Skunk Hour*
March 12, 2009
What happens when a Montauk Surf Vampire and saltwater guy with a slight Florida ditch obsession conspire to fish a trout stream? Nothing.
More later on the state of said trout stream, stocked, and the ongoing efforts to de-stock it in hopes of restocking it later. In a word, bizarre.
[UPDATE: Jason did in fact hook and land a rainbow, but I had blocked it out of my memory.]
*(With apologies to Robert Lowell)
If you can’t catch fish at Connetquot, you can’t fish.
I just keeding. Kinda.
How’d you know where we was at?
But that’s the topic of my next post. To combat Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis, they closed the hatchery for sterilization and released 80,000 stockers, and have operated since Jan 1 under the policy of a 10 fish bag limit per day. It’s a kill fest right now as they try to cull out all the old fish and start over.
There just aren’t that many fish left. It’s a bizarre scene.
PMcD:
You must have left the ’spy flies’ on your desk when you were planning the trip. They were set for broadcast mode.
It could be worse, you could be stuck here in
prisonthe office reading about the skunk.At least you got out.
I forgot about your goddamm decoder poppers. Normally I foil up when they’re in my presence.
Pete,
I made a small post about it last September. The clues gave your location away. I use to fish there a lot when I lived in the city. That place really use to do something for a man’s ego, that’s for sure. It’s kind of sad that the Conny is being fished out, but on the other hand, it’s just a precursor to a healthy fishery for the future. It sucks that all the fish that are in there right now have to die for the future of the fishery, but without the sacrifice, that place wont have a future.
I had a link to the news article in my post, but it looks like it’s not active anymore.
-Chris
I think every fly fisher in the NYC metro area has made the pilgrimage.
It certainly is/was a king-maker stream.
When it’s like that, you kind of feel dirty after.
Oh and JP, I was stuck in the office last week reading about your jobba carp.
Hook me up with some good links for NY striper fishing. I need to take advantage of it while I’m out here.
Can’t wait to read more about it Pete.
P.S.-If you need anyone to teach you how to catch trout, look me up.
hehehehe
-Ben
Chris, sent a few your way…
Ben,
My deficiencies as a trout angler stem from an aversion to nymphing. I’ll do it, but as was the case yesterday, I get stubborn about working streamers even when it’s all but pointless. Call it death by 1,000 woolly bugger casts.
Thanks!
you are a member of a secret society. sometime in the late 90’s i fished the reserve with a couple friends. it was late august and everything was low and slow – difficult even for those bountifully mangaged waters. one member of our crew who shall remain nameless to preserve his innocence (lest he be self-assured enough to man-up as Pete has done here) was skunked and whined about this all afternoon, re-christening the stream in the process. “I cannot be believe I can’t catch a (multiexpletive) fish at Connetquot. I’ll just call this goddamened place Con-NOT-caught.”
this was even more furstrating to him by the fact that we were fishing a beat near one of the “ponds” and there were a couple guys on the rowboats slaying large fish with apparent ease. we didn’t tell our miserable friend something we learned later that afternoon – their spectacular success might have been aided by performance-enhancing gear. when the warden came around to check flies they took a good while to paddle in the whole 15 yards and the guy not at the oars was messing with their gear pretty feverishly. i later asked what they were slaying ‘em with. his reply with a pretty straight face was “purple san juan worm”.
anyway, was not aware of the curent situation there. thx for the update in advance.
Chris,
I have seen guys cheat there, too. Guys drifting eggs, guys using scent.
If you need to cheat on this river then you might as well give up fishing because what’s the point? Actually, what’s the point of fly fishing if you’re going to cheat?
I think the last time I got skunked there was also in the mid 90s. Fortunately, there used to be a trap range nearby so I took out my frustrations with my buddy’s over-under.