Early on in my fly fishing pursuits I found myself releasing my 14th trout in two hours of fishing the Connetquot River. I felt good about this until a man walked by claiming to have caught 50. He’d grown bored, he said, and was going home early. Adding insult, he scooped a dip from his lower lip and flicked it into the water, where a trout rose to meet it. The Connetquot River has been described as Long Island’s blue ribbon trout stream, a once private fishing club turned into a pristine State Park with an on-site hatchery that stocked it with kamloops rainbows, brooks and browns. Some of the fish held over and reproduced, creating a small wild population, and some below the…
Posts tagged “connetquot river”
Of interest mainly to people in the NYC Metro: My buddy Stefan wanted to find out more about the Connetquot and forwarded me this email response he got. On Behalf of Ronald F. Foley, Regional Director, LI Region March 25, 2009 Dear Mr.REDACTED : On Behalf of Commissioner Carol Ash, I am writing in response to your e-mail of March 19, 2009 concerning the Connetquot River State Park Preserve Hatchery. Trout in the Connetquot River and hatchery have tested positive for Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis (IPN). We are working closely with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to address the matter. No trout will be hatched or raised in the hatchery this coming season in order to give us time to both develop…
This Ken Shultz article came out just before the NY State DEC discovered IPN. The Connetquot represents in one localized microcosm the best and the worst of a hatchery sustained fishery. On the one hand, a stream this close to such high population density could never support pure wild fish with unrestricted access to them. Operating a stream on a pay-to-reserve English beat system with a carefully managed stocking program allows for solitude rather than shoulder to shoulder and the chance to fish larger than normal brown, brook, and rainbow trout. On the other hand, it is not reality. On the one hand, the big sea runs and the cagey eight-pound holdovers with the hooked jaws exist in numbers not seen in normalcy. On…
I took a late afternoon trip to the Connetquot River on Long Island yesterday. The rules have changed since they discovered a virus at the hatchery this winter. For one, the use of chest waders and felt-bottomed boots is prohibited. There is limited wading on the river below the hatchery, but only in hip waders. (Very few people can wear hip waders without looking ridiculous, and odds are you are not one of them.) I’ll put up the official new rules in a future post. What else has changed? The days of retarted meat slab fishing (or hero fishing, depending on your perspective) appear–at least for the time being–to be over. The park is still stocking the river, but you can no longer approach…
Tagged: connetquot river, Fly Fishing, trout
