Salvelinus
New member
First, the fishing was great on Sunday, with 20+ fish landed in an afternoon and evening of fishing. Mostly stonefly nymphs and some soft hackles at dusk when fish were chasing emerging nymphs. Monday, the creek muddied up substantially, whether from the portal or a thunderstorm up a trib or both, but the fishing fell off quite a bit. In the murky water, there was substantial feeding on small emergents in slow water, but I couldn't get it figured (any advice?).
On catch and release, I'm mixed on whether Phoenicia downstream should be C and R. This weekend I met two NJ bait fisherman that said they caught 150-175 trout over the previous 2 days, all on mealworms and worms. Obviously they released most of them...but how many were deep-hooked, etc.? There are some very good bait fisherman on the creek who catch a lot of fish, keep some. I don't know how much impact the meat fishing has.
I guess I'd rather see a fly-fishing only zone from, say, the parking lot downstream of Emerson, where the flood protection starts down to the old RR bridge. That way campers could still keep fish up by Phoenicia and Woodland Valley, and bait guys could still fish the big pools down low. But protect a nice stretch in the middle where you have to do a little bit of hiking anyway to get to sweet spots for fly-fishing and C and R. I bet some really nice wild fish would grow big in there.
On the other hand, there are a lot of fish per foot of water in the Esopus, and maybe it needs a little thinning. Fish don't grow big there, mainly because hatches are sporadic, water is often muddy, and competition for aquatics is intense. Worms are big pieces of steak to Esopus trout and a bait fisherman can do really well there. Maybe some more harvest should be encouraged ?! I wonder what the DEC found with their telemetry study.
Anyway, just looking for other opinions.
On catch and release, I'm mixed on whether Phoenicia downstream should be C and R. This weekend I met two NJ bait fisherman that said they caught 150-175 trout over the previous 2 days, all on mealworms and worms. Obviously they released most of them...but how many were deep-hooked, etc.? There are some very good bait fisherman on the creek who catch a lot of fish, keep some. I don't know how much impact the meat fishing has.
I guess I'd rather see a fly-fishing only zone from, say, the parking lot downstream of Emerson, where the flood protection starts down to the old RR bridge. That way campers could still keep fish up by Phoenicia and Woodland Valley, and bait guys could still fish the big pools down low. But protect a nice stretch in the middle where you have to do a little bit of hiking anyway to get to sweet spots for fly-fishing and C and R. I bet some really nice wild fish would grow big in there.
On the other hand, there are a lot of fish per foot of water in the Esopus, and maybe it needs a little thinning. Fish don't grow big there, mainly because hatches are sporadic, water is often muddy, and competition for aquatics is intense. Worms are big pieces of steak to Esopus trout and a bait fisherman can do really well there. Maybe some more harvest should be encouraged ?! I wonder what the DEC found with their telemetry study.
Anyway, just looking for other opinions.