Amawalk Browns

First Amawalk Brown of the day

Sometimes you just need to be spontaneous.  After a rather long week at work and the fact there is finally a weekend on the family calendar without any major obligations, I decided at the last minute to head up to Westchester to fish a favorite stream of mine...Amawalk Outlet.  This stream is part of  New York City's water supply system and is regulated under "artificial only" rules.  To get there required getting up at 5am and driving an hour and a half from Long Island.  But it was worth it.  I managed to have large stretches of the stream to myself for several hours, not something I would often enjoy on Long Island.

Amawalk Outlet downstream of Woods Street Bridge

Caught a couple of browns right near this rock

In a "nutshell".... it was a pretty nice morning.  I managed to bring a half dozen healthy looking brown trout to hand and had a few LDR's.  All of them were taken on a size 14 Killer Bug.  On this stream, as well as a number of other streams in Westchester and Putnam counties, a Killer Bug is just about all you will ever need.    I did fish a couple of sakasa kebari, with a few bites and hook-ups here and there but the Killer Bug was the hands down winner.

      

In addition to the browns, there were a number of other stream-side residents present.  There was an abundance of midges and mayflies hatching, especially in the sunny patches.  Spring peepers could be heard in many areas along the stream.  Mallard ducks were swimming in several places and evidence of others that passed during the night could be seen everywhere.

Deer tracks

 In my opinion, a few hours stream-side is all I need to recharge my "batteries."  What better tonic could there be for stress relief than being able to stand knee deep in a cool mountain stream and hold such a beautiful work of Nature?