I'm buying a lottery ticket!

Left camp about 8:00 this morning and drove five miles ( narrowly missing the second of two yearling deer that were learning to cross RT. 97) to where I could get cell service so that I could again call Verizon and try to schedule an appointment to get the phone line fixed. The call took 45 minutes and with severe thunderstorms scheduled for the afternoon  I decided to take advantage of the rest of the nice morning weather and try to catch some fish on a Hendrickson spinner fall.  Found the spinners, lots of them, but never even saw a rise to cast to.

Returned to camp about eleven thirty, did some chores then got ready for the afternoon fishing.  When I heard the first rumbles of thunder I decided to wait it out at camp.  It rained hard for a short while but then stopped.  I headed out only to run into more rain and lots of T and L.  Put my rain gear on and when the rain let up a little I headed for the stream.  Changed my mind when a flash of lightning was immediately followed by a clap of thunder.  Sat in the car until 4:00 when the T and L had moved away. Walked to the stream in heavy fog and a steady rain.

The fishing?  As regular readers know the river has not been kind to me so far this year.  Dave and Rick at the Troutfitter take pleasure in telling me that the years are taking their toll and that I have to lower my expectations.  On reflection this may well be true but today Lady Luck took my hand.  In a hendrickson/paralep hatch that had every big trout in the river feeding on the surface she guided my fly into the mouths of large feeding trout for two solid hours.

When the hatch ended at about 6:00 I actually took off my waders (I never do that) and drove around to various spots just  looking for rising trout.  It wasn't until I made my last  stopped at Junction Pool and saw several risers going in water I could reach that I put my waders back on and fished the remaining hour 'til dark.(Lady Luck was still with me).

Most of the river system seemed to escape the heaviest of the down pours.  The Beaverkill, however, got hit hard and is pouring lots of muddy water into the BEB.  As a result the BK, BEB and the BR will all be high, colored (stained if you prefer) and unfishable for at least a couple of days.  Not a tragedy,  the early hatches on this part of the system were about over and by the time they clear and drop to wadable levels we will be talking March Browns.  The action for now is on the two branches both of which escaped the worst of the storm..

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