You nailed it Matt! I was fishing in barnhart's pool when I first met him. The water was up a little bit and I was desperately trying to reach a feeder on the far bank. I heard a little bit of noise and turned around and it was Art and the Rockefellers lawyer sitting on a log right behind me. I apologize if I had gotten close to them with a back cast. "We were just admiring your casting young man, carry on". I told him that I couldn't reach the fish and remember seeing him on the cover of fly fisherman so I figured he could 😂. I ended up chatting with him for a bit, meeting him at Raimondo's for a pizza lunch, planting a magnolia bush at the corner of his driveway and hanging out in his kitchen. It's somehow morphed into me meeting him and Galen to go fish. We'd load all the gear into the back of the old station wagon he had and drive down along the beaverkill from pool to pool. A stop at Carins was a guarantee. The section you're talking about near the gauge has changed dramatically as you know. I always called it the dump pool because everybody would go down the gravel road and dump their trash on that Hill including dead deer, televisions, mattresses and whatever else. You are 100% spot on that we used to access it right about the riff. The big flat Rock on the far bank had to be showing above the river surface in order to cross. We'd fish the main pool and then he started giving up more secrets. One night he had me go to the tailout and stand in knee deep water. He told me to stand there and wait. After about an hour, I yelled over nothing's happening should I come in? He told me to watch to my right I would start to see the pods of fish move up out of that riffle. They were feeding in a pack and moving up river. I was told it was one shot and to wait until the fish was directly in front of me. 4X, Rusty spinner, one cast and my backing was flying out the guys is that fish went back to the fast water. Never saw it and no idea how big it was but he told me that he had caught one nearly 12 lb on a sulfur spinner there last season. That used to be a very narrow and deep section of fast water which has since spread out and no longer holds those kind of fish. The bottom route 17 bridge at the rest area all the way down to the Fishes Eddy bridge changes every ice out. Huge gravel bars move, Islands relocate and channels disappear every winter. I've never seen a place that changes as much as that specific section. The first time through it every year is going in blind and has almost resulted in a flipped boat several times 🤣.
Art tied a leader for me one time that was 25-26'. I said I couldn't cast something like that but he told me it was easier to keep 20 ft of leader in the air than it was to keep 20 ft of line in the air. I just had to check the cast at the end and it would turn over fine. He was correct and I still use a pretty long leader from time to time up there.
I remember staying in the cabin right next to yours when that elderly lady owned it. I would set up a video camera on the porch and just filmed the pool while I fished. Fish from 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. until noon, grab lunch at circle e and right back at it until dark. You'd see 1 or 2 guide boats and that was it. One of my last times through that pool was with my nephew and we were in pontoons during prime time. As we turned the corner into Methodist, six or seven drift boats were anchored, three or four pontoons were anchored and there had to be 15 to 18 wade fisherman. We signaled that we were going behind everybody and headed right for the takeout. It's really changed but if you know how to play the game, you can still have some peace and quiet.
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