fishin' report - long

[DJ]

Over slept this weekend so instead of the raritan, I headed to the Stony Brook. When I got there I saw a spin fisherman in the spot I wanted .... damn. So I started further down stream nymphing. I wanted to do three things. 1. catch atrout! 2. figure out if there were warm water opportunites (i.e. bream) and 3. It looks like smallie water so I wanted to see it close up.

1. So I after nymphing in a riffle without success, I started moving up stream with a bugger. I stood in the exact spot the spin fisher was in not 20 minutes earlier. Behind him was a log from which I pulled out three trout (my first!!!!)

2. In that hole with the trout, I got 4 small green sunfish and about 4 small rock bass from that one area about 10 yards by 5 yards! Incredible. I waded up stream to a shollow riffle and pulled a couple more rockbass on down side of the riffle and then about 5 more around the bridge above it...... see a pattern? Rockfish seemed the predominate species.

3. As for the smallies (my number one fave fish).... It looked like smallie water: clear, rocky with a hard bottom lots of shade and minnows everywhere with everystep!!!!! No matter how slowly you moved you could not help but see them everywhere! But I saw no evidence of bass. I am 100% positive there are LM bass there post spawn as this feeds into Carngie lake. This raises a couple of questions I'd like an answers to.... is it possible for smallies to be on the spawn and just hunkered down on the beds in some pool? When do bass/sunfish in general spawn up here?

 

[Bevans]

I live about 5 minutes from the Stony Brook, in Hopewell, and so fish it more often than other places, on the way to pick up kids from school, etc... Your comment on the sunfish is absolutely right — it's the predominant species I've come across. They get stuck in the few pools that are left come summertime, which makes for a good outing with 4 year olds. No question where to throw your line. But I have also caught smallmouth in there, and on one occassion a surprisingly large one. Were you down near ETS, off Carter Road? I usually fish further upstream, where there's a huge, huge crayfish population. Wonder if you saw the same. I usually throw wooly-buggers, but have often thought that a crayfish pattern would work wonders there.

 

[DJ]

You just made my day! The smallmouth part especially. The way it looked and and the forage fish I couldn't imagine there being stocked trout and sunfish only. I am in princeton and was looking for a fun small stream I can go wet line for smallies, LM and panfish on occasion. I was actually a ways downstream off of Quaker bridge accross from the farm near the canal. I have driven up Carters/Rosedale and that area under the bridge behind ETS is what got me dreamin. As i'm sure you know, there is little more fun than panfish on the fly in the summer. A guranteed hit every day!

BTW: I was throwing a small probably size 6 brown/olive wieghted wooly bugger which probably did look somewhat like a crawfish when I let drift. Next time you head out drop a line and maybe we can test out the crawfish theory.

 

[Bevans]

DJ,

Have you tried Lake Carnegie itself? I keep thinking that it would be a good, local lake for smallmouth... lots of cover, maybe a good place to fish poppers; but also that a small boat or canoe would make it much easier to fish.

 

[Unregistered]

I intend to try Carnegie. Mid Atlantic Game and Fish reports that Carnegie is one the best Bass lakes in NJ! However, I looked at the NJ fish and game website and it says there are no smallmouth in carnegie. Which makes sense because it is very shallow. However, I caught a smallmouth on the millstone near blackwells mill last year and you caught one in stony brook... so if those two rivers make up carnegie it standds toreason there might be a couple atleast during the cooler wether, right? I don't know. I just read that large mouths prefer shallow warm water (carnegie) with soft bottoms while smallmouths like clear cooler deep rocky lakes or clear rocky strams with hard bottms. If you get a chnace check that web

 

[hondo]

Hey guys

If your looking for smallies try the Neshanic River southwest of Flemington in southern Hunterdon County. I have not been there in a few years but as I remember the place was loaded.

 

[Dave B.]

Hondo and Bevans, you're both right on the respective streams. They both have smallies. The biggest problem right now is they both got hit HARD by last years drought.
Bevans, if you checked Stony Brook from Pennington to the ETS area last year you know it was nothing more than a few tepid pools connected by a 2 inch deep trickle of water.
As for the Neshanic, from above Manners road down through Rainbow Hill and past Black Point-Montgomery Rd it was basically the same. The only plus is the Neshanic has more and deeper pools to hold the fish and recieves much less pressure than Stony Brook. I've no doubt both streams will recover, but things may be a bit slow for this year at least.
One other area you guys may want to try is the Millstone below Carnegie lake from the Kingston area on down. Used to have good smallie pops and being a larger stream would be better buffered against drought mortality.
'Course, as stated above, there's always the good old SBR. Always has plenty of smallies. Also might want to check out the lower NBR. Used to be good smallie water with a slight mix of holdover trout.
When all else fails, hit the Delaware! Good Luck!

 

[DJ]

Great thread! thanks for the info. Out of convenience I'll be trying the millstone, neshanic and stony brook when I can't make it to the raritan. That said, went out for a bit on the millstone near blackwells mill wed. evening for about an hour and a half. No smallies. I think they are bedding so I won't even target them or try to find them. Instead I hooked three nice pickeral and a really nice robin. The last pickeral was a beauty 20+", but a lil' skinny with a big head. Guess he's just starting to fatten up. As I took a picture, he bit me. It was ugly three deep puntcure wounds and a really deep cut across the thumb that bled forever! I was in shock, but have new found respect. Those things fight hard and bite harder!!!!!

 

[Bevans]

That's very interesting to hear about the pickeral; I cross over the Millstone right near where you must have been fishing on my way to work. I've only fished the Millstone once, near Rocky Hill one morning last summer. The drought certainly didn't help conditions, but I was turned off by how muddy and slack the water was. Didn't stay long. As low as the water was, the Stony Brook was better.

Your wounds remind me of a time when I was about 10 and wanted to get the teeth of a northern pike to make what I thought would be a cool Indian necklace. It was in Michigan. My grandfather, who was cleaning the fish, which was huge as I remember it, had taken off the head. Well, I saw the head there on the side of the sink, severed from its body and with its mouth open, and decided it would be safe to reach up and pry a tooth out. Big mistake. The minute my thumb got in that mouth, it chomped down. I panicked, started screaming and shaking the head all around the kitchen. It had torn most of the skin off my thumb by the time I flopped it off onto to the floor.