Fishing - TR -- Big Flat Brook -- New Jersey (Long-ish)

Who says New Jersey is ugly? Not me, that's for sure.

BFB is a 9 or so mile long stretch of fly fishing only, stocked water in the
extreme NE corner of NJ. Closest "major" town would be Milford, PA.
Beautiful small stream. Millions of fish. Picky little *******s, but there's
a lot of them.

The brook is simply gorgeous. Just outside the Delaware Water Gap, it's a
big piece of real estate. I'd never guess that this was New Jersey. Guess
that shows the image most folks have of NJ. My wife looked at the pics and
said -- "Wow, that looks peaceful". I s'pose that's about the best
description. Sounds from the riffles, birds singing, hawks soaring, the
occassional turkey gobbling (or whatever you call that weird noise they
make), not many people, and lots of trout.

I had tied up a buncha flies that the hatch chart calls for -- March Browns,
Olive Caddis, PMD, and a new one to me, the Grey Fox. Took a bit of time to
find that one on line.

Getting there is a bit of an adventure -- get a copy of the county map. The
"official" state road map sucks.

Anyway -- the fishing...

Day one -- Meandered down the creekside until I saw some promising water
(read: full of rising fish). Looked around and saw the honey pool. Looks
like it must be where the hatchery truck dumped the fish a few weeks
earlier. Had to be at least a hundred fish in that pool. So I get in a bit
upstream and start casting. Tied on a 14 IOBO humpy (olive). Drifted it over
that pool a few times. Couple rises, but no takers. Backed off a bit and
started the drift. The stream moves fairly slowly in the area of that pool,
so I was able to easily feed line to match the drift speed. Kept it pretty
much dead. First strike. Missed him. Dammit. Tug, tug, nothing. ****. Repeat
drift. Nothing. Toss the fly to the other side of the creek. Got a rise and
a take. Didn't lose this one. Brought in an 8 or 9 inch brownie. Nice
healthy fish. Great fight on my short 4 weight. My brother had the camera,
so no pic. He swam off.

It's such a great feeling to get the first fish of a trip. Gets the "monkey"
off your back. The rest of the trip is just gravy now.

Especially since it was the first trout I'd taken on a fly I tied. What a
rush.

A few more casts yielded nothing, so I decided to vary the menu. Tied on a
16 March Brown. After a few casts, I got another brownie, about the same
size, mebbe a bit smaller. He swam off, too. Great looking fish. No pics of
this one either -- Dave was about two hundred yards upstream. Two fish in
about an hour. Not bad, me thinks. Of course, as soon as I thought that, it
stopped. 45 minutes of nothing made me decide to try a nymph.

Tied on a 12 Tom's Working Nymph (from the danica.com site). No indicator as
the water is reasonably calm and gin clear. Tossed it around in that pool.
Nothing for a bit, until I felt a huge tug. Stripped some line, then
nothing. ****, again. That pool had fish in every size -- from the smolts to
as long as your arm. This was one of the latter. Drives ya nuts.

Missed another smaller one as the afternoon hatch started coming off.

Dave hadn't gotten anything and was a bit frustrated when I told him of my
luck. So we switched spots for a bit. He still got nothing.

Decided it was dinner time, so we packed up and went to Milford. Got a great
steak sandwich at a local place. Yum. Place was called Apple Valley
something or another. Kind of a mini-mall (in the small town,
kitchy-tourist-trap sense). Never had a steak sandwich that actually had a
one-inch thick steak. Damed fine for the money (8 bucks).

Picked up a case of a regional brew (Yeungling, I think it's spelled), went
back to the hotel and pretty much got smashed.

Hit the river the next morning with one hell of a headache and a belly full
of Perkins' french toast. I had drempt of that pool all night, so guess
where I went....

Tied on a 14 Grey Fox and started casting. Got one right away. Nice rise and
take. Dave still had the camera, so no pic. Got the camera from Dave and
resumed fishing. Another one, and this time a pic. Another monkey off my
back -- I can prove to my wife I was fishing, not gambling in Atlantic City.

Nothing for a few minutes , so I switched up to a 14 Olive CDC and Elk.
Whammo. Another nice brownie. Biggest one I landed the whole trip. Wth a
pic.

Decided I'd beaten this pool to death, so I went upstream for a while.
Didn't see any fish, but decided to explore the brook a little. Absolutely
beautiful stretch of water. Kept having to tell myself that this was New
Jersey, not rural Wisconsin.

Time to pack up. Drove to Philly to get my flight back to Chicago. The plane
pushed back 30 minutes late, waited on the tarmac an hour and half to take
off, flew to Midway, circled, was low on fuel, so we got diverted to
Cleveland. Got gas and went home. Landed at Midway at about 3:30. Should
have gotten in about 10:15.

At least I got some fish.

Pics are he

http://community.webshots.com/album/349283878CSLcGv

Dan

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