I miss the Ramapo! I know it's not the best river around, but was my local river for so long that I have a fondness of it. Looks like you did well! All on streamers?
Very nice, I'm up there a lot myself. Very muddy bottom in a lot of spots but plenty river to explore. Did you fish in NY or NJ?
Hey, sorry for late reply. My notifications need work!
I fish both, but more in NJ than NY. The NJ sections are easily accessible and they do a good job stocking. I've never seen evidence of large holdovers, but I could be wrong.
In NY, they actually stock 14" browns! But, the river is not as well managed and can have a fair amount of crap in the water. Still, I have seen evidence of very large holdover browns. It's just not a pretty river which is part of my reason for going to begin with.
We also have a problem with tributaries, that should be contributing cool/cold water to the river, but were dammed, creating shallow ponds that sit in the sun acting like solar collectors, and are now either contributing warm water, or water that's not as cold as it could be.That's a interesting point Rusty. I fish the NY part but I have tried North NJ a couple times. As far as NY goes I always thought the problems arose from all the old dams along the way that still hold water and slows the flow of the river. It's so silty that I've come across spots where you can sink up past your knee. Slow flow and silty river bottoms always equals no trout in my book.
That's a interesting point Rusty. I fish the NY part but I have tried North NJ a couple times. As far as NY goes I always thought the problems arose from all the old dams along the way that still hold water and slows the flow of the river. It's so silty that I've come across spots where you can sink up past your knee. Slow flow and silty river bottoms always equals no trout in my book.
If you try to check it out, you'll get chased or arrested, but there's a urban legend that the dam in "Sun Valley Farm" (Mahwah upstream from the Bear Swamp Bridge) creates a cool deep pool where monster trout lurk.Run of the river dams don't hold back water as they remain full pool 100% of the time. Instead, as Pete said, they create thermal issues, sediment issues, fish passage issues, etc. But they are not the same as flood control dams that actually get manipulated to release or hold back flows. Our dams are mostly remnants of days long gone by and were for unknown reasons maintained for a century or more by their owners for no purposes except that there was always a dam at those locations since early European settler days.
On a related topic, I know of a book being written about dam removals and their impacts on native fisheries (includes anadromous fish) with an emphasis on the northeast US which is seeing lots of obsolete dam removal projects. Not sure when the author will be publishing it, but Patagonia is funding its writing. I know because they interviewed me for it somewhat recently.
Unless there's been a very recent change....Pete, looks like that is DEP owned now. Can't be 100% sure as even the NJ tax maps show "Null" for ownership at the dam at the end of the lake. I assume that is where you meant? All other surrounding lands are NJDEP owned.
The Mahwah Museum tells us that Fred and Margaret Wehran. changed the name of the property from "Hazelwood" to “Sun Valley Farm.”Hello, You are talking about the Wearing(wrong spelling of the name). Back in the early 60's I drove for the Ramsey Taxi at night after work. A few times I had to go to Newark Airport to pick up the owner of said property. We got to talking a few times and he gave me permission to fish his property. He was really a very nice person. Bill the mailman