The Pequest River flows 35.7 miles from Stickles Pond near Newton to the Delaware River at Belvidere. It’s fed by Beaver Brook, Mountain Lake Brook, Furnace Brook, Bear Creek, Trout Brook and numerous springs. Stocked by the state from Pequest Road in Green Township to Belvidere, the river offers anglers a lengthy course of trout water.
Some of it involves meadow flow without the rocky character developed nearer the Trout Conservation Area where Gerry Dumont, a longtime guide with South Branch Outfitters, believes the water stays coolest near the outflow from the Pequest Trout Hatchery. During winter, the temperature of the well water from the hatchery remains in the 50s and warms the river. On downstream to the Delaware, the Pequest keeps that rocky character. According to Fly Fisher’s Guide to the Big Apple, by Tom Gilmore, it flows along a limestone aquifer allowing it to flow ice-free and slightly warmed during the winter. During summer, the springs cool it.
June and July last year were extremely hot months. One mid-July day, Mark Licht and I fished the Pequest for smallmouth bass at Belvidere, not doing badly. Back home in Bedminster temperatures might have reached 90, while I felt astonished at Belvidere’s 80-degree high mark. Not only springs keep water cooler to the north. Mark and I did wet-wade with no discomfort, although besides our smallmouths, Mark caught and quickly released a rainbow trout. Dumont told me none of the rainbows in the Musconetcong survived that hot summer.
At Belvidere, possibly most interesting is the short run of river from the dam to the Delaware. Dumont told me, “Years back, there was a big flood. Manchini had his other hatchery down in Carpentersville. He lost a lot of tiger trout. Got into the Delaware, and for quite a few years, they were catching these huge tiger trout right at the base of that dam. Casting these big bass plugs. Catching 6-, 7-pound tigers.” Jeff and Vern Manchini own the Musky Trout Hatchery. Carpentersville is on the Delaware south of Philipsburg, which is downstream of Belvidere. Although he never said he caught any of the tigers, Dumont catches wild browns at the dam and downstream of it, believing that they push upstream from the Delaware.
Multiple sources have told me wild browns exist upstream of Belvidere, but neither me nor Dumont has caught any up there. Gilmore’s book speaks of holdovers but not wild trout, and the internet is quiet about any wild ones, which I find surprising for a limestone stream. During an August night while putting live eels out for stripers at the confluence of the Pequest and Delaware, my son and I stepped into the tributary river, finding it much cooler. Tom Gilmore, who died in 2020, is a former President of New Jersey Audubon. The claim of limestone quality is authoritative.
Dumont is not a wild trout specialist. He told me, “I fish trout, and I like bigger waters. When I hook a fish, I want it to be something other than swimming in a 4-foot circle.”
It’s no surprise he hasn’t fished above the TCA where the Pequest is smaller, but although he has a preference for the deeper stretches of Belvidere, he does like the TCA, despite the shallows not conducive to the Euro-nymphing he likes to do. I’ve heard stories about unscheduled releases of big trout from the hatchery, and I asked Dumont about that. He cited two possibilities.
“Some fish do escape from the Education Pond,” he said. A conduit leads away from it. Trout manage to “run from the pond to the river, and big fish get in the river. I don’t know exactly how, but the best time of year to fish big ones is during winter. I don’t know if they dump some in during winter, but they’re there. They used to dump them into the Musky at the former No Kill area in Hackettstown. One winter they dumped two dozen fish 22 to 26 inches. Once and a while they do weird things.”
The Pequest is quiet when it comes to word, but it’s a river of year ‘round possibilities for anglers.
Keep an eye out for Bruce Litton’s book, “The Microlight Quest: Trout, Adventure, Renewal” which will be available soon.
