A nice day on the creek!

[mtthwnvk]

For her 13th birthday my daughter asked for a fishing trip to the Catskills. I was happy to oblige, so we headed up to Esopus creek this morning.

Fishing was pretty decent in the morning at the usual public access spots, was really cool to see my kid land a few good ones. I think this might have been the first time she wanted to really fish for the fishing and not just because it was us hanging out, kinda neat.

Water was chilly enough to numb up the toes early in the morning, and some folks will be happy to know we saw a lot more rainbows (albeit, mostly young and small save for one large one I turned) than Browns. All in all a solid day on the river, got me a little excited for fall.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[flyman23]

Nice pictures. Always like to see kids catching fish.

 

[FIN-ITE 34]

What area of the Esopus did you fish? I haven't been up there in tens of years, but used to fish the Phoenicia to Big Indian stretch quite a bit. I can see on the sat photos that the river has had some drastic changes since I've been there.

 

[mtthwnvk]

What area of the Esopus did you fish? I haven't been up there in tens of years, but used to fish the Phoenicia to Big Indian stretch quite a bit. I can see on the sat photos that the river has had some drastic changes since I've been there.

I've fished it about 5 times in the passed year each time based around the Phoenecia area. This time we fished the Emerson section behind the resort and then the lower special regs section by the boiciville bridge. Some folks complain about it, but I always enjoy it. Always run into old timers who tell me how good it used to be. This time ran into a guy closer to my age (maybe early 40's) and he told me the biggest change was Irene - seems to be the story for most of northeast.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[FIN-ITE 34]

I've fished it about 5 times in the passed year each time based around the Phoenecia area. This time we fished the Emerson section behind the resort and then the lower special regs section by the boiciville bridge. Some folks complain about it, but I always enjoy it. Always run into old timers who tell me how good it used to be. This time ran into a guy closer to my age (maybe early 40's) and he told me the biggest change was Irene - seems to be the story for most of northeast.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

A gang of us would always spend opening day on the E. It was our annual "Old Guys vs. Young Guys" competition that included fishing and three bar room sports, pinball, pool and shuffle board bowling. We parked our campers behind Jeff's Forest Bar & Grill, which is now J. Roccos Steakhouse & Speakeasy. The parking lot was gravel and much larger than it is today, I guess a result of Irene. Jeff served breakfast, lunch and dinner, so we didn't have to go anywhere else except to visit all the other local bars in the valley. That was quite a hoot because we were like the swallows to Capistrano to the locals, they couldn't wait to have us return every April 1st.
We always managed a few really nice rainbows when the conditions were reasonable for that early opener. Another small stream we would do well in when the E was to high and dirty to fish was the Woodland Stream.
Well talking about this just got me a little depressed because just about all of the "old guys" are no longer with us and as I think about it, I am now considerably older that what the "old guys" were then..............

 

[mtthwnvk]

they couldn't wait to have us return every April 1st.
We always managed a few really nice rainbows when the conditions were reasonable for that early opener. Another small stream we would do well in when the E was to high and dirty to fish was the Woodland Stream.
Well talking about this just got me a little depressed because just about all of the "old guys" are no longer with us and as I think about it, I am now considerably older that what the "old guys" were then..............

Sounds like you have to restart the tradition. I'll meet you up there next April 1.