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And Now You Know The Rest Of The Story.

  When I went down to Lordville on Wednesday, I had hoped to maybe finish up in time to get a little fishing in. I didn't. It was 4:00 when I called it quits so I decided to take my bow and sit in a place where I've often seen does and fawns come out to feed in the evening. The first doe appeared at 4:15 followed closely by her two fawns. Another doe appeared moments later. By 4:30 there were four does and three fawns in sight. Shortly thereafter, a nice eight point buck walked towards the does. He seemed to look at me several times but was clearly more interested in the array of potential mates. When he got within 25 yards of me he stopped broadside, which turned out to be the last mistake he ever made. Called Jean in the morning, (her car has the trailer hitch), and she drove down, (an hour and fifty minutes each way) so we could transport the deer back home. Finished up the butchering Saturday night in time to treat Jean to a nice prime rib dinner at Dasher's Pub down in...
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Turn Out The Lights, The Party's Over - - -

 Heading down to the Lordville Estate tomorrow morning. Will be stopping at Vicky's Unisex Hair Salon at 10:00 AM for my last hair cut there until next spring. The Troutfitter is closed and David is probably down at Hilton Head by now after spending over two-hundred straight days at the fly shop and inn. Down in Lordville, I've got work to do. It'll take me the better part of two days to finish the closedown. It's for me, a sad time, another year gone by, and at 81 you know there can't be many years left. When all the items are checked off the shutdown list, the place will be neat as a pin, the 'fridge turned off with it's door left open, stove ashes cleaned out, hot water heater shut off, the pipes drained, anti-freeze in the traps, the heat turned off, the bed stripped, and fly-tying materials moth balled, leaving the Lordville Estate nothing but a dark, cold, empty, unappealing  place. When I come down later to rake up the leaves from my neighbor's hu...
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Gonna Shut You Down.

  It's October and my plans seem to change daily. CL Repair got my tires in at one on Monday and Craig was able to do all the work on the car while I was crossing off items on my closedown list. Car was done by 3:30 and I packed it full of stuff and headed home. Not saying I'm done fishing but my next trip down may well be to shut off the water and drain the pipes. Of course if I shoot that ten pointer Thursday, all that could change. Right now dry fly fishermen have very few good options. The EB fish have been pounded and are no longer eating on the surface. The WB is a sea of mud and the release has been raised. The BR is also very muddy and I have been unable to find good consistent bug hatches there for the last month. One ray of hope is that the UEB release is being stepped down, and at lower levels may offer some good pseudo fishing. The BK and Willow remain very low, and, at least when I've stopped by, bugless. I enjoyed excellent dry fly fishing right through Octobe...
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There Are No Commercials When You Just Watch Nature.

  It may be time to go sit in a tree, but I'm still here at the Lordville Estate. Why? Several reasons. First, I made arrangements a month ago to get new rear brakes, a tire rotation, and an oil change at Craig's. CL Repair in Equinunk. Stopped by Friday so Craig could get the parts for the job and decided I needed to also get new tires. Craig said if his guy has them in stock he will have them on Monday afternoon and  he can do everything Tuesday morning. Second, it seems to take longer to do things than it use to. Planned on doing the final cleaning of the fly-tying room and bedroom today, but things just got in the way and only the fly-tying room got finished. Walked out in the yard and looked at my handy work on the two freestone peach trees and decided to finish the job on the cling. That took an hour and a half and I still need to rake up the branches when the deer finish eating what they want. If  you'd rather spend time watching analysts on TV talking about the el...
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And I Thought Smith's Colonial Motel's No Vacancy Sign Was Due to Leaf Freaks.

  Let me be clear about a few things. First of all fall fishing can be very good, if most people are hunting, watching football games or working on their honey do lists. Why? The browns are busy spawning, which takes a huge percentage of the river's fish out of the game. The hatches are mostly very small flies and don't compare with the blanket hatches of big bugs seen in the spring. You are mostly fishing for rainbows and juvenile browns. When there is an onslaught of fishermen, the fish that are rising, quickly learn to let the duns go and eat emergers in the water column. Today, the number of anglers on the EB and BK, (didn't look anywhere else), was for the second half of October, simply unbelievable. Every fishing access lot was filled with cars, there were multiple fishermen in every pool on both the EB and BK that I drove by, trailers were lined up at every takeout. Simply stated, I couldn't find a place to fish, IN THE MIDDLE OF OCTOBER! What did I do? Broke my ...
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If You Have Deer In Your Yard, You Don't Need A Rake.

Woke this morning to find the backyard covered with frost. Thermometer on the back porch read 30. Waited until 10:30 to resume the peach tree pruning saga. Happy to report that tree #3 is now finished. Will go back and "touch up" trees one and two, now that I have viewed several peach tree pruning videos. Thankfully, I have lots of helpers on the project. The peach leaves are still green but lots of them come loose during the pruning process. Yesterday six deer helped clean up and today the number swelled to nine. There won't be a peach leaf left in the yard tomorrow morning Skipped the lower WB and it's "green tinted" water and arrived at a pool on the EB higher up than I've been fishing, promptly at 3:00. Maybe a tad early, but there were some bugs and I saw a couple fish rise before my phone rang, it was a return call from a "How'd you do?" call I'd made earlier. While I was talking, I saw four more fish rise. Waded in, got in positi...
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She's Leaving On A Jet Plane - - - -

  Drove Jean to the airport at 4:30 AM for her trip out to Fargo, North Dakota. Was back to the house by 5:30. Had an early breakfast, packed up the car and headed for Lordville. Wasn't halfway there when Jean called to say she was in Chicago and ready to board the flight to Fargo after getting her exercise by first going to gate B22 and then having to go to gate F14 due to a gate change. Temp in the 30's all the way down. Stopped at the Troutfitter and Dave said there was a frost there last night. Arrived in Lordville too early to mow the wet lawn, so I started in pruning the third peach tree. First branch let me know that the tree wasn't happy being pruned, whacked me in the face drawing blood  on my cheek and ear. The deer were delighted that I was throwing down branches for them to chew on and within fifteen minutes there were six of them eating peach tree leaves and branches. Undaunted by my previous bad advice on where and when to fish, the Assoc. Eds. beat me to the ...
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