Tried the New Lamington River Pool and Upstream

Plans were to maybe fish a private lake for big bass, but that depended on the wind. Since wind was right for a deer hunt, Brian did that instead. I asked him where he would suggest I fish today, and he came up with two really good options, but I felt stuck on checking out the North Branch some five or six miles from home. When Trish and I drove home from a hike Sunday a week ago, I noticed two parking areas where I had never fished the river before. 

Can't let that go without at least checking it out. 

The first spot had a trail leading angularly down what otherwise is a very steep bank with a vertical elevation of about 50 feet. I got down near the water, but I found the river all but inaccessible. Mind you, I'm suffering from cataracts and will go in for surgery in December, so my depth perception is not good right now. Oddly, I find no difficulty driving, but walking a trail is another matter, and when it comes to descending a sharply steep six to eight feet to the river itself--forget it. I did scope out the stretch and it seemed deep enough to hold bass. I know a similar stretch upstream from there, maybe four feet at the deepest, and we used to catch bass left and right from it. 

I drove on to the next turn off. Vertical elevation there is only 20 or 25 at most. Access is definitely more doable, but the stretch impressed me as too shallow, about two feet. I was in no mood and really in no shape to put on my waders and wading boots to cover water and ground looking for deeper water up or downstream. I'm not at all incapacitated, but I might feel more willing to search the river during the summer. Fall has definitely come since last I walked along the South Branch with my wife and a friend little more than a week ago.

I drove elsewhere in the region looking for access, and instead of finding more, I ended up fishing the Lamington River where TroutScapes LLC removed the wing dam and created a nice pool. I did get a good tap on my Senko there, and then I tried upstream, where I started getting some pickups that could have been small bass or larger sunfish. 

At one point, I got snagged, and the violence of trying to work the hook free loosened the ceramic ring in my tip guide. It went down the line, presumably to the eye of the snagged hook. I made my way further upstream--an exercise that proved my steadiness of foot by my walking an edge of rock outcropping allowing my feet no more space than the width of my boots--hoping to free that hook by getting ahead of it, when it broke off all too easily. A couple of years ago, I lent the rod to a guest who reeled a barrel swivel against that ring, breaking it loose. I glued it back in place and that worked well until today. Before that hook broke off and the ring was lost, I had realized I was fishing the very same stretch of the Lamington where I first used the rod--my very favorite rod, a five-and-a-half-foot St. Croix medium power--in the summer of 2000. On that day more than 21 years ago, I caught a single smallmouth bass from the stretch.

Is the rod--as is, without compromising its length and flex--a total loss? Did it really come full circle like that, or can I simply heat the tip guide, remove it with pliers, and put a new one on? That all depends on whether St. Croix affixed the tip so it is removable, or glued it on there so it won't come off without destroying the rod's tip section. I'm going to have Fairfield Tackle heat it and find out. I already tried asking St. Croix about getting a tip guide, and since I got no answer from them, I'm not going to waste my time at that any further.