New Jersey Trout

Went out today during the heat wave!!!! 45 degrees... woo hoo!!!!!! Caught a good amount of trout. Fishing was good at the Pequest today. Caught trout on midges and aquatic worms of sorts. Some had fins, some didn't... but they are trout none the less. Took some pictures of some smaller ones and the big one that went 22" on the net.

The South Branch of the Raritan has it all. The river has lots of stocked trout. The river also contains almost as many wild trout. Some true leviathans that have eluded some of the river’s  ”fly fishing clubs” can be found within the public water.

You can try any section of the South Branch and have a good fly-fishing experience. This river has many faces. Some stretches flow through meadows with mouth-watering dry fly water. Other stretches have endless pocket water and riffles that are dying to be nymph fished. What ever your preference, this river will meet the demand.

Went to the Pequest River today. The temp was 19 when I started. The fishing was good today. The trout were feeding very well. The only problem is that there is too little an area to fish. There were three people there for most of the day. When I left the river there were 11 people fishing one little stretch. It is terrible that there isn't any catch and release there. So many of these fish have been taken out. We need to make this area catch and release. There could be tons of fish if they didn't let people take them out. Anyway, I caught at least a dozen and a half fish. The largest was 18.5". Too little fish for so many people. The kicker is the only way that we can ever make this c and r is to have as many people going there as possible. The state will realize that it is a valuable resource. Then we will have catch and release not fish and fillet.

A friend of mine said to get a Valentines Day trout. That’s exactly what I did. I braved the blizzard like conditions. It took one hour to go what would usually take twenty minutes. I got to the river and it was 19 with a wind chill close to zero. I brought my hand warmers today! The fishing was slower. I landed eight trout today. They were all taken on the same midges that I used on Sunday. The highlight of the day was that two of the fish were over 20" and one was over 22" by a hair. Great day with crappy weather, but I’ll take it.