Sunday in the Catskills: Scouting a New Stream and More on the Zimmerbuilt Tenkara Guide Sling.

May is a great time in the Catskill mountains. Its too early to be backpacking in the Adirondacks, where the upper elevations are still under plenty of snow. Farther south, the snow has melted and the explosion of spring growth is underway.

On Sunday I took a trip to explore a new stream for me, one that I've been wanting to check out for a while, and had scouted using google earth. I was happy to have discovered that it was, in fact exactly what I was hoping for.

I took the time to stop at the fly fishing museum, and saw this old line-winding machine. I also checked out a couple of fly shops in Roscoe to see what was going on. It was really a welcome surprise to see a prominently displayed Tenkara USA display in the store. I bought a fly box and some 6.5x tippet, a rare find, before embarking down a long dirt road to get to where I wanted to be.

Here's my fully loaded Tenkara guide sling, with enough supplies for an entire day of exploring a stream (or hiking, for that matter.)

I had filled it up with the following:

very light softshell wind jacket

synthetic vest in case it got cold

  water bottle and Steripen water filter

fishing gloves

lunch

medium tenkara rod case with suntech kurenai HM30R and Shimotsuke Kiyotake 18

suikei 39 

titanium net

3 different small fly boxes

wallet, phone, keys

The clip holding the net on is a rather ideal setup. Mounted to the strap, I had their Tenkara Strap Pack, which held:

size 3.5 level line

a medium/small sized fly box

two spools of tippet

fishing license

nippers

And there was room for a little more in that strap pack. I am rather giddy about this purchase, as it came out EXACTLY as I had hoped. Now, everything I need fits in one pack and is comfortably slung over my left shoulder, leaving my right shoulder unencumbered for fishing and whatnot. 

As I approached the stream, there were wildflowers everywhere.

Some were just beginning to open.

I emerged from the woods along a nice bend and pool. I had a hook up on my first cast, but somehow the fish wiggled off and so I figured I'd just start working my way up stream.

I was into some fish pretty quickly.

The weather was textbook perfect, and I chose to wet wade for the day with the new gear that my friend in Japan had helped me secure while on my adventures over there earlier this spring. 

The sky was overcast but the sun kept peaking out and creating moments of intense brightness. I was using the bow and arrow cast plenty due to many small downed trees around the stream.

There were many different "types" of water to fish on this stream, and I enjoyed finding fish in many of the places I wanted to see them.

Undoubtedly, the fish of the day was hooked and then lost in this deep pool. I have lost some impressive fish on my barb-less hooks this year, and clearly more practice and learning is in order. I saw the fish I had and it was a beauty, likely over 12" and a brookie. I will be back to cast my line in this pool again soon.

At this point, the sun returned and some hatches began.

 I ran into a local small-stream fisherman who had been fishing dries all day but had only hooked two fish. I decided to stay with my sub-surface options and wasn't sorry that I chose to do that, as I continued to catch for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

I stopped to have a snack here, it was one of the most beautiful moments of the day. But I had no idea what awaited me ahead, just upstream. I fished both forks of the stream and then came upon a prime Catskill waterfall.

I fished my way through some perfectly clear pools as I worked up to the waterfall.

This pool certainly held trout.

 While I did manage to catch one larger fish here, most of the fish I got were on the very small side. This spot was not very far from a road, and I suspect that it gets fished out by locals on occasion. At least the healthy little fish indicated that to some degree, the stream seems able to handle the current pressure.

I had about an hour of good sun left, so I climbed above and around the top of the falls, sneaking dangerously close to the edge while getting around this natural "stone wall."

One last fish was netted in this picturesque little pool.

I kept exploring up river for a bit, mesmerized by what would be around each new bend of the river...

The sun began to dip, and that was my cue to climb up and out of the gorge and find the road again.

As I walked back towards the car a mile or so down the road, I marveled at the different micro-climates and interesting features of these mountains. I can't wait to return to this forest again soon.

Saturday's surprises - new gear and stockies.

 

Last weekend was a fun weekend. It started with me getting my new Zimmberbuilt Tenkara Guide Sling Pack way before expected. I asked chris to customize it for me to hold my UL titanium net, and to make it with black instead of the usual checkered white and black fabric.  He had it done in a couple of days and shipped it before leaving for Midwest Tenkara Fest, I presume. I was blown away when I took it out of the box, just 2 days after it was shipped, and less than a week after I had placed my order.

 I added a standard Tenkara Strap Pack to hold my fly box, 7x tippet, a couple of spools of line, and my clippers. The rest fits in the bag itself. It has two zippered pockets, each with a small pocket inside for organization. As soon as I had the thing out of the box I got in the car and headed towards a new stream I planned to scout in an area I caught a lot of fish recently.

Sometimes, as is the case with Blue Lining, you don't really know what's going to be there when you arrive... in this case, the stream was way too small to want to fish. Bummer. I had been dreaming of discovering a "mirroring" stream running up a parallel gorge. Alas, it was too good to be true. But, I wasn't far from Kent, CT, so I headed to a well known stream that I don't mind dropping the name of - Macedonia Brook, pictured above.

Make no mistake, this is a nice wild trout stream, but it has insane peak season fishing pressure, and happens to be stocked a few times a year, and it was a very different fishing experience than when I fished it with TenkaraBum last fall. This weekend there was, apparently a boyscout outing and the stream had been stocked with some really raggedy-finned browns that were aggressive as hell and hitting every fly that sunk below the surface.

I caught stocked brown in all the pools I fished, but what I had really wanted was wild trout. Am I really this jaded? This was a clear example of why introducing stocked fish into a wild trout stream is less than ideal. These fish were clearly going to eat all the baby brookies and other trout they saw in their path. I just hoped the boyscouts would have good luck and eat their catch, helping to shift the balance back towards the wild trout and help them avoid becoming dinner for these beat up hatchery fish.

After a nice ride home I snapped a quick photo of the moon behind some clouds before joining some friends for a BBQ. I knew I'd have to find a special stream the next day to "make up" for my experience on Macedonia Brook, and contemplated a trip to the catskills.

Reflecting on my trip at the end of the night, I scolded myself for being at all disappointed, after all, I had landed many decently sized trout and gotten to put my Suikei 39 to the test in a newer environment. All was not lost, and tomorrow held a new adventure...

More Uodome and a mind-bogglingly amazing wild trout stream!

I was invited to fish with a new friend I made at the last TU meeting in NYC. We were to fish a small stream. I had told him about my last adventure, and he assured me he'd outdo it. I was obviously extremely excited. The weather was definitely cooperating as well.

As we hiked into the stream we came upon perfect trout water and I was into some little brookies right away. It was a sign of a healthy stream.

Cascading pools and a bit of a gorge forming.

Hits in every pool, fish netted in most.

Fish seemed to have two or three color variations. Some were darker with the colored bottom...

... others more pink.

 The only brown of the day. This river was a tributary to another larger river, could some baby browns have made it up here? Also, have I mentioned how much I've been enjoying this new rod? It is taking the beating I'm giving it very, very well.

 Adrien had indicated we were going to a very special fishing location, but I had been too distracted by the fish to think much about it... until we came upon a cave of epic proportions.

 Not only was there Uodome, but the cave was a sight to behold!

Talk about fishing spots... first careful cast brought a fine specimen to net.

It often seems that in these small streams, where brookies don't often break the 12" mark, the trophies of each pool can be indicated not only by length, but by the size of their tails. This one is collapsed a bit in the net. It was HUGE!

My day pack is a little bulky. I'm waiting for a slightly customized pack that I ordered from Chris Zimmer.

Picked up another fish in the pool in front of the cave.

We decided to go all out and hiked a seriously steep embankment to climb over and beyond the cave. We figured there would be some epic pools that most people didn't put the effort into reaching.

 

On the way over there was mineral deposit art.

Adrien peeks back to see if I can make it around the fallen tree. A treacherous moment. In fact there were lots of those. I wouldn't want to do this stuff alone. Too many opportunities to slip and fall.

you can see the chasm above.

It became immediately apparent that it was worth the effort. The first pool, which was dubbed the un-fishable pool, clearly held large fish. Only way in there was a rope and harness. Best left for another time.

I hooked into the largest fish of the day here in a calm spot between two rocks and next to the splashing falls. I thought it was a snag at first. I don't know how it got off, but it was probably the fact that I flattened the barb on my hooks.

Above that was another overhang pool. It had nice log cover from some really large old trees that had been washed down there ages ago.

I let Adrien fish these pools and climbed up ahead.

One small brookie came from this little pocket in the rock.

Another run under a cave produced a brookie.

Beautiful scenery around every bend and over every rock formation.

I got a few nice ones in this pool.

This next pool might have been my favorite. I picked it apart and pulled fish from the right side near the shelf, on the left side in front of the rock....

...between the rocks, and then in the center as well. 

Almost unbelievably, it kept going like this. Run after run, pool after pool, cliffs and caves galore.

There were small brookies in pretty much every spot that I expected. I'd like to take a moment to point out that while buggers were working fine, the most productive fly of the day was again, Rich Garfield's Ausable Ugly.

In this pool, Adrien caught fish on the left side - some really nice ones. I think his fish of the day came from there. 

I was able to fish the right side at the same time and also caught fish. Crazy!

After a while the stream finally flattened out a bit and returned to a more "standard" format of pools and riffles with a plunge here and there. It was picturesque the whole way up.

We had both missed fish of a decent size in this first pool and had decided to fish it again before leaving. Adrien hooked a few trout and then we took a break.We were each into over 15 fish at this point, and I had lost count around 20.

Adrien is french, and showed me his french style dry flies, which present the hackle in a slightly forward manner. Its not quite as pronounced as a tenkara fly, but you can see what I'm getting at.

His dry flies were beautifully tied, it was a shame we didn't get to use them this day, but the fish just weren't rising yet. The water was still in the 40's, after all. I was no purist this day, fishing bead head flies almost the entire time.

I wasn't into the larger fish I had hooked earlier, likely because Adrien had taken them a moment before. I hooked a couple of fingerlings and then decided to call it a day. We stopped on the way for some BBQ since it was late and we were tired from a long day of crawling and sneaking around the stream, climbing over waterfalls and ascending and descending the various gorge areas we were fishing.

 All the sore muscles will be well worth it for one of the greatest days of small stream fishing I have ever seen. Thanks to my new friend Adrien for taking me to his spot!