A fish of many firsts (and the first fish of 2024) | Quest for No. 1: Part V
A wild native brook trout in New Jersey, my first fish of the year.
My year of fishing got off to an unfortunate, frustrating start. As I’ve explained before, I typically like to get on the water in the first week of the year, most often New Year’s Day itself, in the hopes of securing my first catch right away, allowing me to move onto more important fishing concerns.
It also serves to satisfy another of my ongoing fishing goals: to catch a fish every single month of the year (much more will be written in the future on the passionate pursuit of seemingly meaningless personal angling goals and achievements).
RELATED: Skunking my way into the New Year on thin ice | Quest for No. 1 Part I
RELATED: This park (and this month) is full of skunks | Quest for No. 1 Part II
RELATED: Can a New Jersey wild trout save my month? | Quest for No. 1 Part III
RELATED: Last-ditch, Hail Mary trip for winter stripers | Quest for No. 1 Part IV
The tradition goes back to my youth, when I taught myself to fly fish for wild, native brook trout in small Connecticut streams. More recently, the first week of January has often provided some mild, ice-free conditions, allowing me to make a quick trip to The Park to catch some small largemouth bass, black crappie, bluegill and pumpkinseed.
But on the morning of January 1, 2024, I sat in my Outer Borough apartment and waffled over whether it was worth making the effort to throw a few casts at The Park and get a few fish on the board. At that point, my streak for monthly catches had reached 10.
This system of waterfalls held no willing fish on this trip.
Most years my streak halts in February at 11, and I was already making plans to avert a February swoon this year. As I mulled fishing or relaxing on the couch with the dog, I reasoned that there would be plenty of time in the month to get my January fish. So I stayed home.
Fast-forward 32 cold, rainy days and four skunks later, and my laziness had once again proven my downfall. I failed to catch a single fish in January, thus ending my streak at a ignominious 10 months.
Fishing is all about failure, at least for me, though I suspect its a common condition. And this is another topic that will get lots of space to breathe on this website. So in a way, several skunks and a failed goal were the most appropriate way for me to start the year and this new writing pursuit (at least that’s what I convinced myself to ward of the fishing demons and move forward).
So as the calendar turned to the second month, the shortest and hardest fishing month of all, I was determined avenge my January failures.
My plan: go back to my roots and pursue wild brook trout in tiny, mountain streams on the fly.
While fly fishing for brookies sparked my initial passion in my teens, it hadn’t been a part of my fishing life for decades.
I spend most of my time conventional fishing for largemouth at The Park, smallmouth on The River in New Jersey or striped bass from the surf in New York. More recently, I switched to the fly while hunting smallies in New Jersey rivers, a thrill I recommend all anglers experience.
But with the smallies in their winter slumbers, I had cold water-loving brookies on my mind.
So I picked a New Jersey state park my fiancee and I had hiked with our dog, one that contained two winding mountain streams tumbling down into a small river. After some research I’d learned both streams had wild native brookies in them.
Unidentified fungi spotted after another soggy month.
So on February 2, I woke up early, packed the van with my waders, boots, and my old 7-foot, 4-weight Orvis Superfine fly rod, and headed West. The weather report had worsened overnight, and now called for light rain and showers throughout the day, which is an issue when temps stay below 40. After feeding the cat in the morning and making coffee, I nearly decided to ditch my plans. Driving hours only to stand in the cold rain and not catch fish, again, suddenly seemed undesirable.
But I wasn’t about to let laziness lead to a second-straight month of disappointment.
As I drove over the Manhattan bridge, across Lower Manhattan and under the Hudson River via the Holland Tunnel (which at 100 years old terrifies me every time I use it), a continuous light rain pelted my windshield. Things were not looking good.
But after a stop at for coffee and a breakfast sandwich at Dunkin Donuts, I pulled into the park only for the rain to graciously peter off.
I decided to use a dry-dropper rig, expecting the small hopper I chose only to act as nymph-guide and strike indicator. Below that, at the end of 18 inches of 5x tippet, I tied on a small, green nymph I honestly didn’t know the name off (and since learned was a scud). It had a sizeable bead head and a neon green body, instead of natural colors. In the back of my mind I remembered a recent video claiming green was the best color for brookies.
This small hopper was supposed to act simply as a strike indicator.
As I walked the park path down a gorge to the stream, my excitement grew exponentially, imagining every new hole filled with hungry, willing brookies.
I went upstream, as far as an old park boundary posting, worn and weathered to the point that I wondered if it marked anything anymore or was just a remnant of some lost past. I didn’t see any yellow POSTED signs, the ones that haunt many beautiful places throughout New Jersey and the country at large. But I decided not to push my luck and to instead start plying the numerous holes I’d spotted on the short walk there.
Who knows what this weathered sign marks anymore.
The first was riffle that ran under a downed tree, forming a wider pool downstream. On the inside of the main flow was a small hole, no more than two feet wide and hard against the tree, with an even smaller eddy within it.
From five feet away, no casting would be necessary, or even possible in small confines of this stream, with low hanging branches everywhere. So I tossed my flies under the log, right into hole I was eyeing. One second after wavering on the edge of the current, a dark shape darted from under the log and nailed my hopper with a resounding splash.
The first spot.
I was shocked. Not only because I had a bite, my first in many sessions, or that it happened in the very first spot, minutes after I arrived, but also because in the middle of winter this bold, little brookie tried to take a dry fly a third its size, and with authority no less.
After gathering myself amid an adrenaline rush, I tossed my flies back into the same spot. This time, the hopper plunged under the water, and I lifted the rod to find a small brookie, maybe the same fish, pulling back at me.
I quickly pulled the fish into a puddle beside me out of the current, and maneauvered it into my net.
Finally. After many hours of freezing effort, the drought was over, I had my first fish of the year.
And, man, was it a beauty.
As I looked down into the net, the astounding colors and patterns of the fish I had grown to care so much about as a kid blew me away once again. The squiggly vermiculations on its back, like a soldier in jungle camo. The flame-colored and white-tipped fins. The bright red spots with blue-purple halos. Despite seeing more of them than I can count, the sight of a wild brookie never fails to make my mind spin, my brain struggling to understand how such a beautiful display of colors exists naturally in the environments it calls home.
A fish of many firsts.
Native to the the northeastern U.S., eastern Canada and the Appalachian mountains all the way down to Georgia, the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) was here long before us, dating beyond the end of the last Ice Age, when glaciers stretched all the way to southern Brooklyn.
But they may not survive us. In my mind, the fate of the brook trout represents one of the greatest black eyes on the environmental history of the United States. And it’s the perfect representation for all of our ecological sins over the years.
Dams, over-development, habitat loss, pollution, deforestation, overfishing and climate — which makes all of those issues worse — have all struck a potentially fatal blow to this cherished native species, the official freshwater fish of numerous states. They used to swim free in nearly every creek and river in the Northeast, with monsters measured in pounds hunting in larger bodies of water, and still larger sea-run varieties making New England estuaries their home.
But now they’re all gone. At least relative to their historic prime in the 1700s. You have to travel to Northern Maine and parts of Canada to find the last vestiges of healthy populations.
Still, throughout the more southern parts of their historic range, small populations of brookies had survived the human onslaught, escaping to the small, cold mountain streams where they can exclusively be found now. Just like this small brook in New Jersey.
But my first fish of 2024 was one of many firsts. I’ve caught wild brookies in Connecticut and New York, but this was my first in New Jersey. It was also my first brookie on the fly in what could be two decades.
The joy of that catch, and the appreciation of the short interaction I was granted with such a perfect being, was enough to satisfy me for the day, if not the month.
Of course I kept on fishing anyway. And they were biting. Incredibly, more than 10 little brookies smashed my hopper dry fly in the three hours I was fishing, though it proved too big to hook any of them.
I switched my nymph to a larger, heavier stonefly-esue pattern, and under another fallen tree I hooked, fought and lost a slightly bigger fish.
At another spot, I stood on the bank and dropped my flies into a whirlpool next to current running underneath a plank walkway. As my flies drifted into the undercut bank, I felt my nymph get snagged. Upon lifting my rod, I felt a shake and to my surprise briefly glimpsed a chunky, 10-incher before it rolled and pulled free. It was a giant for the size of the stream, and the type of near-miss whose memory will power me through many skunk sessions as the year rolls on.
A little a while later, and shortly after a banana-peel style fall on my back after slipping on a wet rock, I made my way back up the gorge to the van, slightly damp, smiling and fully satisfied as I began my long drive back to the city.
SONG OF THE TRIP
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