The early bear season ended last week, unsuccessfully for me. With the trout season ending in another two weeks, I wanted to get in another fishing trip while I could. So, I headed to the Neversink river. Specifically, I planned on camping at the Wolf Brook MUA, and from there take the trails down to the Neversink River Unique Area where I could do the fishing.
My goal for this trip was to test my completed portable fly fishing kit. I’ve been messing with it for some time now, and I think I have a workable fly fishing kit that I can carry without problem in my pack over distance. So, with waders, boots, and rod stuffed in the pack, I headed for the river early in the morning.
Following one of the trails I was able to make my way to the river fairly quickly. I walked along for a bit until I found an area I liked.
I put on my waders and wading boots, and set up my rod. I took some pictures of the equipment, and I will do a separate posts about it later this week, since I have been getting a lot of questions about my set up. Then I got into the river and got to fishing.
The water was very cold. At first it felt fine because I was warm from backpacking to the location, but an hour or so later, the cold was hard to handle. To warm up I took some pictures of me fishing, which is an incredibly difficult activity. Setting the 30 second timer on my point and shoot camera, and then trying to get into the river without taking a dive, was challenging to say the least, but it does get the blood going.
I wasn’t having too much luck. I was determined to practice my dry fly casting, but there wasn’t a lot of surface action. There were some cadis flies hatching, but not a whole lot.
I didn’t have anything to match the color too well, so I tried a few different combination without luck. When in doubt, sit down and have lunch.
By this time I had put on my puffy jacket. Much of the river was still in shadow, so despite the relatively warm weather we have been having, I was still cold from being in the water.
I continued the same routine for the rest of the day. I was planning on concentrating my efforts on fishing in the evening to maximize my chances, but by mid afternoon, tired, and decided to pack up and start looking for a camp site.
The waders, wading boots, and the rest of the gear made their way into the pack nicely, contained in a plastic trash bag that I brought to keep the rest of my gear dry. I picked a direction and started bushwhacking. Soon I reached a small stream, Wolf Brook to be exact. I stopped for water. It seemed to be a more trustworthy source than the larger river.
I washed up, refilled my water, and kept going until I found a nice area in some pine woods where I could set up camp.
It was still relatively early, which gave me plenty of time to relax. I got up early the next morning and headed back down to the river for another try.
Finally, I managed to hook one on a #16 BWO.
I decided to end things on a high note, so I packed up and headed out.
I was very happy with the way the gear worked together. I didn’t catch a lot of fish, but that is mostly due to lack of skill. It was a good trip. The only down side was that the mosquitoes were still active.
Now I’ll start working on the post about the gear itself. I hope to have it up by the end of the week.
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