Searching for rectangles....

I do it about 5 nights a week. I stand outside in the dark, cold night on the edge of a foot bridge with some decent lighting, scanning the water. The lighting isn't great, but it's enough to cover about 15 yards of water. I'm looking for dark rectangular shapes peaking out of the shadows where the light ends. When I see movement, I hope off the footbridge and cast towards it from the shoreline. More often than not, I walk away empty handed. I usually target carp, but the area I fished last night appears to have some stocked trout wash in to it from Sandy's wrath. I pulled two fish, one over 18 inches, and quite ugly. These fish were stocked a month ago, and had a lot of strength to fight, which is a good sign.

Never tie one on....

That is... never tie on a fly until you get a good chance to examine what's going on. I got to the stream today, and it was windy as hell. I didn't think there would be a chance of anything on the surface. My common sense said to knot up a nymph and egg rig with some split shot since the flows are still ripping from Sandy in the wind-free front seat of my car, but I opted to leave my leader naked until I got stream side. I got to the hole and I couldn't believe it. My timing couldn't have been more perfect because there was a great baetis hatch. Some 8x tippet, and a size 22 CDC olive later, I brought my first fish to hand, followed by another. Then just like that, the hatch ended. I'm glad I wasn't fumbling around trying to clip off the nymph rig and store the flies back in a box. After the hatch ended, I picked up another 3 or 4 on midges and eggs. Fun day on the water for sure.

October photo dump

This month went too damn fast. It was a beautiful month to be outside. Well...at least til Sandy hit us. I spent a lot of time outside with the kids, did a little fishing, ate lots of Halloween candy, and watched our neighborhood get destroyed by wind.