Trout reports...

[Michael82929]

Spoke to my dad over the weekend...

He said the fishing was outright insane

Fished the Paulinskill on Friday - LOL.. he got 104 trout throughout the day and his buddy got 80..... All mixed - browns rainbows and brookies

Saturday - he fished the flatbrook and got over 80 thoroughout the day...

Still a lot of big fish in the water..

Fished ultralight in the AM - and during the day / early PM switched over to flies

The fly fishing bite has been insane during the mid / late day

[AndyS]

Last week of stocking. I'm hoping alot of fish hold over through the summer.
Thanx for the report.

[Capt. Lou]

Nice report, here's my take fished practically every day since Mar 30th only missed about a week total.
Quantity of fish were available as Mike points out , I'm speaking for myself there was a noticeable lack of mid size fish in my catch. I'm not out there to catch numbers but many days this is the case.
I have been lucky enough to C&R a couple over 5#'s each spring .
This spring was better to me had 4 over that number , but three taken in PA home waters.
Last week after thirty days of almost contuinos
fishing I finally got a bow in the 5# range in NJ waters ! Now what I did not catch many of was mid range fish , those sizes that are prevalent in fall winter fishery 15 to 20"'range .
Maybe others have done better but I believe I only landed about 6 in this range! That's probably taking close to several hundred trout !
May is rapidily drawing to close & with it my chances of getting another 5# plus fish .
I'm looking forward to getting on the ocean shortly & since I will not be trout fishing again to fall , this is the way my Spring season may end.
Not complaining just wondering how others faired per my expierance .

[Michael82929]

My usual spring time daunts have produced the same number of mid sized fish as opposed to last year.

We had more bigger fish last year than this year.

The stretchs of water that I fish changed large in part to Sandy and other fall storms that flatten a lot of the structure we had last year.

Messed up a lot of the river.

Nothing has changed in the yrs of stocking nor will it in the future... pre and first few weeks get those 2.5 yr trout

Mid season - those go away and you get one / two weeks of the bombers and thats it.

Sometimes you may get that following week a few mid sized or bombers based on inventory.

The suprise this year was the week they put in the bombers, they allocate usually 70 on a truck for that week. This year, two runs I know of had 90.

Another suprise was the bonus fish - by end of season - you have 2400 / 2600 trout on a run. Right now their is more than that loading on the truck.

I find it sad to see the licenses down and trout stamps down... Fishing has never been this good for NJ trout streams.. Years ago, if you caught a 15 inch trout.. it was a big deal.

You caught 30 fish - it was a big deal..

You got one breeder a year - it was a huge deal....

Last few years, I have had days - catching 3 - 5 big fish in a day....

40 - 100 fish catch days...all species, ultra light / pull out the fly rod... you can catch a 6 - 9lb fish in a NJ trout stream.. My father never saw that is 50 years he been fishing those streams..

[cantcatchme]

Sad to say but they deff didn't stock a part of the Metedeconk this past Monday that I fish on a regular basis. Not that it us a big deal to me because I am pretty much done with trout. I did fish it Tuesday and it was very dismal in the normal holding spots right after a stocking. I talked to 4 other guys that fished after 5 Monday who have fished this spot for 15 plus years or longer and they had 2 brookies between them. Usually you can see them in certain runs and they were void of fish. Had to work my way down river to catch some left overs from previous stockings.