Words: Stephen Sautner 2021-11-16 08:51:07
Tim Mahoney makes his way up the banks of Big Flat Brook in Sussex County, NJ, on an extremely cold day—below freezing to be exact. “We would fish for about 30 minutes, go back to the car and warm up, then return to fishing for 30 more—the process repeated ad nauseum.” Photo: Rob Yaskovic It snowed again last Thursday, adding another five or six inches to the 20 already on the ground. Then by Sunday, the late February sun dusted itself off and icicles began to drip, drip, drip. The thermometer outside read 35 degrees. I convinced myself this was, in fact, almost 40, so I grabbed my gear and headed out. I chose a small, overlooked wild trout stream that straddles the frontier between hardcore New Jersey suburbia and its remnant woodlands. At a dead-end road adjacent to a small county park, I parked and tugged on waders and traversed an enormous pile of snow left behind by the town plow. Someone had snowshoed here recently, so I followed their tracks into the woods—it beat trudging through untrammeled knee-deep snow. After a while, they merged with a cross-country skier’s trail, which eventually deposited me at a sharp bend in the stream. A 10-foot-wide ribbon of dark water babbled through an otherwise silent snowscape. The creek ran low and clear; most of its flow remained locked up in the drifts around me. For the first quarter mile, I had one sharp pluck on a weighted bugger drifted through a pocket, but nothing else. When I came to a slower, deeper pool with a lazy bubble line moseying into a tailout I stopped and watched. A few early brown stoneflies and midges wandered on the snow along the banks and dark specks drifted in the film. And then, by God, a trout rose. I hunched into stealth mode. The trout rose again, pushing a little water. Decent fish. What had begun as a casual afternoon slinging junk had suddenly gotten serious. I clipped off the streamer and retied with a size-20 Adams. Staying low, I slowly approached the pool and carefully pulled off some line. Just as I was about to make a cast, I heard an enthusiastic “Hi!” from behind. I turned and saw two women with trekking poles standing on the bank 30 feet away. “Catch anything?” one of them asked. “No, not yet,” I said. They started to head upstream directly toward the riser, which had just come up again. I quickly added, “But there’s a trout feeding in that pool.” I pointed just as the fish rose. “Did you see it?” They stopped and looked. It came up again. “See it right there?” But they didn’t, and I realized some of us will never see a trout sipping midges. I asked if they would mind if I made a few casts before they walked by. “Sure!” they said, probably assuming I would immediately catch this mystery fish. But this was no dumb stocker waiting to be spoon fed a Power Nugget. It was a wild brown rising cautiously in a tough spot just a few feet from a tailout. One bad cast and faster water would swallow line and leader and send my fly whirligigging through the pool. Alas, this turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. On my first cast the fly rooster-tailed directly over the fish. For good measure, and perhaps feeling the pressure of an audience, I somehow made the exact same cast and the trout quit rising. I turned, thanked them for their patience and wished them a pleasant trek. They waved and said something I couldn’t hear over the rush of the stream. Maybe it was how I might consider throwing more slack with a curve cast next time. Not sure. I backed out of the casting position and considered my options. Though the sun was starting to slide lower on the horizon, there was still plenty of fishing time left. And it was pleasant along the stream in those wintry woods. I leaned upon a fallen tree against the bank and waited. A few bugs still trickled in the current, so maybe the trout would come up again. Ten minutes later it did. My shoulders tensed and I eased back to my casting position. I stripped off a couple arm lengths of line and considered once again the geometry for a proper cast. If I piled up the tippet and immediately mended, I could probably… a low thump, thump, thump grew steadily louder and I turned to see another trekker coming up the bank. He was moving fast, decked out in a technical ski jacket, swishing breathable pants and knee-high boots. “How’s it going?” he asked in a blur of flying snow. Before I could answer he galumphed past, putting down the rising trout and continuing around the next bend. I backed out to my now-familiar log and waited some more. With time to kill, I decided to paw through my midge box to see if there was something that might be a better match than the Adams. And there it was. Hidden among tricos and size-22 olives was a speck of a dark caddis—perhaps a 28, the smallest fly in my box and the best match for the electron-sized midges and pencil-tip stones crawling and flying about. With supreme confidence, I reached for what was clearly the fly, but somehow I fumbled and the tiny caddis dropped into the stream. For a nanosecond it swirled in an eddy behind my wading boot before the current grabbed it and sucked it into the purgatory where all lost flies must go. I grabbed a size-20 Griffith’s Gnat, tied it on and waited some more. A few minutes later, the trout came up again. By now, I knew the routine: crouch, approach, kneel, cast. I stripped off line, false cast once, then misfired yet again, overshooting a good three feet past the rising trout to the far bank. On the next cast I overcompensated, placing the fly impotently into dead water just a rod’s length away. I continued to suck. I picked up the fly one more time and put it maybe a foot below the trout. Still off the mark but better. I decided to let it sit before I picked it up for another cast. It drifted a few inches then began to slowly V-wake. The trout turned and took it down. I lifted the rod and was in. It was a decent fish, and it surged a few times before surrendering. It eventually rolled on its side, showing off handsome red spots with the little waterlogged Griffith’s Gnat hanging from its lower jaw. I released it and leaned back against the fallen tree for a few moments, breathing in clean winter air. Then I climbed up the snowy bank until I found the cross-country trail and the snowshoe tracks that eventually led to my car. Let’s say it was better than 10 inches. In fact, all things considered, let’s make it 11. Tomorrow it might be a foot. With supreme confidence, I reached for what was clearly the fly, but somehow I fumbled and the tiny caddis dropped into the stream.
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.