Tenkara Fishing in the Catskills Mauntain（Ⅲ）

My wife and I spent last weekend in the Catskills fishing a mountain stream and the West Branch of Delaware with tenkara outfits.

It was her first time fishing the Catskills mountain stream and she caught a nice brookie.  I caught a few brookies too.













I would be satisfed just seeing a few of them.  
I felt continuing catching them would be harassing these pretty little fish.

                                  

We fished the West Branch of Delaware on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.
We tried several fast water stretches that were good for tenkara fishing.
The water level was 400~600 cfs.
Wading in this level and fast water was a little bit difficult for us, especially for my wife.
 I concentrated on drifting my fly along the undercut of the grassy bank at Shehawken, and I caught a 13- inch brown in the early Sunday morning.






















Later I also caught 3 more browns in Hale Eddy when I drifted the bead-head soft hackle flies swinging below me.
I didn't catch any 20+ inches trout which is not unusual in the Delaware.
Even if I caught one, I wasn't sure if my tankara rod could handle such a fish.
I find fishing in a big river with tenkara rod is not more difficult than nymphing with a fly rod.

                                                                                                                                                                                 












So far I only have experience in tankara fishing in the fast water.  I wander if tenkara fishing method (twitching the fly) in slow water of a large pool, such as Upper Game Land Pool, is effective.

The video below is a tenkara master fishing in a slow water pool.

Tenkara Fishing in the Catskills Mountains（Ⅱ）

I fished in a Catskills mountain stream yesterday.
It was the first time I fished this section of the stream.
The stream bank and stones are covered with thick green moss.
When I was walking upstream, I felt as if I were strolling in an old Japanese garden.

The stream has many nice pockets of water holding brookies.
They are small, but vigorous.
When they attacked my elk wing caddis, they jumped five inches above the water.


Despite the beauty of the stream and fantastic fishing, I had to flee after walking upstream for about a quarter mile.
There were just too many mosquitoes that didn't leave me alone.

I look forward to visiting this stream again in the fall when all these annoying mosquitoes have gone.
I can imagine the stream will be more beautiful as the leaves change to their autumn color.

                                                 

Tenkara Fishing in Croton, NY（Ⅳ）

Yesterday was hot!
Just as last weekend, we fished the Croton.
The water level of the Croton Falls Outlet was down to normal.
The water was pretty warm.  Even when we waded to deep water, it was not cool enough to make us or fish comfortable.
We moved on to the East Branch.

The water level of the East Branch was also down to almost normal.
The water was colder than the Croton Falls Outlet.
We caught several good size trouts, which were our nice rewards for being out there in such a hot day.

                        






If we want to fish comfortably in hot summer days, we need to go to the  mountains farther north.

Tenkara Fishing in Croton, NY（Ⅲ）

My wife and I went to the West Branch of Croton again yesterday and wanted to continue fishing upstream from where we left last week.
I had another reason to go there.  I might have lost a stack of tippet spools there.  I wanted to look for it.
When we arrived, we saw four spin fishermen ahead of us.
We had no choice but to go somewhere else fishing.
Before we left, we had made a quick search for the stack but didn't find it.
The next possible place where I might have lost the tippets was somewhere near the Bath Tub Pool of the East Branch. The Pool was the last place we fished last week.  However, the tippets were nowhere to be found.

The water level of the East Branch remained high.
A fisherman was fishing in the Bath Tub Pool.  So we started fishing on the other side of the Pool.
Not long after, he left.  We had the Pool all for ourselves.
The trees along the bank of the Pool had been cut down earlier this year.
Fishermen can now cast a fly or tenkara line from the banks.

We simply enjoyed casting our tenkara lines without much worry about back space and caught many good size browns and rainbows.
We also fished a little upstream from the Bath Tub Pool. This high water level has created all kinds of currents both in the Pool and a little upstream:  rapids, deep and small plunge pools, fast and slow channels.  Each of them holds fish.

When it was still early evening, my wife said to me, " I have fished enough today."
We left the East Branch with lots of joy even without finding our tippets.