South Branch Holiday Weekend Report

[sqerl]

Quite the holiday weekend if I do say myself! After reading the KLG reports and the "North of" KLG reports, I knew it was my sworn civic duty to give the "South of" the KLG - although not the KLG - South Branch report...

Starting Saturday (5/24) afternoon, I hit up the South Branch, south of the KLG... Managed a small rock bass on a nymph after repeated attempts at enticing a take on a dry fly... Moving down stream, a spin caster was occupying a rather large hole with live bait and doing quite well... Undaunted, I crawled through and over underbrush to get to the next decently sized hole to attempt fate. One hit on the nymph after working the pool from top to bottom was all the she would produce. Switched back to the spinner dry in an effort to get something to surface... Luck was with me as a beautiful 14" wild brown was brought to hand and released... The red dots on her were spectacular. Its a shame I left the camera at home for this trip.
Time was short so it was back home after that...

Sunday (5/25) afternoon I was even further south on the South Branch and was greeted by a couple of spin casters at a stocking point lamenting their fate that the trout were only hitting power bait. I decided to continue walking south to hit various pockets with my caddis dry and leave the power baiters behind me. After a small foot race to get downstream before another spin caster that entered the stream from the opposite side, I found myself working that dry with no luck at all. I must've walked a good 1/2 mile or so down stream with only one 4" chub as the fruit of my labor.
For the walk back to the car, I put a nymph on tried all the same pockets.
... the final count before I got back to the stocking point?
1 brook, 1 brown and 2 rainbow... I hit for the cycle for the 2nd time this year! All fish caught so far were in the 12"-14" range.. and the one rainbow refused to stay in the water.. WOW, it would not stop jumping.. reminded me of a small brown at the KLG a few weeks earlier... Those trout should have their own Olympic high jump event!

Arriving back at the stocking point, with the power-baiters gone, I thought I'd try fishing for the stocked trout that would only hit power bait... a dozen or so casts with my nymph produced nothing... For giggles, I tied on that caddis dry that didn't work earlier... I left after landing 6 stocked brown trout in 20 minutes... all in the 10" - 12" range.... besides, I could barely recognize the fly i was using as it was battered beyond recognition.

Monday (5/26) I woke with the itch to catch more fish.. I figured, no man in their right mind would wake up at 6:30am on a holiday... (I guess that would explain a few things, no?) So at 6:30AM, I headed out to the spot I left the previous evening to see if it was a fluke and started tossing the same fly at the night before.... With fish surfacing all around and no hits, the battle weary fly was retired and another deer hair pattern was pulled.. this one a little smaller and with a light brown body as opposed to green...

I arrived home 1 1/2 hours after I had left and done with fishing for the weekend. Final count - 5 stockies, all brown trout, 10"-12"... with many looks and a few chases that never committed to taking the fly... and one long distance release on a tiny sunfish...

So my 3 day total in the SBr, south of the KLG (and no, not the club property, much further south of that...)
1 brook
2 rainbow
14 brown
1 rock bass
1 sunfish

The Brook and a couple of the brown may have been wild as they were in perfect condition and beautiful. The brown trout stockies were obvious and the rainbow I would just assume to be stockies as I haven't seen or heard of wild rainbow in the SBr... especially in the 10"-12" size. Things might be different in the SBr north of Califon.
and best of all, all flies used were hand tied by yours truly!

Couldn't have asked for better weather for the holiday weekend.. now its back to house chores to pay off the debt for getting out 3 days in a row!!