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..

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Had To Get Out The Neosporin For The Tooth Cuts On My Index Finger.

  To say the Delaware  is a hard river to figure is an understatement. Yesterday was an overcast day that had fishermen thinking olives. Turned out the water was probably too warm for olives and too cold for sulfurs, in short, a dud. Today the air temp was a little cooler, (I think), with a mix of sun and clouds and the sulfurs, (both yesterdays and todays), hatched. The fish? At least where I was, went nuts, threw caution to the wind, and ate everything that came down their feeding lane, both with and without hooks. Heard from two sources that the sulfur hatch at the red barn was also very good today. If my last report on the red barn sulfurs was erroneous, blame it on Ed who has been in Hawaii for the last two weeks, (hence no reliable red barn reports). The fishing mid-day was so good, and the number of fishermen in the "Zone", (it's Friday afternoon), so high, that I decided to fish down river during the evening hours. Fished a pool in the middle section from 6:30 unt...
Read more

Fishing A Cold Blow From Out Of The North.

  Jean came down and we spent the weekend watching wildlife in the backyard, driving around the area and enjoying two "nights out", one with David and Maryann, (the apprentice Troutfitter Inn cleaning lady). A shout out of thanks to her for spending four hours on the road to have dinner with us. Not sure the company or the meal was worth the drive. We drove up to Stilesville to witness the hordes of anglers, and then along the reservoir all the way up to Walton, where we usually stop and go in some of the shops. It was threatening to rain so we elected to keep going. It was raining on top of the mountains but we took route 206?? to Downsville anyway. We hit the rain part way up the mountain and then drove down the other side to Downsville in a torrential down pour. Came out of the rain at Downsville and drove down route 30 with the intention of checking  out the trout in some of the BK's thermal refuges, saw the muddy water at "Jaws" and drove back to the Lordvi...
Read more

Don't let that that rain come down.

 My South Holston river friend, (one of only two people who will fish with me), (the other is currently on injured reserve), is up for a visit (he brought his boat) and today we floated. There might have been some question about where we chose to float (no one else launched where we did), but we enjoyed the fact that we never saw another fisherman, let alone another boat, on the river all day. The weatherman might well have gilded the lily a bit when he predicted a chance of showers and a high temp of sixty degrees. It rained all day, and the temperature peaked at fifty three degrees. When I read the forecast for the rest of Mark's stay (rain for the next four days) I was thankful that we got in the day that we did today.  How was our day? We sucked it up, paid an extra $5.00 to launch (didn't have the proper change), parked in the wrong place (got a note from the owner where we put in), never made it to the predetermined takeout place, and had a delightful day counting bugs (...
Read more