Three Fall Rainbow Trout

Mark uses a centerpin rod and reel, allowing his float to navigate into pockets and around boulders, sometimes floating a hundred feet or more downstream of where he stands. He keeps the reel set on freespool until a trout comes to the net, when he engages the clicker.  When he moves on to position elsewhere on the river, he engages the bear claw, which locks the reel so the rig doesn't come loose as he walks. Free-spooling a slip float is the technique, fingers ready to immediately hold the reel in place so the hook gets set.

He caught two trout on Blue Goo egg sacks he bought while fishing the Oswego River in New York recently. He also ties his own sacks. Sometimes he uses a single salmon egg, a nighcrawler, a pink Gulp worm, or a plastic bead. A third trout for him today came on a single pink Mike's Atlas Shrimp egg. All three were about 14, maybe 15 inches long. The rig is identical to a steelhead rig. A half dozen or so split shots trail down the line in descending order by weight. A plastic bead sits underneath the float, one at the top between the float and a stopper. He buys the beads at Michael's. Much less expensive than at tackle shops or online.

I fly cast a black and a copper woolly bugger, catching nothing and getting no hits.

I got to see some more of New Jersey, traveling roads familiar to me elsewhere, but not where I drove today. I had made a left where I was supposed to go right, putting more than 10 extra miles on my odometer, but now I've seen countryside I might never have seen. It's not a good thing to take too much for granted.  The river is always there, but the fox we saw was an event not quite like any other involving a fox we'll see.

Mark told me about a tree in the river no longer there, too. It created an eddy and bowled out the bottom a bit. The river's always becoming a new version of itself.  

Chub

NJ Trout