Brookie Lake Report: Hello, May

You celebrate May Day with an evening trip to Brookie Lake. It's the best time of year to be here, before the weeds take over.

A spring breeze ruffles the water. You start with a little muddler but the expected hits don't come.

You tie on a deer hair caddis and give that a try as you work down to the far shoreline.

Nothing doing with that, so you try another deer hair fly with an orange head. By now you're at that far shoreline, and you notice something.

Hundreds of little brookies are jumping out of the water on a feeding spree, presumably working on bugs the wind has pushed to this end.

You strip the deer hair fly with vigor, and some fish take it the same way. They are fresh and cold and strong and beautiful.

You think you've found the brookie mother lode, but you glance back and see that the whole lake has little brookies popping out of it.

You would think you'd be catching fish on every cast, but you aren't. You switch to the small deer hair caddis and get a fish to take it on the strip.

The wind dies down, and you can see the clouds of minute midges swirling over the water. You try some tiny little dries to see if you can get some straight dry fly takes.

By now the brookies seem to have formed distinct pods, and they appear to be more skittish without the riffles. They're hitting and running, and you can't seem to get the fly at the right place at the right time. You have to admire these shifty little fish.

You decide to head in. Now you go counter-intuitive and tie on that muddler again. The frenetic feeding activity is tapering off, but you target rises as you can as you kick back.

Halfway back to the take out you come up on a very active little pod, many of them still coming straight out of the water. You drop the muddler into the middle of it and the fish of the day hits it before you can give it a strip.

You get one more the same way, and then that's it. The lake is quiet.

Until another beautiful May day dawns.

Happy May Day! With Bacon

So this all started as a Happy May Day post. No Occupy protests, no International Workers on the march, no parades of Soviet military hardware. Just the good old fashioned May Day where you look around and say, "Hey look, it's May, for crying out loud!"

When I was a kid we made simple baskets, filled them with simple flowers--dandelions, and maybe for good measure some more dandelions, hung them on the front door knob, rang the bell and ran away to hide, laughing like little maniacs. We'd watch breathlessly while our Mom would open the door, look surprised, and look all around to see who had left her such a marvelous gift, pretending that she couldn't see us. She'd close the door--and we'd do it all over again. And again and again until she finally told us that was enough. Now that was fun. Kids today don't know how to have fun like that.

So then I thought, wouldn't it be cool to find a photo of a basket of trout to hang on your cyber door knob. You know, May Day for a fly fishing blog. And I found one, a postcard from 1902. Cool.

But then I noticed another photo of a basket with trout, and when I checked it out it was from April 6 this year. I admit it, as primarily a catch and release guy I can forget that many folks still fish for food. That's certainly true around here, just as much as in New Jersey, where this photo is from. So that got me going off in a different direction.

I got interested in the story of David and Natalia, who fished on opening day--April 6--in Stokes State Park in New Jersey. The park website posted these photos.

They did alright. They got their limit on each of the two days they fished. The limit was 6 fish apiece per day. The caption on the photo above says this was their "partial catch" for day two. The website said that 6,000 trout of from 3 to 8 pounds had been stocked across 88 streams and 90 ponds.

And they knew how to get them. I've had more than one old timer tell me not to waste my time with fly fishing, that the number one trout-getter of all time is a juicy worm dead-drifted deep.

And Natalia knew how to cook them. Bacon-Wrapped Brookies. Yum! You know, I've never had trout fried up that way. How could that be? The sheltered existence of a catch and release fisherman, I guess.

So, it's always interesting to see how other people live, and fish. And to get a glimpse into what it's like to be a trout fisherman in New Jersey.

So where was I? Oh yeah, Happy May Day!

Now I'm going to look up the limit for Brookie Lake. No, I won't be bringing home basketfuls of fish, but I think it's high time I fried up some Bacon-Wrapped Brookies.

May Day Festival: Parade and Street Ball

You know when trout season opens that the time of parades and festivals and rodeos is upon you. Saturday was the first, the May Day Festival at a town up the road. Small town parades at this time of year are celebrations of the fact that we made it through the long hard winter; we did it together, as a community; and, as a community, we can get through anything.

And so every part of town life is dressed up and paraded down main street, and even those things that have a serious or even threatening side--the fire department and law enforcement--are seen for what they really are at their best: the way we help each other out, and watch each other's back. And all kinds of different people, people who might look askance at each other at any other time, stand side by side along the street and chat and joke and help each other's kids share the candy thrown by the passing floats. Everyone is glad to be reminded that they aren't alone, and that we're all in this together.

We've been here long enough to know what to expect in these parades, and we still like it all. There are always the princesses and attendants...

The marching bands...

And Smoky the Bear.

There are, of course, the sirens, now signalling only delight.

The Shriners can always be counted on to keep things on a high level. And they don't throw out candy, they pass out stuffed animals to all the kids.

You'll always see some of your friends out there,  with the Garden Club, or the hospital auxiliary, or just having fun like my friend Pat.

There are always horses, bringing back echoes of frontier days on these streets.

And, my favorite, the Rodeo Queens.

It all makes everybody feel like a kid again.

After the parade we walked down the street...

To the site of the Three-on Three Basketball Tournament. This is big. Dozens of teams in several age brackets play on eight courts all day to determine bragging rights until next year.

This is street ball, and it can get rough. And it's not just for the boys. The "Smokin' Hot Babes" in the flourescent green shirts did a number on their opponents.

And sometimes injuries can occur.

That's why Jeremiah likes it so much. He had been looking forward to this for a long time. His team, "The Average Joes," played hard but got  beat twice and were eliminated. By now, their opponents, from several different towns, are friends, too. It's easier to get beat by friends.

So what do you do when you've been eliminated from the tournament? You go fishing in the river with your friend and make sure your friend's Dad sends a photo message to your parents of your best Smallmouth of the day.

May Day!

Click on photos for full size image.