A random find...

[Mark B.]

Fallfish inhabit the same waters as Smallmouth Bass & are caught on same lures. The big difference is when hooked,........Fallfish = no fight.

As kids in Three Bridges, we would catch Creek Chubs in “The Brook”, an unnamed trib. to the South Branch Raritan. Cool looking in the spring with their fighting horns (breeding tubercles).

Another spring activity in The Brook: Sucker Clubbing.
Kids armed with baseball bats,……the suckers had no chance in shallow water on their spawning run. Not sure why we did it. Just that these big fish were there & vulnerable. We’d stack them up on the shoreline & maybe bring a few back to feed the neighborhood cats.

[Hookmanski]

I love hearing all these stories, keep em coming! Glad to see my little adventure brought back some happy memories. And yeah Chrisper, I'm not giving up the location anytime soon

[Billfish715]

Finding new spots to fish, no matter how small they are, is always fun. Those adventures down the little tributaries off the main flow often turn up some unexpected treasures. I've ventured down some of those side shoots on some of the streams during the trout season and have stumbled across some places that were loaded with fish of all kinds. Check and see where that "find" of yours leads or from where it came. There might be something lurking that might surprise you even more than what you caught.

[Riz]

nice post , always nice to walk thru the woods

[BT67]

as a young kid I fished the Rockaway River in different spots in early summer with the hopes of catching the elusive trout. These fallfish or chubs certainly kept us busy but for me I was always disappointed when I saw it wasn't a trout.

[thmyorke1]

Originally Posted by BT67

as a young kid I fished the Rockaway River in different spots in early summer with the hopes of catching the elusive trout. These fallfish or chubs certainly kept us busy but for me I was always disappointed when I saw it wasn't a trout.

That's literally me. That fallfish I posted was the same story.

[Mark B.]

"The Brook”: 40.519585, -74.791465

My earliest memory: I was 5 years old, as was my friend Ivy. Ivy’s mother took us to the its bank to go fishing. Rigs / Tackle = 2 sticks w/ cotton string & open safety pins as hooks. No bait, we caught nothing. But it was magical.

Back in the early 1960’s it was a dairy farm. We used to dig under the cow patties for worms. The cows had the vegetation browsed as short as a mowed lawn right up to the brook’s bank. Sometimes, a kid sitting on a high bank, meat hanging a worm, would be kicking his feet. Unwittingly, undermining the bank beneath him,…….suddenly he would be riding a large chunk of earth down in to the brook. In the winter, too, while sledding, someone would always fail to turn / skid out of control & end up in the brook.

In addition to fishing for Creek Chubs, Sunfish & sucker clubbing, we were always building dams. Digging holes, too, that would fill w/ water, & then covering with sticks & grass. A trap set for whomever. Usually it was a buddy who would step, & get the dreaded “wet foot”.

[Billfish715]

Mark, Your experiences stir up great memories from my youth. Digging our own worms! Wow! A coffee can for a bait bucket, a pitchfork, a flashlight ( for night crawlers ) is all you needed. Buying bait? What?

We found worms at a manure pile at a farm on our way to a pond. No. Mom didn't drive us. We rode our bikes. Try to find a manure pile in any neighborhood today. Try to find a farm! If we went to a different pond or stream, we would find
"piss worms" under the leaves. They were slimy and usually broke in half if you tried to put a hook in them.

Did you ever have your mom help you find night crawlers? I did, until I pulled a fat crawler out of a hole. That's when I paraphrased what the older boys called them........c..k suckers. Bam! A right cross by Mom to my lip put an end to that bait gathering adventure!

We learned to keep worm farms (wooden boxes with layers of newspaper, dirt, leaves, and compost filled with garden worms or night crawlers) for those summer days when digging worms was difficult. Powere Bait? How about gummy white bread or homemade dough balls flavored with vanilla or some other extract from the closet.

Thanks, Mark.

[Mark B.]

Yeah, Billfish, those were the days,.....simpler times.

My mother would throw the Percolator coffee grounds in the flower bed outside of the kitchen door. There were always worms there. Fairly often, we would dig up what we called a grub worm. In actuality, a Japanese Beetle larvae. Sunfish, especially, relished them.

The Brook runs under Old York Rd. I would walk there, kneel on the shoulder of the road, & fish w/ a dropline from the low cement wall (“1923” carved into it),………my line running through the same groove in, & over, the wall to the water. Hours upon hours I spent there, staring into the water,………I might have worn that groove in to the cement.

Unbeknownst to me @ the time was that my dropline was my father’s old fly fishing reel (I remember it looked like it was made of pewter), spooled with black nylon line. No mono back then.

Once, I put a leaf on the hook & caught a Sunfish.

[Hookmanski]

Well if we're all telling childhood stories i guess I'll join in...

I grew up with the Spruce Run Creek in my backyard. Spent countless hours swimming, wading, exploring, fishing and goofing around in the woods and creek with all the neighborhood kids, some of who are still my close friends today.

There's a huge rock that sits on the bank of the creek we used to climb all over, and fish under. My friend and I went back there with a pack of hooks and 2 poles, trying to catch whatever would bite. We dug up our own worms and used to slay the rainbows backs there. Later the same summer, we went back and found a dock that had come loose from someones property and flowed downstream. So, like any young adventurer would, we hopped on it and floated down river all the way into town, a good 2 miles. Ill never forget that.