Guide Trip Report: 8/23/07 BFB

John from Hoboken and Tom from Livingston took advantage of this past week's unseasonably cold, wet weather and came out with me for their third trip of the season.

As pointed out in an earlier blog post, the Big Flatbrook area got left out of alot of summer thunderstorms this season and essentially ran at 30 to 40cfs (low) all summer with virtually no bumps in flow. This week, the Flatbrook finally got a decent bump in water and we decided to seize the moment.

As usually for late summer on the BFB, a lot of fish have been taken out and the ones that have made it through have become much more selective since their humble Pequest beginnings.

Lots of Isonychia shucks around and all fish caught were fat. We could tell the recent bump in rain had really infused the stream with a lot of food for the fish and they (the fish) had gone on a binge.

Nice Iso. shuck specimen


Fish were taken on some small caddis dries as well as midge larva fished in the film and beneath. Lots of selective surface feeding all day long.

All in all a nice day on the BFB. (especially for late August)

Here is Tom, playing the first fish of the morning from the Showcase.

(Tom also landed a nice forearm trout later in the morning :)

John's well fed brown to conclude the afternoon.

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.

Late July Forecast: Deck, with a chance of Delaware

I took the last two weeks of July to step away from fly fishing and complete a home project that Bonnie and I have wanted to do since we moved in, build a deck. Since our backyard was a wet, muddy ski slope, I decided to go with a big deck, as a muddy ski slope isn't good for much other than mud skiing, an extreme sport we both gave up years ago.

So...we went with a 14'x20', rectangular deck, all built with pressure treated lumber. By far the worst steps were digging and filling nine, 12"x36" footings. My father and I now know that wielding a two-man auger is not for the faint of heart. Forty-five, 80lb bags of cement made for another long sweaty day as well. Bonnie was a huge help throughout the entire build and had the patience to install all of those black railing balusters you see in the picture above.

But in the end we are very pleased and look forward to using all this new relaxing/eating/entertaining space.

Of course, you can't build a deck every day!

Took a couple trips to the Delaware, fishing spots as far north as the Delaware Water Gap and as far south as Lambertville. Picked up your typical mixed bag on both trips, using clousers, hellgramite patterns, big stoneflies and assorted buggers.
Unfortunately, had sunny days to fish which didn't help, especially combined with clear water.

A few DD's. (Delaware Dinks)