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Showing posts from September 1, 2019

The Mayor of Lordville is - gone.

I've spent summers in Lordville since I bought the "Lordville Estate" back in '91. Don Holton was the Mayor of Lordville then and in my mind he always will be. Received an email from Grace his wife that Don, who had battled congestive heart failure, passed away Wednesday while taking a nap (we should all be so lucky). Spent an hour talking with him a week or so ago never dreaming that I would never see him again. If you live long enough you have to say goodbye to an awful lot of good friends, Don was one. I will miss him, to me he was Lordville. For those of you who didn't know Don and have clicked on this site in hopes of getting some information about how or where to fish on the Delaware, know this: I tried the Big East down low near Hancock hoping to find that fish have begun moving back into their cool water haunts. I found not a shred of evidence that this is happening. Nary a rise. Wait a while on the BE. Fished a couple of pools on the Big River in the

Eating at the Circle E Diner.

Today was my kind of day, high about 70 and low of about 50. You can do yard work and not have to ring out your clothes, no worries of the streams being too warm to fish and you can take a good walk in your waders without fogging up your glasses. Took advantage of the cool morning to work on the yard. The new grass apparently likes the cooler temps too as it is now growing like crazy. Left camp about 1:30 and drove up to the Troutfitter shop in Deposit to talk with Dave and see how their first year is going. He said the fly shop has done much better than expected. Said there are big differences between what is sold in the shop in Syracuse and the destination shop in Deposit. Next year they plan to have at least three times as many flies on hand for customers of the shop as they did this year. He also said that they had received many compliments about the rooms from both fishermen and other guests staying at the motel. They are planning on having all eleven rooms ready by opening day

Never crowd one of your "A" boxes.

Fresh from yesterday's ego boosting day I went out at about 9:00 to fish the BR. It never cooled down last night and it was 70 by the time I parked the car. No tricos to be seen. Hooked a nice rainbow right off the bat and two jumps later - gone. No one loses as many first hookup fish as I do - no one. Ended up having a pleasant and productive morning with risers eating my fly and fish eating my blind casts. The fish were not big but the action was steady - until the sun came out from behind the clouds and the fish just plain shut down. The afternoon was spent looking for my missing sulfur "A" box, last seen at stop two on yesterday's trip. I had foolishly crammed my sulfur "B" box in the same pocket of my vest so that I could show sulfur eaters on the UE some flies their grandparents use to eat. The "A" box was apparently a little miffed and jumped out at the first opportunity. Covered a lot of ground yesterday and I had backtracked all but 10 f

A matter of pride.

Have to admit my ego was a little bruised by the results of my Sunday/Monday fishing. Got up with the intention of putting things right. Had breakfast, packed a lunch and left the camp with the temp 62 degrees. Plenty of time to get to the UE before the trico spinner fall. The trico "hot spot" already had three cars parked and I didn't even bother to slow down. Farther up stream I found an empty pool where I actually saw several tricos. There were rising fish from the get go but they weren't feeding on tricos they were eating midges. I have lots of midges in my trip boxes but none in my vest. Had to do some judicious pruning of my smallest flies to get in the game. Some of the fish ate my cobbled flies like it was just what they were looking for, while others ignored my offerings. All in all it made for three hours of fussy fishing and if I had quit then it would have been a good day. Ate my lunch and drove farther up the UE to where the sulfurs and olives are hatch

Keeping it in perspective.

Today was a tough day for me. Tried some pools over on the BK this afternoon. Three pools, three rises, two hookups and one 15 inch hatchery brown landed. The BK is just not ready for fall fishing, yet. I was O for three with my raincoat. Put it on two times and the sun came out and I got sopping wet inside the "breathable" jacket. Don't care what it costs buy GORTEX. The third time I left the raincoat in the car and a brief shower came over the hill out of a bright blue sky and just poured on me. At 6:00 I drove up the PA side of the BR. There were two boat trailers and two wade fishermen at Buckingham and seven cars and a boat trailer at Stockport. When I looked at the Junction Pool parking lot from Rte. 191, the lot was empty. When I arrived in the lot, not five minutes later there was a car parked and a guy wading upstream. While I was standing there two more cars (four fishermen) pulled in. Left and headed downstream to a place that has been good to me a couple o

If you want to catch a bow, don't go too low.

It's Sept 1st and the releases from all three reservoirs have been cut back, Cannonsville to 400, Pepacton to 133 and the Neversink to 100. Wallenpaupack is generating again so minimum flow targets are being met. If there is no substantial rain you can expect the Cannonsville flow to be substantially increased whenever Wallenpaupack is shut down. The other two releases are more likely to remain constant. Drove down to the camp late this afternoon and saw fishermen everywhere. Looking off RT.17 through the trees at the Balls Eddy take out there appeared to be a lot of boat trailers. Labor Day Weekend has traditionally been a "Last Hurrah" time for many anglers and it seems to be holding true this year. The fishing: Drove over the Lordville Bridge on my way up the PA side and saw no one in the riff. Kept going with the intention of looking at Stockport, Junction Pool and perhaps the gamelands on the WB. Thought about the trailers at Balls Eddy and the likelihood of wa