I spent the last week in NYC on business, but managed to get out for a couple days fishing with some good friends. The first day we chased stripers with Capt. Ken Jones, out of Gateway Marina in Brooklyn. We headed out into the Atlantic, where Ken had luck all week chasing birds (and stripers). As is the case with most fishing situations… we should have been there yesterday. The wind had changed and the fish and bait were scattered across miles of featureless 30-foot deep shoreline. We did find a few pods of working birds, and just as the crew was giving up hope, I hooked up with a fish. I was breaking in my friend’s Sage Xi3 9wt, and tied into a 25″ striped bass on an intermediate shooting head and a white clouser minnow.
Soon after, we headed back into Jamaica Bay, casting to structure as huge jetliners landed and took off from JFK airport. I hooked up with a small bluefish, but we couldn’t find the rest of the school. Success that day depended on one thing — the two hand strip retrieve. The bottom line, when fishing in big water stripping flies, you need to stick that rod in your arm pit and strip with both hands. Not for speed, though sometimes you need that too, but it is important to keep tight to your fly. If you strip with two hands on your fly line, you will catch more fish.
The next day, we piled into my friend Matt Z’s truck and headed upstate to the Delaware River. We stopped in at the Catskill Fly Shop, and proceeded to get a raft of shit from the proprietor’s wife when I asked about wader rental. “But I called two days ago, and the guy one the phone told me it was no problem,” I said. “Do I know you? You don’t look like a regular customer,” she said, getting in my face and knocking me back on my heels. Why would that matter if you have our credit cards? Why would a regular customer rent waders? I eventually convinced her that we were responsible enough to rent waders to, while the guy I’m sure I talked to hid behind the counter and shrugged. We proceeded to spend about a hundred bucks on tiny tippet material, unfloatable dry flies tied by the owner, and day licenses. It’s not how I’d run a fly shop, but she still got our cash and I got a kick out of it. Welcome to New York.
We headed out to the West Branch of the Delaware River, and plied the flat calm currents with our East Coast March Brown patterns. There were a few huge mayflies around, along with a good medium-sized caddis hatch. Brown Trout were rising sporadically, and we cast to them, feeding the flies downstream to them so they wouldn’t see the leader material. These are picky fish, and they see a lot of imitations. Crazy flat water with nearly zero surface disturbance makes it tough to fool these educated fish. Eventually, we left for a much cooler location — the mainstem of the Delaware River along the PA/NY border. This looked a lot more like a trout river, and had riffles and boulders, and really big fish. We did hook up as evening brought a massive caddis hatch but couldn’t bring a fish to hand. Rising fish all over us, and nothing to show for it. Aside from some well-deserved humility.
We had tough fishing both days, but NYC is a tough place. And the fish are there.
-MS
