Bro-Time

Pete on the Ausable section

I got up to visit my brother Pete at the house he and his lady Thea just bought. Great house in a great location.... with access to private water on the West Branch of the Ausable River.... not too shabby huh?  We did fish it for a little bit in the morning but it was a half hearted effort to be honest. We were far more interested in a float on another river in the area for smallmouth and pike. So after half an hour or so we got off the trout water and headed over there. 

We dropped off one vehicle downstream and put in upstream for a nice long float. We were both pretty psyched about it. The weather seemed to be pretty good- gorgeous sun and light wind was a great way to start. Before we even put in I had several fish in hand- a couple of smallies and fallfish got things underway. It didn't take long to get into more smallies. The river wasn't too large and there were good spots to get out and wade fish, which we did several times. Using buggers got a lot of attention from smaller bass, fallfish and rock bass. Pike were more interested in the Clouser half and halfs we were chucking.

Smallies are just a blast on the fly!

Of course there was a pike that was far more interested in a smallie Pete hooked. That fish was easily 36" but disappeared into the depths and would not respond to anything he tossed back at it. Shortly after that we were floating near a road and a worker from a local sewage treatment plant drove by in a municipal truck and yelled at me "Sit down a$$hole!!!" (I was standing up in the stern watching for fish like I do frequently). Quite a lovely acknowedgment of concern from a member of the local town's employees. Gotta love the northern Adirondacks!

Nice fish Pete!

Shortly after that things got ugly. Huge thunderheads loomed and some serious rain came down. We started high tailing it downstream. It let up and we started to fish again but more dark clouds and thunder got us moving again. We rolled over a huge pike again. This river has some pigs in it for sure. And some huge smallmouth. We saw some 4+ pound fish in one spot we stopped to fish. I got a decent one, but the real big ones were very spooky. Definitely need to go back and fish this more slowly on a day without thunderstorms!

All in all a great day with my brother. We don't get as many of these as we would like. I truly treasure days on the water with Pete. He is a solid guy that fishes as hard as he hikes (and I dare anyone out there keep up with him on a mountain trail- he hikes for his job and is in amazing shape!). Pete- we will be out there again soon man! And I will start shooting that bow soon!

Pete with a spunky smallie