North Branch Raritan River AT&T Stretch with Salmon Eggs Microlight Spinning

 You can barely see riffles in the upper third of this wide angle shot. Not all the water is slow near the bridges.

Mike and Phil got here and left before I came, also fishing upstream, Mike later telling me they caught five, me figuring that in any case it's worth the time out, though other than having heard their report I came with blind expectations, not really prepared in the mental sense, though once I got underway, catching a trout underneath the upstream bridge in minutes, water moving moderately there, I began in solitude to work my way down into experience, winding down in a way that really mattered.

In the deep water upstream of the downstream bridge by 20 yards or so, I let the egg drift along the outside edge towards shallows a few times, then followed through on a prompt to work it closer to me, into the belly of that hole, feeling the tug, swinging back without a thought and playing another rainbow to my hand.

Downstream of that bridge, fast water. There's a nice seam and some relatively slow turbulence. I lifted a rainbow that got off on the second try, saw another turn on an egg soon after, lost yet another, and finally hooked up solidly a few paces further down, taking that fish for dinner along with the two previous. The fourth trout, even further down and hitting in full current, I intentionally let get off the hook after bringing it onto gravel, three enough for dinner between my wife and I.

I tried the upper bridge and slow water below thereafter, dreaming of a good-size trout like a rainbow I encountered in these stretches three years ago and very well remember, even though it was no more than 16 inches long. That memory brought me back home to this stretch and these runs as nothing else could have. Before this feeling came, I noticed the two cut stumps in the water immediately upstream of the downstream bridge, having viewed just yesterday a photograph I shot of them by wading out and standing behind them, how they have rotted out so much during the past three years as to have lost all that formal presence they had, letting that go and shooting sunset light on trees, though I'm keeping these photos that feature some interesting light.

And then I exercised my last casts, the darkness of water flowing a little high and though not murky, brown and blackish almost as if tannic during the fall, though it wasn't that but just the quality of its clarity hiding the bottom, yet perfectly clean enough to fish pale eggs.

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