The Musconetcong Trout Club was founded in the mid-1950s by Bill Stanley, an Asbury resident. Stanley, who operated the Musky Trout Hatchery, persuaded several local farmers whose lands abutted the river to let a few of his friends fish on their property; in exchange, Stanley stocked their sections with trout. Founding members included Frank (Doc) Devlin, a dentist from Phillipsburg, N.J.; Carl Flemer of Springfield, N.J.; and Bill Flemer, Carls’s nephew, of Princeton.

The club originally had several miles of water stretching from below the  am in Asbury to the bridge over Woolverton Road. The members accessed the river from a dirt road off the Bloomsbury-Asbury Road leading down to a bend in the river shaded by a large white oak. This was our home pool until 2012, when the property changed hands and the new owner canceled our arrangement. A year later, several other landowners followed suit, leaving the club with just a few hundred yards of fishable water. Fortunately, through the efforts of our president, we were able to acquire access to another stretch of water some eight miles downstream, below Warren Glen. The landowner is Russell Smith, and we call this stretch the Warren Glen section (although it’s actually in Hughesville).

As of 2013, then, the club has had two noncontiguous sections: one upstream, below Asbury, and the other downstream, below Warren Glen. The Asbury and Warren Glen sections are, respectively, about 7/10ths and 6/10s of a mile long.

In late 2014, New Jersey Trout Unlimited made major stream improvements on the lower stretch of the Asbury section,  reating new holding pools for trout.  We hope in the near future to make similar improvements to our Warren Glen section.