Near Where George Washington Staged his Army

Nice to be back. 

First I came with both the newly owned fly rod and the ultralight I built from a St. Croix blank. I got in the river and threw a little Rapala Countdown, the rod catapulting it very far on six-pound mono. The situation did not feel right for catches. And there were almost a dozen others and one trout caught. Word is, they got stocked yesterday.

I got out of the river and went home until sunset neared. I live close enough to walk there if I want. 

Then I returned with my fly rod. Began under the exit bridge. I heard my friend Brenden calling me from downstream. He was fly casting. I went downstream, crossed the river, and joined him.

We talked and talked. When the sun had set, the guy fly casting upstream a little asked if I were Bruce Litton. He knew me from the blog. I asked him for his name. Doug fished, if I rightly recall, a pheasant tail, and definitely an egg fly, under an indicator. It went down and he hooked up, but he lost the fish. We also call it the Magic Hour because two guys downstream of us landed trout on plugs. I got hit and had one on half a second. I used a big blue-purple nymph with four white rubber legs just trying to irk a hit. Besides that one hit I got, I caught a red-breasted sunfish. 

Maybe three weeks ago, I wrote Bedminster's mayor about the cones that have been gone a week or so. Our boys were in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and it was nice to catch up with him a little. I believe wild access is a sacred value in America. It took me some doing to come back home to this opinion when I was in my early 30's, because I had accepted much of Ayn Rand's philosophy. But if you want to live in a country where everything is privatized--go to Britain. You'll have a real hard time accessing a river there. We fought the British to win our own nation. I own a book named Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, which makes a strong point of how Russian she remained. Given her Russian character, one might suppose she didn't really understand Americans. I certainly understood the sacredness of access from my boyhood, so that remained with me until I began waking up when I was about 32 and fished the Middle Brook--near where George Washington staged his army. 

North Branch Raritan at Bedminster