Boot Foot Waders, Cold Water & Wind, Catching Some Trout

Twenty-and-a-half-inch, 3.85-pound rainbow trout from the South Branch Raritan River.

Entering the Cold Water Season

I put on my boot-foot, neoprene waders for the first time this season. Temperatures never got above 39 degrees, and while the water temp was probably at least a little higher than that, just as well warmer than neoprene booties and wading boots covered my feet. Fred Matero wore booties and wading shoes, and I never heard any complaint, but I’ve entered the cold water season as of today. That neoprene you see me wearing kept me toasty. My two vulnerabilities were hands without gloves in wind gusts of 45 mph or stronger and no wool cap.

Resistance Overcome

I had to spill beans to do it. And I really did, making sure to quickly clean them up once they scattered on the ground.

It’s the strangest thing, because just yesterday, I read about having been confronted with “losing all” as great to contain in a memoir chapter. It so happens that one of them of the memoir I’m working on is, at least as of six years ago—it may change—entitled “End of the Rope.” So to feel near, very near, the end of my rope today…could have made me feel all the more I must be near that end.

But I had a friend along.

Just to be clear, the name of that chapter of my book The Microlight Quest, not yet published, is not simply cliche, because every chapter is headed by a quote from an American president, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s is: “When you come to the end of the rope, tie a knot and hang on.”

I mentioned six years, but it’s not like I’ve worked on the book forever. I did begin in 2017, but I haven’t worked on it in over three years, and I took a couple of years’ hiatus besides that, not to mention I did a lot of work on other projects while working on the book.

But this afternoon, with all that threatened me laid out, we turned a terrible day for me into a vital success that amounted to two trout caught. A great day for Fred, too. I know, because he got us talking about North Carolina in the spring, the two of us looking forward to it. We plan on driving to Ocracoke and fishing red drum a few days.

Downriver

We began by fishing New Jersey’s lower South Branch Raritan. Casting and retrieving jigs at moderate speed. After 45 minutes or an hour, nothing had happened, and we both felt cold. I imagined I lost a lot of body heat without a wool cap, but mostly, my hands felt it. I suggested we move on to a spot upstream. Not by wading and walking up there; by going to another area altogether, warming in the car on the way.

As we left the spot, we ran into another guy coming in. I told him that just because we’d caught no trout didn’t mean he wouldn’t. I told him about an experience last year there, when I slung a jig for a full hour-and-a-half before I hooked up. He told us it’s been slower this year compared to last, but he’s been hitting the spot and catching some.

It’s colder out there than it looks. Tree branches all asway in the heavy wind. Some limbs breaking. Fred Matero gave it his best.

Further Up

Still a big river at the next spot, we couldn’t wade as far out into the current as I would have liked. Like at the last spot, we managed to get casts near the opposite bank, though not right up against the slightly overhanging soil. I had scaled back from an eighth-ounce jig to a twelfth, but with the five-foot Shimano ultralight, I felt confident in what distance it got me.

Maybe a little too confident. I lost that jig to branches over the water. Oliver Round had given it to me as a gift—he gave me a couple—and I really liked the combination of black marabou, a strip of reflecto, and white head with dark eyes.

I switched rods, trying to work the stretch by casting a sixteenth-ounce black marabou Kalin’s with my four-and-a-half-foot St. Croix ultralight, feeling it really wasn’t quite enough. But I decided to give casts my best as if I did get them close enough to that bank. I had felt something that seemed to have been a knock from a fish on the other jig, but nothing more happened. Nor did anything happen to Fred. I told Fred, at some point, about the trout I caught while fishing the same rod and type of jig at the Big Flatbrook recently. I caught my trout on the same rod at the Paulinksill and North Branch a little while before.

By the time we left for another spot further upstream yet, I began to feel strong. Talk between the two of us had solved the real problem.

Catching fish? I didn’t think it impossible.

On the small side when it comes to fall stockers. Almost the smallest I’ve caught over the past few years.

A Couple of Trout for the Day

We could have gone further, into upper reaches of the river where you can expect wild brown trout, too, but not only did Fred have to be in his car—left behind at my house—by 3:30, we both knew the next spot and believed in it.

Fred cast black marabou. I had an eighth-ounce jig on my Shimano, but I reached for the St. Croix and that little one. The river is noticeably smaller up here.

“It’s shallow,” Fred said.

“Yeah, thigh deep at most,” I said, adding something about low water.

Confident in my little jig, my casts put it where it needed to go. I knew I could wade into position to put it right against the opposite bank if I wanted to. I hooked and lost a trout there once that way. But I was in no hurry at all. We’d just use up the remaining time Fred had.

Both of us felt good about that.

We might have cast 20 minutes when I hooked the smaller of the two trout. And maybe another 20 minutes when I said, “That’s a nice one.” The fish did not want to come to the net, steady runs giving the impression of the trout being larger than it was. It, ran, rolled, and roiled the water a long time before I did net it. That little St. Croix ultralight is a pleasure to pit against a big trout, and I like how the cork at the top of the handle forms a conical shape. My thumb and index finger feel the form, which makes the rod’s presence known all the more.

I like using the smaller jig—and that smaller rod—whenever I can. According to one guy I know, a man who has spent decades fishing the lower South Branch, one shouldn’t use anything heavier than a sixteenth, although, if I recall correctly, I’ve caught trout on both sizes.