He’s never caught so many fish before, ever

CORNWALL — The state’s hatchery trucks delivered some 9,000 brown and rainbow trout to the Housatonic Trout Management Area early last week.

On Friday, Sept. 13, I ventured into the river on the River Road side in Cornwall around noon, thinking I’d while away a couple of hours catching silly stocked trout.

It would make a nice change of pace from floating around a lake bothering bass.

Some six hours later, I staggered out with a sore shoulder after catching at least 70 trout, plus the odd small-mouth bass and whitefish.

That is not an exaggeration. It’s not a misprint. If anything, it’s a conservative estimate.

The fish were taking just about anything, including a white panfish popper I tossed in for the sheer heck of it.

Isonychia imitations, in all configurations, were the biggest producers, but I also connected on: Bread and Butter nymphs; Madame X caddis; Stimulator; flying ant; assorted soft-hackle wets; keibari flies (Japanese soft-hackles); Wooly Buggers; Erie shiners; and the panfish popper.

It was like batting practice.

Also in the mix was an honest-to-goodness lunker brown, which sportingly took a green mop fly. Unless the state is growing 20-plus inch browns in their tanks, this specimen was a holdover.

Saturday was still very active, but the numbers were way down. I only netted about 25.

Only.

And Sunday was more or less normal, with 15 or so.

What happened? Freaky Friday can’t be attributed to my superior skills, pleasant as that would be. There were plenty of anglers having similar results.

I can only speculate that this atypical Friday the 13th was the result of the right weather conditions, the right water temperature, a lot of insect activity and enough time for the hatchery trout to get acclimated to their new environment.

And sheer dumb luck. 

All the fish, by the way, were immediately released.