Nice Rainbow Trout Fly Fishing New Jersey

Fly fished as the sun nearly set, hoping for a hatch of some sort with the mild weather, a little disappointed that a slight breeze came up, and yet something of about size 18 or 20 flitted near the surface, off-white color suggesting small mayflies of some sort, but no trout rose, so I stuck to a Zug Bug and other beadheads.

I found my casting in great shape with size 16, but when I tried a size 6 Woolly Bugger, I soon began to wonder what had happened to my surge of confidence catching steelhead on the Salmon River last November. Well, wading out in the much larger casting arena of that river affords more control, if closer accuracy just wasn't a need anyway. Tonight I also worked very hard at trying to control drifts, finding that mending the fly line, for just one issue, is something I don't only need to practice more, but pick up a good book and read about. I would pass on the online videos before resorting to the local library, but may instead consult both.

I missed a strike, the trout flickering beneath the surface of the seam (in the upper right of the photo) like lightning, the line jerking forward for a second and halting before my reaction lifted it off the surface. Not too much later, I hooked a trout by dead drifting the Zug Bug through the main thrust of current. The fish leapt thrice, two to three feet high, and I felt I handled the fish well, a rainbow caught of over two pounds.

Persistently, I worked at that drift, fishing close to the seam on my side of the flow and the other, although getting any sort of controllable drift trying to work across the current seemed pretty futile. More to read about. And that didn't deter me from continuing to try.

Fishing the main current, I missed more hits than made me comfortable and finally decided to move upstream to the next pool. My first cast laid out nicely on the flat surface of the tailout, lightning striking again almost immediately, and I missed the fish. I cast again, got hung up by an overhang a more experienced fly caster would have noticed, snapped the nymph off, and then tried to tie on a parachute ant, finding that I had misplaced my collection of parachute Adams. (Nothing rose, but that flat water looked nice for a slow-drifting buggy piece of hair.) I put on my reading glasses in the gathering gloom and still couldn't get the 4X tippet end through the tie loop. Is 4X too thick for a size 16? Seems unlikely, but it's another problem to figure out.

So back to the Zug Bug, a nice size 10 or 12, and the first cast to the tailout resulted in a slam, a trout running zigzag, leaping.....off. Nice fish, over a pound-a-half. I cast again, hooked up, and caught a rainbow of about the same size before I fished the rest of the pool and I guess dusk had settled too deeply.    

Marble Mountain Ice Cave Warren County New Jersey

The Marble Mountain Ice Cave occupied my mind since this time last year, and I planed on hiking with my wife two weeks ago, diverted by necessities otherwise. The weather then cold and windy anyway, yesterday turned out to be a much better day. While walking our black Lab Sadie during a recent night, I realized we could take a roundabout way towards the Phillipsburg area by CR 512 from Bedminster, through Califon, and to the Ken Lockwood Gorge, thus giving me the opportunity to take some needed river photos with spring growth fairly minimal as yet, and also to show my wife where I want to teach her some fly fishing.

I thought we would just hang out near the trailhead accessible by Hoffman's Crossing Road, but once Patricia saw the opportunity, she wanted to walk back in, so we walked at least a half mile here altogether. Just a few of the photos I shot I've posted.

We accessed Interstate 78 by State Highway 31 and eventually rode onto CR 621, exiting U.S. 22 in Phillipsburg, the trail access parking coming into view quickly after about a mile. Marble Mountain in Warren County is a ridge flanking the Delaware River, the likes of which characterize the terrain all the way down to Lambertville and below. The trail gradient is pretty modest, but after hiking about a mile when we met with the orange trail to take us aside to the Ice Cave, we had ascended at least 300 vertical feet.

The Ice Cave is no natural cave, but the abandoned Fulmer Mine, active during the 19th century when tons of rich iron ore extracted remains something of a mystery, since no paper trail left behind for future historians tracks where it went to market. The New Jersey Highlands pocked here and there by such mines, most of the forest vanished into smelting furnaces, a massive project overall which included some copper and graphite mining among other minerals as well. How they hauled rock down off such ridges and mountains, I wonder.

Rather than turn around after our hike, I drove northward on CR 621 following railroad tracks and the river to the first right turn, a distance of five miles, perhaps. Eventually, we connected with CR 519, a road familiar to me. No GPS in my car, I hope this device never comes standard with any vehicle we buy. I like to use my sense of direction, not relying on maps, either. The county road I first became familiar with during the 1970's as a conduit between Hunterdon County's Locatong and Wickecheoke creeks, where we trout fished, 519 would have taken us back into Alpha next to Phillipsburg, so I turned left onto State Highway 57 and soon made a right onto CR 625, which took us through Stewartsville.

We enjoyed a nice view of Pohatcong Creek before getting onto Interstate 78.

Ice Cave information set in front of a big fire pit.