Fishing for my dad - 1/10 + 1/11/2020

[Hookmanski]

Bit of a late report, but every year since losing my dad to suicide in 2016 i go out fishing on his birthday to honor him. This year, two of my friends came along for the trip. I like to focus on the area where my dad grew up, Hunterdon County, for these trips.

We started out early Friday morning searching for landlocked salmon. After 3 hours of hard fishing with the wind blowing in our faces and thin ice forming in every cove we went to we decided to call it and switch gears to a nearby trout river. First spot we stopped at looked beautiful and I was able to pull a nice rainbow into the net. Perfect timing, as soon as hit weight hit the bottom of the net the hook popped right out of his mouth. Thanks for that one dad!

We moved further downstream on the same river to a new spot and I was quickly able to net another beautiful bow. Both of the fish I caught were gorgeous, with super vibrant colors and full fins. I assume both holdovers as i doubt they were wild born. Super awesome. After fishing hard from 7am to 4pm we called it a day with just those 2 fish caught, unfortunately my buddies went home skunked.

Jump to the next day, we focused on the SBRR. In hindsight, we probably should've flopped the two rivers as the SBRR was PACKED on Saturday with the mild weather. We went to KLG as my dad used to frequent it as a kid, but it was so crowded that open holes were hard to find. When we finally found one, my friend somehow snapped his pole in half! We walked back to the car and instead of going back we decided to head further downstream. Again, another hard day of fishing from 9am until 4pm. As we were walking back to the car, I was casting in all the holes we fished on the way up and a rainbow smacked my lure right before i pulled it out of the water. We only caught these 3 fish, but I was more than happy with that for a January day.

All in all a great trip. Miss my dad, he would've loved to be out there with us fishing in t-shirts and waders on his birthday. Miss you pops!

Tight lines all!