Toads in the road.

After saying goodbye, at the dentist's office, to old #thirty, a molar that had spent its life grinding up anything sent its way, I headed to the river. Decided to fish a pool on the Beaverkill that I have never tried during prime time.  There were a number of trout rising there one day last week but another angler was right in their midst.

This time the pool was vacant when I arrived at six-thirty, so I waded down into the pool.  The pool deepens quickly and has a lot of flat slippery bed rock which limits your ability to move around to get to risers.

As I stood looking for fish, the toads began to sing.  It's a shrill sound but one I love to hear as I associate it with the peak of the big bug season. The sound seemed to come from the side of the river with a very steep bank and I wondered how the toads managed to get down such a steep slope.  Forgot about the toads when a dark cloud rolled over head and a brief shower soaked me (raincoat in the car).

When the shower ended there was a sparse hatch of caddis, sulfurs and a few larger may flies.  What rises there were were mostly one and dones.  I found the fish willing to eat and hooked six, landing but three.   A nineteen inch rainbow that ran deep into the pool (and my backing) was by far the fish of the day.

At dark I waded back up through the riff, got into the car and headed for camp, driving along the high bank where I had been fishing.  It was there that I encountered the toads, hundreds of 'em sitting on the wet pavement singing their song, they hadn't gone down the bank at all..

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