9-2-23 Labor Day in the Catskills

It was nice to get a little break from the summer heat with a family trip up in the Catskills. I had time to sneak away early in the morning to fish some areas that I used to frequent very often. We were staying close to a stream that New York stopped stocking a few years ago. Most of the wild fish I caught in the stream were rainbows, but on this trip, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of wild brown trout, most were in the 6-10” range. On a side note, I think the wild rainbows on this stream are pound for pound some of the hardest fighting fish.

I only fished from sunrise to 8:30am both Saturday and Sunday, there was little activity on the surface so I decided to nymph. The banks were covered in Isonychia shucks so I used a large iso nymph as a point fly and a small dropper about 18” above. Typically, I focus on getting dead drifts and I usually don’t swing flies at the end of the drift. Given all of the iso shucks on the bank, I did focus on swinging my flies toward the bank at the end of the drift to potentially entice a trout. I only caught one fish on the swing, but that technique would have likely worked a lot better later in the day when the nymphs might have been actively crawling to the banks.

The stream is loaded with pocket water and hard to reach places, this is why I love fishing here so much. With some accurate casting and a little aggressive wading, you can get into some nice numbers of fish if your presentation is on point.

Although most of the fish are on the smaller side, there are some larger rainbows that are an absolute blast to catch. On this trip, I wasn’t able to land the one good fish I hooked into, but that’s quite alrighta little excitement to the day as well.