Another Facebook memory popped up on Facebook. This was the pleasant reminder of another decision and dream that went down the toilet. It started in 2004 when I purchased the first house on the banks of the West Branch of the Ausable in a Town called Black Brook. Six years later I would but the house next door. It was going good, or really going no where, and then Irene hit and it started a downward spiral until both were sold around 2013.
Above are both home overlooking the river. When I was all about trout that wall always held a fish or two. And below the house and under the bridge the West Branch would meet up with the East Branch. Ausable Forks was an old town that has seen its best years when a paper plant, J & J Rogers,
was in operation. The mill was right up the street from my houses on French Village Road. They use to say in town you could tell what color paper they were running that day by the color of the water in the river. My plan was to have a lodge to guide out of, the green house, and have a fly shop, in the blue house. Delusional at best.
Irene really did a number on the town and the river. It basically ruined both. Many businesses and homes were severely damaged and the river rock spread into the river. You can see below how hight the river came up and basically flooded the basement and first floor of the "lodge". In a pinch the town, county, and state
brought in heavy machinery and basically just dug out a straight path in the middle of the river, basically a channel, that ruined any good types of holds and lies for the trout. After we got power back
and I got things settled down here in Ocean Township, NJ where I was living at the time Ryan and I headed up to survey the damage and get too work. I remember standing in the FEMA line looking for
some help and was turned away at the door because the Forks wasn't my primary residence. We broke our asses up there for a few days for really no reason. Today the houses and town look totally different. They knocked the house down on the corner and built a Family Dollar across the street.
Back home Hurricane Irene was the beginning of the end for the pier down on Phillips Avenue in Deal. It was there where I first met the guys who would become the "Phillips Avenue Gang". It was a
great place to be able to scout out conditions, sit with a cup of coffee, and watch the other guys fish. I can remember standing on the northeast corner of the pier, just to the left of the steps that went down to the groin, and looking for signs of mullet and bass from the Pump House on Roosevelt Avenue, down past where Poplar Brook came in, all the way to the north pocket below the pier. You could watch the action unfold as they moved down the beach. Sandy would come a year later and that was that for the Phillips Avenue pier.
It's crazy how quick life goes and how the years just pile on. I was born in 1968 so I'm 56 years old. Looking back 56 years from 1968 puts us at 1914. That picture above is a street scene from 1914. It's crazy to think that I am as old as the time from that picture was taken until the day I was born. Man I'm old.