Catskill Mountain Man
Explore, and implore to explore
Oh jesus it's been friggin 5 years since this happened... man the time flys.
I got myself a job that I always kind of wanted, some of you may remember the story.
I lifeguarded for 4 years every summer because the job I have now's (of which I now manage) work would fall off every summer. I was doing research about maybe working as trail maintenance for NY/NJ trail conference or something different that lifeguarding a community pool. I found that NYS was desperately searching for lifeguards for its state camp grounds. Luckily I passed all tests and requirements after 2 months of irregular tests and 1 big physical test.
When the users here found out I got the job they were very excited. One user even sent me like 70 flies in the mail, if you're reading this now THANK YOU!!! I still have a few!
I was blessed to be able to select little pond camp ground in lew beach, ny. The campground's driveway goes over the upper beaverkill's club water near the wulff flyfishing school. Not gonna lie I snuck under the bridge a few times and fished briefly before dark. Never caught anything though..
I was in the heart of 4 watersheds that were all minuets away. The sink, esopus, bk, willow. I flyfished everyday after work and even was allowed to fly fish during work if no one was in the water (which was frequent)
One day I decided to hit the esopus. I drove over the major passes and was on the side of rt 28 gearing up in 30 mins. I decided to pull over next to another fly fisherman who was also just gearing up. We geared up along side one another silently and both scanned the stream making small talk about what and how we were going to fish.
The guy turns to me and says "Wait a minuet, I recognize you YOU'RE CMM!". I abashedly admitted and he claimed that he loved my posts.
For some of you that complain about me berating others now, you have no idea how erratic I was back then. "GRRRRR stay off MY neversink" or "Stay away from the neversink there's a monster in there that loves to eat New Jersieans and city folk" were common posts.
The guys username was Allen (if i remember correctly) and I dont believe he directly used this site but lurked. Also I reached out to an Allen on the forums in the past and he said "It wasn't me" I had his number and he invited me to fish again but I lost that phone.
We fished until dusk and I bet him that I could catch more fish than he could. He told me about the legendary esopus rainbow fishing (which is apparently the best wild rainbow fishing east of the mississippi) and how the experience was being ruined buy the state overstocking 9" dumb browns who would take your fly in an instant. This is a fact I still know and tell others about today.
Anyway we fished for 2-3 hours and I ended up landed 3-4 9" browns. He caught nothing but I suspect he was going for the big wild rainbows.
It was a learning experience that I used to better my understanding of the esopus and ended up going back and catching some awesome feisty large rainbows at cemetery pool.
This was just an interesting story I wanted to tell
I hope all is well with everyone
I got myself a job that I always kind of wanted, some of you may remember the story.
I lifeguarded for 4 years every summer because the job I have now's (of which I now manage) work would fall off every summer. I was doing research about maybe working as trail maintenance for NY/NJ trail conference or something different that lifeguarding a community pool. I found that NYS was desperately searching for lifeguards for its state camp grounds. Luckily I passed all tests and requirements after 2 months of irregular tests and 1 big physical test.
When the users here found out I got the job they were very excited. One user even sent me like 70 flies in the mail, if you're reading this now THANK YOU!!! I still have a few!
I was blessed to be able to select little pond camp ground in lew beach, ny. The campground's driveway goes over the upper beaverkill's club water near the wulff flyfishing school. Not gonna lie I snuck under the bridge a few times and fished briefly before dark. Never caught anything though..
I was in the heart of 4 watersheds that were all minuets away. The sink, esopus, bk, willow. I flyfished everyday after work and even was allowed to fly fish during work if no one was in the water (which was frequent)
One day I decided to hit the esopus. I drove over the major passes and was on the side of rt 28 gearing up in 30 mins. I decided to pull over next to another fly fisherman who was also just gearing up. We geared up along side one another silently and both scanned the stream making small talk about what and how we were going to fish.
The guy turns to me and says "Wait a minuet, I recognize you YOU'RE CMM!". I abashedly admitted and he claimed that he loved my posts.
For some of you that complain about me berating others now, you have no idea how erratic I was back then. "GRRRRR stay off MY neversink" or "Stay away from the neversink there's a monster in there that loves to eat New Jersieans and city folk" were common posts.
The guys username was Allen (if i remember correctly) and I dont believe he directly used this site but lurked. Also I reached out to an Allen on the forums in the past and he said "It wasn't me" I had his number and he invited me to fish again but I lost that phone.
We fished until dusk and I bet him that I could catch more fish than he could. He told me about the legendary esopus rainbow fishing (which is apparently the best wild rainbow fishing east of the mississippi) and how the experience was being ruined buy the state overstocking 9" dumb browns who would take your fly in an instant. This is a fact I still know and tell others about today.
Anyway we fished for 2-3 hours and I ended up landed 3-4 9" browns. He caught nothing but I suspect he was going for the big wild rainbows.
It was a learning experience that I used to better my understanding of the esopus and ended up going back and catching some awesome feisty large rainbows at cemetery pool.
This was just an interesting story I wanted to tell
I hope all is well with everyone
