Thought I Got Snagged, Until the Trout Took Drag

Catching fall stockers from our rivers has never been easy for me. 

There've been only a couple of times the past two years when I caught three of them on an outing. I haven't really fished the fall stockers over the course of fall and winter until two years ago, but I did find they cooperate with a thorough approach, after I decided that would be with an ultralight spinning rod and a black marabou jig. 

I fly fish too. That's the only way I fished them in the fall for a while, though that amounted to one or two outings a season. I wasn't successful, besides having a nice one break off a Woolly Bugger. Spinning might be proxy for my fly rods. Maybe I'll switch out the spinning rod for my two-weight or more likely my five-weight. Maybe I'm just learning the rivers before I approach the trout in a more difficult way.

But the rivers are plenty difficult as is. A couple of game wardens checked on me at Three Bridges. They weren't happy with my black Lab, Loki, but for good reason. Loki's growl sounds like a lion; his bark is deep and loud. 

"Restrain your dog, in case someone else comes down," I was told. 

But before the man on my left who almost got his hand bitten, having attempted to pet Loki's head, had told me to do that, I asked about witness to any action of the fishing kind. 

"We saw some caught late in October," the other man said. "Not after that."

"I'm sure they're still a few laying around out there," I said.

"Yeah." 

I've caught river trout in February, which is a stretch from October. 

You can always count on some being somewhere. A week or so before Opening Day one year, the state hadn't stocked the North Branch Raritan's AT&T stretch yet. By studying the water, I saw no trout, until I spotted one about 18 inches long. The only trout I saw in the clear water. 

Some of these fall stockers probably holdover into the next fall, though it's true that a large number of them get taken the first week or so after stocking. After that first week, most of the fishermen quit on them, though. I saw no one else fishing today. 

I like the feeling of joy in barren solitude. Even when nothing gets caught, I know it might be possible to hook one, until I leave the river alone for the day. Time and again experience has proven it happens, but if you're not happy with one or two trout, stick to springtime's smaller fish. 

I'm even happy with a fish that throws the hook. 

At Three Bridges, I began by casting under the bridge. At one point, I got snagged, and I made my way upstream along the wall of the bridge to finally pull the jig free. All the while I called out to Loki, trying to reassure him. Even though he's a Lab, he doesn't swim, and he was out of my sight. Imagine had the two wardens come jaunting in on the scene when I was under that bridge! Loki would have gone mad. 

After I talked to the wardens, I held Loki by the leash and made my way upstream, to a range of water I think is about six feet deep; maybe it's only five. I fished it persistently, and once when I believed I'd got snagged, the great trout suddenly ploughed forward, bending the rod further and taking drag for a second. 

Trout in the River but None on the Hook