This November, the FATC will be hosting a pastors retreat put on by Altar Fly Fishing(https://altarflyfishing.org/). To help in our planning, we needed to make a trip down and check out cooking and meeting facilities that will be used for the retreat. Since we were going to Montauk, we had to fish.Derrik Kassebaum, and Mike Bisaga are organizing the Altar event from the FATC side. We will put on a great event with their leadership and the help of a group of other FATC brothers that will join us for the event.
The trip was put on the FATC calendar, and Steve Baker, Bob Hassett and Scott Dougherty joined in.
The first thing we noticed as we pulled into the park was the number of cars. Why were there so many cars and people? Don’t these people have jobs? It’s a Wed.
Anyway, after making our stop at the office, we headed up to the normal spot to get prepared for the day. Bob and Derrik stayed in the park while Mike, Steve and Scott headed down to Baptist Camp to see about all of these Browns we have been hearing about. While Baptist was loaded with fish, it was tough to figure out what exactly they wanted. I think Steve went through about 10 different flies. Mike had one on right at the bend/riffle at the parking lot, however, it was short-lived and didn’t make it to the net. Shortly after we arrived, a hatch started that was one of the biggest I have seen. It almost looked like it was snowing, it was so thick. Except for the first hit on a nymph, the fish didn’t seem to want anything deep. Mike hooked into another fish stripping a crackleback. The fish made a run downstream to where Steve was fishing, so he was ready for the assist. Just before he got it netted, the fish broke off. A combination of being a little too aggressive on landing the fish and the FATC that it was a good 20-25 inches, at least that’s what it looked like from where I was standing. We only had a couple of hours before lunch, so we did not wander downstream too much at Baptist. Before we packed up, Mike had one last hook-up with a nice brown on a soft hackle. This one made it to the net., Not wanting to take ANY responsibility for our lack of fish, we blamed the slow fishing on the excessive hatch that was going on. We figured, no reason to eat a hook with feathers and fur on it when you got the real thing. At least that’s our story.
We all met back at the Stagg table for lunch, and Mike and Derrik headed off to their appointment at noon to check out the cooking and meeting facilities for the Altar event. After all, that was why we were there.
After a brief tour, Mike and Derrik headed back to meet the other guys. Everyone stayed in the park in the afternoon and fished. Derrik had some luck around the boulder in the morning, so he headed back there. Derrik and Mike both pulled a few fish from the deep pool behind the boulder , and Mike got a few above in the riffles, stripping a softhackle. Bob did better than all of us in the afternoon on a variety of flies..
The water is clear and low and fishing is a little tough. Although there were a lot of people fishing, I didn’t see too many catching like you normally do. Some of the flies that seemed to work were black and brown midges, San Juan Worm, Cerise Worm, soft hackles, cracklebacks and The HOP, however, results were not consistent and it really took a variety of flies to figure out what they wanted.
