May in review
Was finally able to get the lawn mowed here yesterday before the first storm and am heading home to tackle some chores there. Spent an hour last night reflecting on the season to date and came up with a few statistics of interest at least to me.
My fish total for May came in 9th out of the 25 years of record keeping. There seemed to be plenty of fish and the number of fish caught would probably have been somewhat higher but for the high water that wiped out the first eight days of the month.
The % of browns caught that were over 17 inches (15%) was the lowest since I've kept track. Some of that is due to the high water limiting where I could fish. ( Never got a chance to cast to the big browns sipping hendrickson and caddis spinners in the big river tailouts.)
The % off rainbows caught that were over 17 inches (40%) was right in the mid range of prior years. This number might have been higher if I hadn't lost so many of them the last few days.
On the positive side, there were good numbers of two year old fish (11 - 13 inches) everywhere I fished this included both browns and rainbows.
The fishing pressure was strange. The high water kept most of the wade fishermen away early in the month but it also put the boats in different places as the BR was so high it was dangerous to even float. When there were decent flows and good weather there were far more boats than I have ever seen. In the areas they were floating I found it impossible to wade fish. As the water returned to reasonable levels the wade fishermen also returned in large numbers.
The timing of the hatches contributed to crowded conditions as the BK, BE and BR hendricksons were over long before the UEB and WB hendricksons even began. This resulted in the anglers all crowding into the areas where the hatch was going on rather than spreading out over all five sections of the system.
For the first three weeks I was catching fish with "clean mouths". Usually after a week of hendrickson fishing it's hard to find a fish without fresh hook marks.
My fish total for May came in 9th out of the 25 years of record keeping. There seemed to be plenty of fish and the number of fish caught would probably have been somewhat higher but for the high water that wiped out the first eight days of the month.
The % of browns caught that were over 17 inches (15%) was the lowest since I've kept track. Some of that is due to the high water limiting where I could fish. ( Never got a chance to cast to the big browns sipping hendrickson and caddis spinners in the big river tailouts.)
The % off rainbows caught that were over 17 inches (40%) was right in the mid range of prior years. This number might have been higher if I hadn't lost so many of them the last few days.
On the positive side, there were good numbers of two year old fish (11 - 13 inches) everywhere I fished this included both browns and rainbows.
The fishing pressure was strange. The high water kept most of the wade fishermen away early in the month but it also put the boats in different places as the BR was so high it was dangerous to even float. When there were decent flows and good weather there were far more boats than I have ever seen. In the areas they were floating I found it impossible to wade fish. As the water returned to reasonable levels the wade fishermen also returned in large numbers.
The timing of the hatches contributed to crowded conditions as the BK, BE and BR hendricksons were over long before the UEB and WB hendricksons even began. This resulted in the anglers all crowding into the areas where the hatch was going on rather than spreading out over all five sections of the system.
For the first three weeks I was catching fish with "clean mouths". Usually after a week of hendrickson fishing it's hard to find a fish without fresh hook marks.
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