lot better than I would. For good reason, too. Always a trade-off. The designation of the "T" in "XT" is for "tough," and tough it is, I'm sure. Good knot strength. Abrasion resistant. 

Also clear, and I don't like the blue, Stren-like, (another line brand), color of the XL. You have to trade off, and I might trade off Vanish for XL yet.

Vanish also had less diameter, and I do like that. Or at least I thought I did, and maybe I still do. It's .17mm. XL is .20. Here's the thing though. I don't seem to get casts out there any further, although it's true that after I switched to the eighth-ounce black marabou jig, expressly in order to cast further, I did get it closer to the far bank than I ever have, though I thought because I got better umph.

I could be mistaken. Does .03mm improve casting distance by a few inches or a foot or two or does that only mean you have to use up more line to fill your spool? Besides, won't a limp line cast a little further? I would think so. And so does this particular blogger.

So what I will probably do is end up scouring the internet for limp monofilament that doesn't have that blue shade I don't like. And if it has to be .20mm, OK. But I'll try to find limp, clear, and low diameter.

I like Berkley products, though. My scale is made by them and I've tested it on a five-pound bag of sugar. Spot on. Besides, Berkley has been in business since 1937.. I was big on them as a teenager, too, and having a long track record probably means you've stayed in business because you make good products. In Berkley's case, I would say so.  

And so I had ended up catching the second trout, photographed below, although that was before I switched to the heavier jig. I did miss a few hits today, and once came up with another sucker scale on the hook, if you've been reading along with my recent posts.

Both of my trout went back into the river. The five-plus-pound trout I caught yesterday is plenty for now. Unfortunately, the area of river where these fish are means they will, in all likelihood, die before summer, unless someone catches and keeps them. 

You'd hope the trout would have enough wherewithal to swim for the Atlantic.  

Odd-looking coloration for a rainbow trout.

Back in the Beginning

A Technique for Fall Stockers

 

Rainbow Trout Weighing Over Five Pounds

 Yesterday, I fished a 16th-ounce black marabou, getting hit a couple of times and once having a fish on for a second, but you don't really know if you're snagging suckers, unless you really get struck. One of the hits yesterday did feel like the jibber-jab of a small trout. Curious. 

When I got skunked last time I fished the river, a couple of times my jig had a sucker scale impaled on the hook. I imagine big carp exist in the stretch, too, but the sizeable fish I hooked that same outing left behind a scale I'm sure had belonged to a sucker.

Since I get longer casts from an eighth-ounce jig, I switched to one of those, lost it to a snag, tied on another, lost that one. Meanwhile, I had had trouble with the old Berkley fluorocarbon I had loaded onto my Cetus, after blood knotting to the Berkley XL underneath. The stuff was doubling out on the cast, and twice I lost a lot of line and had to retie. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if the Berkley Vanish I ordered is really going to live up to the claim the company makes of its castability. 

I tied a 16th-ounce marabou onto that four-pound-test XL line, and judged that the stuff does cast marvelously--the XL does, I'll give you a review of the Berkley Vanish in the next post. Very soft, limp line, which does pose problems when it comes to getting snagged--you can't expect quite as good knot strength, and it won't do as well among abrasions like rocks and wood. You trade one thing off for another, but the Vanish is supposed to be good both ways. This other stuff I tried, while the Vanish is coming to me through Amazon Prime, might have been on the spool for 22 years, because I have spools of line collected in a plastic trash bag going back that long ago. I've kept them protected from sunlight, so they are still good, but fluorocarbon generally was not as good as it is now. 

Anyhow, I waded back out to my favorite spot within the stretch and worked that jig, getting pounded. The trout made itself visible almost immediately, so I felt relieved it was no sucker. Big trout. It really didn't fight very hard, and this is the second five-pound-plus trout I've caught that didn't fight hard. I caught a 24-inch rainbow at Round Valley Reservoir that didn't. Other big ones I've caught have fought hard as hell, though the 6.9-pounder just shy of seven pounds, which I also caught at Round Valley, didn't fight all that hard, either. 

Yesterday's was 23 1/4 inches, 5.3 pounds. A thick-bodied rainbow.

 

6.9

How to Jig for River Trout Can be Complicated

When I parked, the temperature was 65, and I felt confident it would remain high as I fished, possibly even provoke some of those rainbows in the spot to hit, along with the stimulus of the approaching front. I wasn't exactly raring to go. I didn't like the long walk through a large farmer's field, but I covered the distance pretty quickly, getting over-warmed in the process. 

I wanted to try one of my new NRC Creek Bugz, but I decided to leave the eighth-ounce Kalin's marabou jig on the hook, since it worked so well last time. Pretty soon, I hooked something heavy that began heading downriver, and then I lost it, feeling I had just lost a tank of a trout, but once I had reeled the jig in, I saw a scale on the hook, so I figured I had snagged an oversize sucker. 

I lost my jig and tied on an NRC (photographed above). Fishing one of them, I think, is a little more complicated than an eighth-ounce or sixteenth-ounce marabou. I mounted it on a 32nd-ounce jig head, and though I felt it cast pretty far, I couldn't get it close to the far bank as I did with the eighth-ounce jig, and with the heavy wind this afternoon, controlling the retrieve wasn't as easy. 

It's a much slower, plodding retrieve. It seems as if you can keep it near bottom without getting snagged nearly as often as you do with an eighth ounce. I retrieved the eighth-ounce jig fairly fast by comparison, and I was still getting hung up a lot. The water is pretty deep in the area of the long stretch I fished, too. Maybe one of the main advantages of fishing an eighth ounce is getting it across the river.

I hooked and lost a pretty nice trout last time I fished the stretch by having got the jig near the opposite bank and having just begun the retrieve. But today, I got hit once on my side of the mid-river. I had lost the NRC to a snag and tied on another eighth-ounce jig. It was a definite strike with a shaken-up series of pulls, and it came on the eighth-ounce jig and its faster retrieve. 

I've been told by a more experienced river trout fisherman not to fish that way. That an eighth ounce is way too heavy for the rivers during winter, but I keep getting hit and I usually catch trout. I think most of my river trout have hit that size, rather than jigs of a sixteenth ounce. Some advice is good, and I think I have yet to see if my friend's enthusiasm for NRC pays off in more catches for me.

But sometimes advice just doesn't work out. You need to follow up with and stick to your own way, as curious as you may be about someone else's. Fishing does have to do with hard fact, but there's enough leeway to allow for confidence in certain presentations to lead the way forward for any given angler. Cold water trout will hit a jig that has to be retrieved at at least a moderate retrieve.

They're that active in the winter. Think of all the smallmouth bass in our rivers and that they don't show up in winter catches. It's not the marabou they don't like. They're off the feed in general, because they don't hit NRC baits retrieved much slower, either. They do have to feed on occasion, but trout remain a lot more active than bass do. When its very cold out trout get hard to catch, though.

The temperature was falling fast. When I did get back to the car, it was 57. In the meantime, I felt disappointed the warmth didn't stay with me. I had switched to a sixteenth-ounce marabou--all of the marabou besides one a friend gave me are black--and hooked something that began fighting hard. In the water I saw brown and believed I had snagged another sucker, not hooked a brown trout.

It wouldn't have been impossible, but unlikely. As you can see in the photo, the sucker got hooked in the tail. It was fun fighting a fish to the bank. I had forgotten my net. I unhooked the fish and released it back into the river. Suckers are an integral part of the river's ecology, rather than really being any nuisance as carp can seem to be. As if, just maybe, carp disrupt the spawning of bass. Not sure.

I would have stayed longer and have tried harder yet to catch a trout today, but for the second time, my line came doubled up off the spool and knotted up. So much was lost, I wouldn't have been able to cast effectively, so I quit. Sometimes, to catch river stockers, you do need to double down. Next time, I'll try again. Trying to remember to use the jigs my friend Oliver gave me. 

Last Time