The Greenbrook 9/21/24:

[AndyS]

9/21/24: I joined the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership and about 40 other volunteers for International Clean-Up Day at Mountainview Park in Middlesex Borough. At go time we all split up and a handful of us headed for the Greenbrook. About 12 of us knuckled down and got it done.
I think it was around 1974 when my friends and I would ride our bikes down Shepard Ave to where the Greenbook ran between Bridgewater and Middlesex. There we would sit on a big log at the bend of the brook and catch sunfish, dace, shiners, creek chubs and an entire host of other fish, this kept us entertained for hours.
Around 1976 I joined another friend and we would trap muskrat in the winter, around the same time I penned my first book "Freshwater Fish of New Jersey" I wish I still had that book. One day I went to the brook to go fishing and everything was dead. There was a thick mat of dead fish that covered the brook, we never went back and fished the brook again. Fast forward 48 years later, the brook is slowly trying to make a comeback. The first thing I noticed when I set foot in brook was the amount of bait fish. The bottom of the brook is starting to resemble that of the South Branch of the Raritan with the underwater vegetation. Will this tiny brook ever make a full recovery, probably not but it keeps getting better with every clean up.

[bigfishy]

Didn't know you were a writer...I'd love to read it if you ever find it...gr8 work out there as always

[AndyS]

Many times before it looked like this.