TROUT FISHING NEAR NEW YORK 
WITHIN THREE HOURS FROM YOUR OFFICE YOU CAN HAVE 
YOUR LINE IN AS PRETTY A STREAM AS YOU COULD DESIRE 
By W. E. SCUDAMORE 
I T is astonishing to find what a large 
proportion of the business men of 
New York City are keen trout fisher¬ 
men, and how few dare allow their 
minds to dwell on this sport during their 
spare moments. The general reason for 
the relegation of Isaak Walton's sport 
into the back of their minds is, I find, 
the fact that they either believe a fishing 
trip should be a fortnight’s holiday, or, 
that, to be worth while, it entails the 
subtraction of at least one or two days 
from the week’s work. 
They are apt to agree that nothing is 
better for the recuperation of the tired 
business man than a few days’ fishing, 
but the question “Do you often go fish¬ 
ing?” generally brings the answer, “Oh, 
no ! The nearest good trout fishing is at 
Phoenicia, New York, and it is difficult 
to reach over the week-end. One wants 
a clear week and I can’t spare the time.” 
This, of course, is absurd. Though 
nothing is further from my mind than to 
detract from the excellence of the sport 
to be obtained at Phoenicia—I have 
never been there, can’t spare the time, 
in fact—I do want to point out that 
there is excellent trout fishing to he ob¬ 
tained, even though you, like myself, do 
not own a car and should count the 
shekels with care, very much nearer to 
your New York office than an all-night 
journey or even five or six hours by rail 
followed by a motor drive. In fact, 
well within three hours from your office 
you can have your 
line in as pretty a 
trout stream as 
your heart could 
desire. 
Beginning early 
in April and last¬ 
ing until July 15, 
there are innumer¬ 
able places of 
which I could tell 
you—and just two 
or three brooks of 
which I wouldn’t 
tell you for any 
consideration ■—• 
where you can 
have a nice Satur¬ 
day evening’s sport 
and fish until a 
reasonable late¬ 
ness Sunday by 
leaving New York 
at noon on Satur¬ 
day and returning 
either Sunday evening or Monday 
morning in time for business, and with 
Fish. 
Before proceeding further, let me as¬ 
sure you that I speak from experience. 
Although not a “star fisherman,” and 
with no walloping bag of which to 
speak, I can assure you that not one 
week last season did my wife and I re¬ 
turn with less than one trout between 
Page 180 
us—the story of that one is another tale 
and has no place here—while my best 
single day’s catch netted me seventeen. 
If this sounds alluring, I will now tell 
you where you may go and do likewise. 
W ITH the Lackawanna Station at 
Hoboken as your starting point, 
you can make any of three stations your 
..... 
Because of the unceasing activities of 
the New Jersey State Fish and Game 
Commission the streams of that state 
are kept stocked with trout and the 
fishing is better to-day than it was in 
the days of Frank Forester. It is a 
source of great satisfaction that the 
rising generation of anglers will never 
know the despair that came to the trout 
fisherman a generation ago who waded 
the length of many an ideal stream for 
trout without ever getting a rise. 
IIIIII|IIII|IIIIIIIII1IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII1IIIIIIIIII111II1I1I1IIM^ 
objective—Hackettstown, Blairstown, or 
Newton. All are in New Jersey and 
trains are frequent and convenient. 
At Hackettstown, two hours from 
Hoboken, there are two small but com¬ 
fortable hotels and the choice of at least 
two streams. The smaller, called the 
Musconetcong, runs through the town 
and can be fished without recourse to a 
flivver, whilst on the larger stream, the 
Pequest, a few miles west of the town. 
good fishing can be reached in a quarter 
of an hour’s drive. 
May I remind you of three things 
necessary for comfortable fishing in these 
streams? Wading trousers of the heavy 
kind are necessary, for the water is high 
in the spring; other tackle than the dry- 
fly in April, for the water is discolored 
as well as fast; and a license—your wife 
will not need the latter. 
On the Musconetcong, about half a 
mile from the center of Hackettstown is 
a mill, a few yards to the left of a 
gasoline station on the main road, and 
from there down the stream is a good 
twelve miles of fishing. You will find 
plenty of trout early in the season for 
the entire stretch, “posted,” so far as I 
know, for only two short stretches, and 
there is actually no one place better than 
another at that time. Later in the sea¬ 
son,—and there is a good little boarding 
house about two miles out of the town, 
right on the bank of the stream, which 
I can recommend highly—the water is 
low and one must fish further down the 
stream and with a dry fly. Quietly, at 
that, if you wish to be successful. Yet, 
fish are always there and many of them, 
as I well know, all through the season. 
It was on this stream last year one 
broiling hot June afternoon that a friend 
and myself, after having fished for a 
couple of hours and caught two small 
fish each, were discussing the advantage 
of using a tiny July Dun as we strolled 
up the stream, when we met a man fish¬ 
ing down-stream with a sea rod and a 
huge hook baited with one of those large 
earthworms known as a “nightcrawler.” 
This man, whom we afterwards heard 
described as the local bootlegger, showed 
us a 17-inch brown trout which still had 
a little life left in him. 
Wading in the other stream near 
Hackettstown, the Pequest which I have 
mentioned, is by no 
means easy at any 
time. I warn you, 
therefore, to take 
good care at all 
times of the year, 
for the bottom is 
composed of 
boulders and there 
are some deep 
holes which earlier 
in the year are not 
visible, and though 
I do not wish to 
frighten you, for 
fish abound and 
the scenery i s 
glorious, yet 
please remember 
to be constantly on 
the alert for pit- 
falls. 
The fishing com¬ 
mences about five 
miles by good road 
to the west of Hackettstown be¬ 
low a swamp, and is almost equally 
eood for the entire stretch of what I 
should judge to he well over twenty 
miles, that is, until the stream flows into 
the Delaware. 
The Pequest meets an excellent main 
road at various short intervals, and 
though several good stretches are 
(Continued on page 206) 
