Guide Trip Report: 11/21/07 KLG

John and Thomas joined me for a day of Thanksgiving eve fishing. Despite north Jersey's early snowfall at the beginning of the week, the South Branch was at 43 degrees and a nice 90 cfs flow. A nice crisp morning, (just how Tom likes it) with not too many leaves in the water. As you can see below, it didn't take long for John and Tom to dust off their no-indicator nymphing techniques and start bringing fish to net.

A solid stocker rainbow Thomas landed.


One of John's nice wild browns.


And the release.

By days end, John and Tom fought and landed a mix of wild and stocked fish with a few nice fish lost briefly after hook-up. John decided to hit one more spot after Tom had to head for home, just as the light was getting low. He was happy he did, as it resulted in the nice rainbow pictured at the top of the report.

New Hatches magazine article!

I wrote the first installment of what will eventually be a multi part piece on reading water. If you've ever fished with me, you know I am a big water reading guy. It is the cornerstone to my approach for trout, and I feel you can never over emphasize it's importance.

This article takes a skill we all possess at an expert level, color discrimination, and uses it as a basic tool for finding the(so called)magical 10% of water the fish are holding and feeding in.

Check it out, and let me know what you think. Always looking to revise things for the future.

http://www.hatchesmagazine.com/page/month/344

Fish in Frame

My father and I were out on Saturday morning and both got into some decent fish. Here is a release video of a healthy rainbow. After playing around with this camera for a few weeks now, I am getting A LITTLE better at keeping these underwater shots in frame.

This fish took a fly that I call a "Quicker John" Essentially my quick-tie version of the Copper John. No epoxy, no flash and no bead head. Everything else from the original pattern is there. A much "quicker" tie that you don't mind losing. And if you don't need the weight of the bead and epoxy,it fishes just as well, IMHO.

Guide Trip Report: 11/3/07 KLG

Josh from Englewood, NJ came out for a full day of fishing on the South Branch. An experienced saltwater fly fisherman, Josh was looking to expand his arsenal of techniques in the trout world, and specifically hone his approach to fishing nymphs. A secondary goal was to learn some of the Ken Lockwood Gorge and maybe even land a few trout!

By all accounts Josh had a very successful day. Water temp was 48 degrees in the AM and flow was around 80 cfs. A gusty wind was putting some leaves in the water, but all in all a beautiful day. I don't think we fished a stretch of water 20 yards or greater without Josh at least rolling a fish.

By days end, Josh had landed about 10 fish and had lost several more. One really nice aspect of Josh's catch was that the majority were wild fish (browns).

Some nice wild fish from Saturday:















Of course, a fat, rod bending stockie sprinkled in here and there is nice as well :)



Being mindful of the leaves in the water, we tried to stick with some patterns that had non-leaf/debris characteristics to them. This is an important fly choice factor over the next couple of weeks. (I am going to try and do a fly pattern post dedicated to this sometime this week)

Broke the new camera in and took some cool underwater videos as well.
Here is a rainbow after release. Still need to get a feel for framing subjects underwater, fish finally cooperates.

Releasing a small wild brown.


Here's Josh landing his best (sizewise) fish of the day.