Guide Trip Report: 8/17/07 S. Branch

I had the pleasure of guiding Kevin from Chester, NJ yesterday morning on the South Branch. Kevin's goals were to develop a sound approach to reading pocket water and fine tune his presentation skills in such water.

Kevin was a devotee of the classic wet fly swing and quickly made some adjustments to fish situations were short line nymphing would be more effective.

We called it a morning by 11 o'clock and by that point Kevin had hooked six fish, bringing four of those to hand. We had success today on a variety of subsurface patterns including some Isonychia soft-hackles, caddis and midge larvae. Kevin's confidence level in fishing small midge patterns was definitely raised by mornings end.

Here is a crappy shot(my fault) of a holdover rainbow Kevin caught. Approx. 13 inches and very skinny.



Spent a hour or so fishing by myself in the afternoon. With this past week of thermal relief, fish are starting to creep out of some "hunker-down" mode. This can be seen by fish holding locations, activity level and aggressiveness.
Here are two nice examples of South Branch brown trout reproduction from yesterday.