Trout

[Reel Class]

Since I'm waiting to get my boat fixed I've had some free time on my hands. In between waiting for the arrival of the bluefish on the beaches and in the rivers and inlets, and the very slow action with stripers locally here in ocean county I've been hitting some trout spots mostly here in ocean and monmouth county and up in Bergen county where I work my regular job.

A few spots down here have been holding trout but they've been somewhat finicky but I have been picking some fish on powerbait, jigs, and phoebes. I've only caught state stocked rainbows and the biggest in the last week was maybe 12" down here.

Up north, it's a different ball game. It seems there's less pressure and more water to fish with more trout to be caught. Recently, a good friend of mine tipped me off to a spot that was loaded, so I checked it out. Water was crystal clear, shallow, and looked like a spot you'd see a guy on horseback casting flies to cutthroats in Colorado - so I did a little searching and found a pile of rainbows and had a blast getting bit on almost every cast with a gold phoebe. The fish were mostly 10-15" and were a blast on ultralights in the faster water. Best day so far was almost a double CPR'd limit. I've released all but 1 trout I've caught this year and these nice clean fish are just gorgeous.

I've also seen a few brook trout chase the spoon but have not caught one this year yet.

One thing I've also seen is basically no one fishing for the trout, despite state stocking a lot of places still.

Good luck to all that have been out and I enjoy reading the reports here!