Lopatcong Creek 3/14

[LopatNympher]

I spent 2 hours casting with no fish today. I tried a pheasant tail, a hare's ear, and even tried a few dries to no avail. I remembered a thread on here talking about cased caddis so I tried one of those, a #14. On my first cast I caught a baby brownie followed by several more. In accordance with my luck, I then caught a high tree branch and broke the leader. Of coure this was the only fly of this type that I had in my box so I ended up calling it a day. The day wasn't a total loss, I caught fish. I am happy.
Here's a pic of one of the babies I caught today:




Here is a mate of the nymph i used today:


I apologize for the pic quality.

[LopatNympher]

I fished the lower section of the creek yesterday. What I found there was disheartening in the least and downright disagusting at the most. There is a spot where two large sycamores were washed out of the bank several years ago during a flood. They fell perpendicular across the creek, in esence damming it up. This created a large basin in front, almost 8-9ft deep. Because of this, the deadfall also collects and deposits everything that floats downstream during high water onto the bank. There must have been over 100 (no exaggeration) empty water, beer, and soda bottles laying there along with various other debris and flotsam. I was pissed off, really pissed off. So on my next day off, tuesday, I am going to go down there with a box of garbage bags and clean it up, even if it takes all day. If anyone reading this is in the Phillipsburg NJ area Tuesday, I will be there at noon if you want to help.

Only 10% of bottled water containers get recycled. The rest either wind up in a landfill or worse they are chucked to the side of the road and end up polluting our waterways. If you don't already, I urge everyone here to buy a reusable water container and bring your water from home. There are many good inexpensive filters on the market. It will save you money, it will save the environment, and its just the right thing to do.

Thanks for reading my rant!
Chris

[AaronJasper]

Come to think about it I do notice less plastic bottles and soda cans on the ground in CT. The charge must make it worthwhile to recycle them!

[LopatNympher]

I spent the morning cleaning up this mess. Pulled 3 large trash bags full of plastic bottles out of here. I'd like to thank the Phillipsburg Water Authority for letting me throw them in their dumpster.



Some random pics of the creek.

The spring that flows out from this old springhouse keeps the creek cool all summer long. It has a really large flow as you can see.




Here's the dam they removed a few years ago. They really did a nice job restoring this area of the creek.








One of my little honey holes



Town property begins here and runs down to the Delaware



There is a spot on the creek where it widens out considerably and becomes very shallow. I cast up from there into a nice run, about shin deep. Towards the end of this run there is a large piece of concrete pipe about 2 ft in diameter that sits on an angle in the creek bottom. The last 2 times that I've fished this spot, a large fish has come out of the run and hightailed it into that pipe. He is enormous by the standards of this creek, about 15-16 inches. Rip and Black, that fish is MINE, you cannot have him!

[TexasChris]

It's on now bortha!

good job with the clean up. That's a real stand up thing to do, wish i could have helped!

[BlackLabel]

These pics got me wanting to explore alot more.

[LopatNympher]

The more you explore, the more your back and knees get sore from creeping up on all the little pockets.

A couple wood ducks showed up yesterday and warned every fish upstream that I was coming.

[AaronJasper]

Thats a really nice little stream. They did a very good job on the dam removal. The bank restoration looks very solid. Does the spring flow well year round? Or does it fluctuate seasonally? I would imagine that if it does there are more trout in there than one would think.

How are you fishing that creek? I would use a dry fly with a nymph dropper. That way you would be able to effectively fish those small pockets from long range.

[LopatNympher]

The flow from that spring is fairly constant all year. I've only seen it slow down drastically once during a very dry summer.

I am fishing small nymphs with an indicator (I use pink biostrike). I haven't really tried any dries yet, I don't really have anything in my boxes that match what is hatching right now. Last fall I was getting some really nice brookies on tan caddis in the late afternoon, early evening.

[LopatNympher]

I know there are bigger fish downstream. I've seen a nice one the last two times I was there and to be honest there are spots on that creek where I know some monsters are hiding but I just don't have the skill to get a fly to the.....yet! I did land a 21 in brookie last spring although with spinning tackle.