[Lard Almighty]

After texting the boss that I was ill, I slept in for a while to give the stocking trucks time to make their rounds. First spot on the list was Peapack Brook, which was down to a pathetic trickle. Nevertheless, a few nets of fish were tossed in. I found a hole by the railroad bridge where the fish were stacked up and couldn't stay away from my jig. I nailed seven from there, a mix of rainbows and brookies. The brookies were bigger than the bows by a good 2 inches on average. I got one more brookie upstream before I beat it out of there.

Next up was Natirar. I knew they didn't stock that stretch but I wanted to see what was going on. Same story: very very low water. I saw a nice smallmouth on a bed, but the only fish taking my jig were rock bass. I caught about a dozen of the little peckers before I got sick of it and left.

I wanted to fish a spot with plenty of water to see if it made a difference, so I headed over to the dam at Duke Island Park. I started throwing a rapala, no dice on that. I switched over to a jig, and still nothing. I noticed a couple of fish breaking near the middle of the river, so I put on a kastmaster and started winging it out as far as I could. On my third or fourth cast, it gets slammed! I fight it for a few minutes and finally get my hand around a really nice rainbow. Didn't get a measurement, but it was every bit of 20 inches. After snapping a photo with my cell phone I revived the fish in the shallows (which took a little while), but she eventually swam off pretty strong on her own. I threw the kastmaster around a while longer, but I got no other bites so I left.

After stopping at a diner for a late lunch I went to Far Hills to fish the North Branch at the 5:00 whistle. There were a lot of fish by the bridge, but they weren't going for lures. I only managed two on a Panther Martin. Since everyone was staying within a hundred feet of the bridge, I decided to venture downstream, which was empty of anglers. In the half mile stretch I covered I caught six brook trout, a little smallmouth, a fallfish, and a rock bass, all on a CD3.

Final tally: 17 trout and about 15 miscellaneous fish. Not bad for a day which was supposed to be spent in a cubicle.