Creek Addict

Up’North Maine Fly Castings.

There you go. HAHA. 100%. pure. awesome.

Nick and I spent Saturday fishing the no kill section of the Beaverkill and a small wild trout stream in northern New Jersey. The weather sucked. The leaf hatch was on. The fishing? Well, at least we were fishing. Nick and I both caught fish, but it wasn’t a day to write home about. I’ll write about it on our blog though. Why? Because I took pictures.

The Beaverkill was slowly rising all morning due to rain. The fishing wasn’t that great, but we found our fair share in the pocket water. The best catches at the Beaverkill were the wild (I think. They still had their adipose fin, and the fins were in almost perfect condition.) brown and rainbow I caught out of the lower no kill. At least we had the water basically to ourselves. We saw one other guy fishing some deep slackwater, but that was it. No one else wanted to be out in the rain and cold.

The small stream in north Jersey was rising and slightly off color when we arrived. That, however, wasn’t the problem. Every other drift netted a leaf. That’s the only thing I hate about fall fishing. The colors are great, the fish are aggressive, and the water is normally at a great temp. The leaves drive me nuts though. The fishing here was pretty tough. I normally find fishing is tougher when the water is coming up due to rain or runoff. For whatever reason, I always have much better luck when the water levels have peaked, and the flow is going down. A few chili dogs were consumed, and some fish were caught.

What I assume is a wild brown from the Beaverkill.

Judging by the condition of the fins, and the intact adipose fin, I think this fish might be wild as well. They are probably coming from the D if they are wild.

If I told you this was a brown trout, would you believe me?

Small Jersey brown.

Gotta love having wild browns 10 minutes from your house.

Gut piles, fall stock brookies, stinky suckers and cans of corn. That pretty much sums up my trip to a local Jersey river this past weekend. Sure beats working.

Alicia and I decided to stop by the shit hole and meet up with Nick for a quick fix while we were out shopping for baby stuff on Saturday. The conditions weren’t great, but we managed a carp a piece before we had to run more errands. I was more excited to watch Alicia catch one than actually catching my own. If you haven’t been keeping up with the blog, I went fishing with Pete McDonald from Fishing Jones about two months ago. Unfortunately, Pete had to leave before he could net one of these smelly bastards (See this post). So, I’m pretty much putting this video up as a response from my wife officially calling Pete out.

PARENTAL ADVISORY-EXPLICIT LYRICS

My little guy. This fish has obviously been stuck in the lips before, and from the looks of it, it wasn’t a size 12 streamer hook.

How to Make Your Own Measure Net:

Tools needed:

Tape measure
Sharpie Marker
Sally Hansen Hard as Nails

Instructions:

Measure from the top of your net to the end of the handle and mark the handle in one inch increments with your marker. Mark the increments with the appropriate numbers and allow the ink to dry. Once the ink has dried, apply your hard as nails for a permanent finish. Be careful when applying the Hard as Nails, you don’t want to brush it on or even the dry ink will smear. Instead just blot the Hard as Nails on. Once the one side is dry you can measure from the bottom of the handle to the opening on the net on the opposite side. Same as before, measure in one inch increments and mark appropriately. Now you will have a net that is good for measuring small wild fish and your trophy catch.

The finished product.

My net goes from 19” to 30” on the large side.

It goes to 12” on the “wild” side. So although I can’t measure a fish from 13”-18”,  I can still measure the big boys and the little ones too. Plus, its a piece of gear I always have with me. Instead of saying, “Damn, I wish we could have measured that fish.”

Close up of the finished product.