f3cbboy said:
hey jd - you can still find some brook trout on bergen county NJ . very few brookies and small tributaries to not so big "rivers" but they still fit in a mess kit frying pan - only problem is you have to find somewhere to park where people aren't interested in "hey what ya doing????"
I had two cops point their guns at me on time, yelling at me to "freeze." It was nighttime and I was pulling some traps out of the Tenakill creek in Tenafly, NJ. Then they told me to "drop my weapon" and I informed them that all I had in my hands were a few traps and a flashlight, and a wooden bat, and the conversation just got more silly after that. "Trapping what", "what the hell is a muskrat", etc. I was legal and I had a NJ trapping license -but I guess I was an anachromism by that time. It was mid-70s.
With brook trout, we always fished the small creeks for them, and many are probably still there. Problem is, the creeks all go through private estates. For bass, rock bass, crappies, etc. we used to fish the Ramapo River - it used to be beautiful there in some spots.
One funny and true story. When I was a kid, my dad told me about when HE was a kid and a bunch of Italian mafia gangsters owned a small lake in Alpine, New Jersey. The boss was Frank Maretti and he had the lake stocked with rainbow and brown trout. He got shot and killed, and his will left the lake and property to the Catholic Church. So, at the time I was told the story, this property was Holy Angels Catholic Girls School. Been private and fenced in since Maretti got his brains blown out. So, me and a few friends got wondering if the trout could of survived all those years and a few days later, we snuck in at 5 in the morning via cutting a hole in the fence. As soon as our lines hit the water, our lines shot out and broke. We lost all our hooks. Next day, we snuck back in with deep sea fishing poles and 20 lb. test line. We were catching 20 -24" rainbows, one after another. We did this for weeks and finallly got caught and arrested. That led to a chain of events. The caretaker decided to drain the pond to get rid of the trout. Well, he found out the bottom wasn't smooth, and once drained, there were big puddles all over, teeming with huge fish. Yes, we snuck in again and started catcing trout by hand. And again, we got caught and arrested. I got two years juvenille probation for it. Later, the caretaker got arrested for putting poison in the lake in an attempt to kill the fish once and for all.
I wonder now if there's any fish left there, or even if Holy Angels is there anymore. Someone told me they thought the Catholics gave it up and Eddie Murphy built a mansion there.
