Lucky bastard

As Patty becoming more of a outdoor person, she's been asking me to go on a camping trip.  Car camping is not my ideal camping but who am I to say no to a little bit of camping and whole lot of fishing. 

Covered bridge over Willowemoc Creek

Fortunately for us, our campground was relatively empty for the weekend.  This particular camp does not allow any loud noise which why I chose to camp out here. This campground is enjoyed by many anglers for its ideal location

We chose our campsite right at the creek bank.  The sound of running water was sure to be soothing to our ears but I was glad to bring my ear plugs...

 This is my first time fishing the upper willowemoc and the scenery precedes its reputation. From the campsite, you can hike miles upstream without running into posted lands.

I've caught this brown right by our campsite.

Nothing beats good ole steak dinner when camping.

The temperature dropped to 45 degree at night and Patty made herself a cozy setup.

Next morning, we started our weekend fishing excursion with one of small creeks in the catskills.  This is a brook trout water.  It's a small creek full of eager brookies and biting insects.

From our first cast to the last, the creek provided us with enough brookies for us to be fished out for the day.  

The Beaverkill was our next stop.  This is Patty's first time fishing the Beaverkill and upon arriving, she said "This is my kind of water".  As for me, this is where I learned how to fly fish.  There were a lot of anglers fishing the river, almost shoulder to shoulder in certain pools. We primarily fished between pools whenever we found empty pull overs and able to avoid the crowd.

Off the bat, Patty hooked this wild brown and many more after that.

I wanted to throw in a little spey casting session so found a pool relatively wide enough and able to improve a bit more than the last time.  Tied black nose dace fly at the end of the line with no intention of catching fish but to my surprise able to catch a small brown at the end of the swing.  It goes to show you that you can have an ugly casting yet still catch fish.

My first catch on spey rod!

The most of these large browns were caught with caddis fly.  Surprised to found them in somewhat fast running water. 

Caught this wild? brookie near one of tributary creek.
My first time catching brook trout in Beaverkill

I can definitely see myself doing this kind of trip with Patty more often as she doesn't seem to be bothered by biting insects and other critters she used to be scared of  and more than anything she now enjoys every aspect of being an angler. I am a lucky bastard!!!