West Branch & the 75

I was up there this past week and ended up being quoted in the NY state report on the fishing quality in the new no-kill section. I have taken bigger fish but never a larger fish in the rush of fast deep pocket water. The highlight in the pocket water was a 19" brown struck mid river with all the associated turbulance of fast pocket water. This was a beast who bent the hook to near ruin and failure.

 

I also managed to find and fish 2 new brooks one of which was prolific including a 17"+ brown (had to be stocked). The other one held a Heritage Strain of natives, one which went a full 16" and was the beast this side of Labrador.

 

Finally getting timing down to the point where i could cram all this into my 2-3 solo personal days a year and culminate all this with ending on a flat riffle that holds a ludicrous number of fish on the ride home.

I hit the riffle at 5 pm. The water was barely wadeable, 3 days eirlier I could not even drop in along the margin. I started with a a #12 puffy EHC. Twenty+ fish later i switched to a Picket Fence and went with out a bump for about 6-8 minutes. I quickly switched to an Ausable Wulff (tied by Fran himself). After about 50+ fish tried to get a proxy on the count (although i knew this would be a night for the books, i find it hard to keep count after 5 or 6 fish anyway). So i counted 12 fish in a 20 minute period and this seemed about right compared to the every cast or every other cast catch rate. Yes i have read John and others who say it is not possible... Well i have nothing to prove and no one really cares but over the 4 hours this rate works out to about 150 fish, even if you discount the liar factor and 8 minute fishless period well from 5-9 i took well over 100 trout mostly rainbows (about 6 to 1 over browns) and 1 Chub. most fish were in the 12-14" range but I also had one decent fish a brown that went about 17".

The night was big by any standard and yes i could have been more like Nick Lyons and left afteran hour (we don't need to catch them all) but i stayed and likely would stillbe on the river now (but i "had to go" after 4 hours, and yes i bagged it out).

The highlight was not the catching, but rather "knowing" that it was going to happen like the old guy in "Old Guys", i knew this day, weather, temperature, timing and water level was going to hit big and planed to be there at zero hour and that was fun.

June is a magic month up north, this trip made up (almost) for only being out 3 days this year.