Fishing conditions are downgraded to Poor.

My wife came down to take in the annual Fourth of July parade in Lordville. It was a scorcher with both the car and porch thermometers registering 92 degrees. As predicted the BK, EB and BR gauges all were up over 70 degrees.

Spent the day just trying to keep cool. Took a drive up the West Branch in the afternoon (more for the car air than anything else) and was amazed to see the river void of fishermen. We counted five wade fishermen and two boats. On Tuesday there were somewhere around 30 - 40 trailers at Balls Eddy alone.

Watched a nice display of fireworks from the back porch to close out the holiday.

The fishing on the 5th -

Holiday weekends are not the time to fish the UE. There were over 20 cars parked at Al's in Shinhopple waiting for the kayakers and canoeists to arrive on their down the river journey from Downsville. It was a great day to be on the water and lots of people took advantage of it..

Tried the early morning again on the WB, it was a total bust. No bugs and no rising fish. Hooked a nice fish early that came unstuck and then suffered through 8 refusals. Drove up to Deposit to fish the sulfur hatch. Arrived at 1:30 and couldn't even get in the stream. There were six boats anchored between Butler Brook and the town bridge with a seventh boat weaving its way through them. The hatch was sparse at best and there were very few fish rising in the hot sun. Spent an hour at the sewage treatment plant catching yearlings and watching two creel carrying fly fishermen beat the water to a froth. Retreated to Lordville until about seven when I again ventured out to the WB. This time I drove along the river to see how many boats would be coming by. The boat traffic below West Branch Angler didn't seem to bad so I went to the gamelands. There were bugs and a few rising fish to keep me occupied ("only" eight boats came by). The fish turned out to be more than a match for me as I counted over a dozen refusals. It wasn't until about 9:15 that I hooked my second decent fish of the day, a 16 incher that held the skunk at bay.

In a very short period of time conditions have changed dramatically. The water is now at summer levels. All but the two branches are too warm to fish. Several days of hot sunshine haven't helped. Add to that the incredible pressure put on the WB this week by drift boat anglers and it's easy to see why the fishing has become as poor as it has.

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