Maggie's Farm

The WSJ has the old-timey story of the Southside Sportsmen's Club in the 1880s, and Long Island's fishing secret - the Connetquot River, which holds large sea-run (and hatchery) trout.

I am fortunate to have fished that stream. (Reservations required, and barbless hooks, which I prefer anyway for all fishing purposes.) 

Henninger's piece Where Big Fish Caught Big Trout, begins thus:

Assume you are a wage slave in New York City. As respite, you favor the joys of fishing streams for large trout. You have a couple of choices. Travel 2,206 miles to the banks of the Madison River in Montana, or thereabouts. Plan B: Early on a weekday morning, load your car with a flyrod, stream waders and a box of flies, drive some 57 miles out of New York City on the old Southern State Parkway into Long Island, turn in at Connetquot State Park, in Oakdale, walk to your reserved "beat" on the Connetquot River, fat with rainbows, brookies and browns. Oh, and there's a bonus: You will have arrived at the living heart of the politics and history of the Empire State.

Read the whole thing (link above).

Photo above: A big Brown we caught on the Connetquot last September. Below, my photo of my beat on the stream that day.