High Sticking the Garden State.

The day after Thanksgiving, Charles invited me out to Ken Lockwood Gorge in New Jersey. We met up about 6am and drove out to meet our guide James from Autumn Brook Angling (http://autumnbrookangling.com – I’ll write about the excellent service in a separate blog). Ken Lockwood Gorge is part of the South Branch of the Raritan River, NJ. The Gorge is a treasure, a piece of wild trout water located where it’s totally unexpected, and it deserves to be handled delicately. According to James, the gorge nurtures all kinds of insect life including mayflies, caddis, stone flies, crane flies as well as scud. These factors, combined with bountiful big boulders and deep holes, make the gorge prime real estate for rainbows, browns and brookies. Basically for fly fishermen, its paradise – close but fantastic.

Both of us have been busy with work and were pretty eager to throw around some flies. The winter winds must be taking it’s time this year, as it’s the end of November and it’s still not that cold (in New York or Chicago). That’s good, it gives us a few more trips out to fish, a sort of surprise bonus at the end of the year. We arrived at the waters earlier than scheduled, so we messed around with our Tenkara sticks while waiting for guide James. James turned out to be an excellent guide and although the fishing was somewhat slow this day, he taught us the proper skills of high sticking with nymphs (James is a nymph specialist). James is a music teacher by profession, and perhaps because of this he was an exceptional instructor. He explained what he was going to do, did it, then allowed us to try and learn it, and then continued to coach from close by. By the afternoon, it had gotten colder and windier as the radar forecasted. Somehow, I feel more ready for this winter with this new set of nymph skills.

Winter fish, prepare to meet Fish Finder & Gone Fishing…