Weekend musings.

Some regular readers who know that I usually fish Monday through Friday are probably wondering what happened to Fridays report. Well, here it is. Drove back to Syracuse for an oil change, new tires and my annual physical. The bad wheel alignment that chewed up my tires will be corrected early tomorrow. My wife is fleeing Florida ahead of the storm and I will be picking her up at the airport just before the SU / Liberty football game. Will possibly return To "The Lordville Estate" in time to throw a few flies at BR fish on Sunday night.

In my spare time I had a chance to add up the catch totals for August. In number of fish caught it was my sixth best out of my 28 years of record keeping. It was the third best August in the number of rainbows caught, while the number of browns was down quite a bit. Contrary to the usual decline in numbers of big browns that show up in the August catch, the percentage of browns over 17 inches was one of the highest in the years I have kept records. Rainbows were not only numerous but the percentage of big bows over 17 inches returned to a more normal figure than the record low figure in July. The 2 year old bows (now 2 years and four months old) make up the largest year class in the areas I have been fishing.

The brown trout catch figures are probably not a true indication of their numbers as I have spent less time this year on the WB due to heavy fishing pressure and the large number of yearlings (now about 9 inches long ) in the Sulfur Zone. There has, however, been a huge change in the brown trout population makeup in the Upper East. Historically there have always been large numbers of yearlings assembled in pods at the head of pools gulping tricos in the AM and olives in the PM. There place has been taken by what seems to be a larger than normal number of large, heavy 15 to 17 inch stocked fish. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on the wild trout population next year on the UE.

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