Northeast American Genryu #3 - NYC Tenkara Anglers in the High Peaks

Last weekend was the NYC Tenkara Anglers trip to the Adirondack High Peaks. It was sublime, and I don't really know how I'll do it justice in words, so this post is going to be photo-heavy and split into two parts.

A few of the other guys who were supposed to join couldn't make it, so it ended up being just two of us... with plenty of beautiful water to fish. We started at one of the C&R section along he Ausable West Branch on Thursday afternoon.

This river holds tons of fish, many more fish per mile than most rivers closer to home. Its worth a trek. If you're looking to hook into multiple larger holdover browns, or to spend a day drifting dries, this is a perfect river for it.

We both started off with some smaller fish - the action was on right away. It is possible to pick pockets with dries or soft hackle flies pretty much anywhere, and catch fish. What a treat.

Moving up to the bottom of one of my favorite runs, I hooked into the largest fish of the day, around 16-17" or so. It fought hard and made the Suntech Grayce II sing in the current. I love that.

Nice colors on this one, and good healthy proportions. Plenty of food to eat here!

Moving up to the faster water at the head of the run, I grabbed another decent sized fish. And this was after another guy had just pulled 4 or 5 out just 15 minutes earlier. What's not to love?

The colors were more beautiful on this fish, and it was almost the same size, maybe a bit smaller. Needless to say I was already really happy and it was only a couple of hours into our adventure.

That night we stayed at a local state campground and prepared for backpacking into the high peaks region the following day.

We did our best to keep the packs light and so we obviously left waders and vests OFF the list, carrying neoprene socks, gaiters and light weight water shoes in case we had to go in. The water is freezing cold up in the mountains, you need some neoprene - don't think you're going to stand there with nothing on your feet, they will go numb in seconds.

The forecast was almost unbelievable with 4 straight days of sun and beautiful weather. We knew that would make for some challenging fishing due to shadows and exposure, but that hardly mattered when looking at the big picture.

The hike in to camp was only about 3 miles, maybe a bit more. The trails here are well marked and well used, albeit mostly for hiking, not accessing streams and lakes for fishing.

Arriving at the site, we took a few photos in the "tenkara action figure" style. Why don't these exist yet? Good times.

 The most important thing you can bring here is a bug head-net. If you leave that behind you are in trouble. BIG TROUBLE. Bring gloves, too.

Needless to say, the streams here are epically beautiful. 

Some of them meander through beaver meadows and provide perfect deep-cuts along curved banks. Others cascade and tumble down the rocks providing pockets and deep bathtub pools. On the first day we only fished the latter.

The brookies here are not stocked fish. There is no regular stocking at all, and my understanding is the limited attempts at stocking in the past were not successful as the acid rain had kept the water at less than suitable levels for the fish and the insect life.

We discovered, joyfully, that at this point, a natural recovery is well under way. The rangers told us that they are working to plan the stocking of a few key high elevation lakes and ponds soon in order to assess if it is time to re-stock the entire region.

Luckily the they've been raising heritage-strain brookies, some of which have already been stocked successfully farther west in the "West Canada Lakes" region. It will be great that this won't be a standard stocking program... its designed to return the area to its former natural glory and nothing more! Stock once or twice, then let it go. Awesome.

Sugi caught the nicest fish of the trip not half way into the first day. It was a legit 11" brookie, and it was fat. I was so excited to see this fish that I almost didn't believe it. My hands were shaky and the photo came out just a little bit more blurry than I would have liked..

Moving up we began to pick up more and more fish, many in the prime 7.5-8.5 inch range, with a few hitting 9 or more. What a treat.

The holding spots were almost endless, and with no slack and just a few seconds of clean drift, fish were darting for the fly left and right. Each holding area seemed to support just one healthy fish.

Its really quite interesting to see the different coloring on the fish, some being much darker with purple, others being very green or even more turquoise. 

We got to a deeper pool with a small waterfall and each pulled a couple of fish out before moving up. The fish in this pool were darker colored than some of the others we had caught.

The Oni Type III makes a fantastic rod for this kind of fishing, and I used a combo of that, a Nissin pocket mini 270, and a Nissin Air Stage 240 for the tighter spots under branches and overhanging trees.

It is a little sad to know that the Oni type III will no longer be produced in the camouflage handle. It has become my favorite small stream rod. I hope that eventually they return to this grip style - its really iconic, recognizable, and unique among a sea of black rods with black grips. (Boring!)

As the sun began to set, we moved around a bend and into a beautiful set of cascading pools...

This might have been my favorite fish of the trip. But just as I thought it couldn't get any more beautiful, we came upon a truly amazing gorge with really steep walls and a set of small waterfalls at the top.

I wanted to know what was above the falls and around the bend, but the map indicated it could be the end of the "good" fishing... the stream splits some short distance above this location, and it seemed like the right time to call it a day.

Standing in the gorge for a few minutes I just soaked it all in. The emotions that his place stirred up were powerful and I walked towards the falls to take another photo.

Shortly thereafter we headed back to camp to make dinner and relax. We were tired and slightly worn out from a long day, but we were both excited about what the next day would hold. A full moon lit up the night sky and I could hardly wait for another beautiful sunny Adirondack day and more vibrant and colorful wild trout. 

To be continued...

A weekend to remember, for life!

Its been an amazing spring so far here in New York State. For the first time in years, we have had a rainy enough mid-spring, which helps to make up for the lack of snowfall. Conditions have been absolutely perfect for fishing for weeks, and I've been out so much that I find myself falling behind in my reports... Now that's a good problem to have!

The NYC chapter of Trout Unlimited had scheduled some conservation work in the form of tree planting and temperature monitor installations and we set out to do the work, but also to fish the Neversink River.

The Neversink is a beautiful Catskills river, and is my favorite kind of water because, well, its as if they just stacked a bunch of small streams side by side... plenty of features, plunges, and cover for fish. We were rewarded with one of the most varied and epic hatches I've seen here in any of my visits.

As we arrived and set up, we were literally trembling with anticipation - the fish were rising EVERYWHERE. And to pretty much everything, as well. What a joy.

Sight fishing to 17 inch browns, while grabbing brookies on dry flies right in the next current line is an experience that is hard to match, no matter what kind of fisherman you may be...

Not only that, but there were some "wild cards" too, like this sucker that we saw flashing in the current and mistook for a brown trout until it was on the line. Hard to see, but it had gnarly talon marks on its sides... this fish was a survivor, to say the least.

Spring is the time to fish this river... as the summer heat sets in, the main stem heats up and the action moves into the tributaries. The fish are also often spooky in the slower sections, but on this weekend we found no such situation.

Being mid May, I hardly expected to see the mix of different insects... it seemed we had everything from march browns to caddis, blue winged olives and beyond. No need to match anything, the fish were hungry and they took anything that was the correct size, and that was presented nicely.

The scenery was also unmatched, from the car-sized rocks and huge pines...

...to the wild flowers and the beauty of the early-spring forest floor.

The patterns on this stick, where the bark had cracked and then slowly decayed, left nature's thumbprint behind for us to enjoy.

On this day I also caught what I consider to be a "trophy fish." It was a beautiful wild brown trout and it bent my rod almost in half. It took a nymph after we had already "cleaned" out the pool with dries...

I rarely get photos with my fish... a benefit of fishing in small groups. Don't mind the Beatles-style mop-top, it happened on its own... one day they call me Elton, the next day Ringo. Ha!

There were plenty of fish to sight-fish to, and we spent hours just walking the stream, hooking one after another. It was a day of paddle-tails for sure.

Eventually, after having my fill of the larger wild browns, I allowed myself to become "distracted" by a small tributary. I fished up it and caught a couple of small brookies.

These fish swim down into the main stem and grow bigger... and then some of these larger fish swim back up the tributaries later on. Mid summer tributary fishing can be wonderful, and often yield fish much larger than the one I caught, below.

One of my favorite fish of the day fought much harder and longer than a fish of its size normally would. It couldn't have been over 14 inches but it seemed every bit as big as the 17 incher from earlier that morning.

This part of the river is not stocked, and we surely had our fill of wild brookies and browns.

It was hard to know that there would be an end to this weekend on the river... memories that will surely last a lifetime were made, as were some new friends.

 Below, my fishing buddies for the day take a moment to soak it all in, watching a rising fish brazenly feed just yards away.  Unable to walk away, Mike said "I'm going to go catch that one before we leave." And he did.

On a side note... wet wading. I love it. Yes, I wet waded this river over the course of two cold days, without an issue. Enter the Daiwa Neo NG-400 Gaiter. It fits over a neoprene sock, and keeps you warm. There is a gel knee pad as well, and I rarely leave home without them.

I happened to have imported a few pairs from Japan, and if you'd like to try them out, get in touch and I'll ship a pair your way.

Some more photos of the weekend...

Planting trees with the TU crew! Horse Brook is looking good.

Finding quite a lot of caddis at the site where we placed our temperature monitors. 

So much more to say, but that's all I have time for now... and I won't blame you if these images haunt your dreams the way they've haunted mine for the last month. I can't wait for the next time, and I sure hope next Spring brings similar conditions, for I will surely return.