Damn those fish counters, all of them.

July is in the record books.  It's sure to be one of the best for me in numbers of fish caught and one of the worst in percentage of fish over 17 inches.  I'll pass along the relevant info when I've added things up.

With apologies to Ed Smith (and I'm sure many others), it's time to come clean. I'm a fish counter.  I have kept journals for over 60 years and the information has proved invaluable on many occasions.  The data I've compiled while fishing the DRS has hopefully been useful to the DEC in past years and continues to provide me with a better idea of when and where to fish as well as what I can reasonably expect the fish population to be like in a given year. The information is also useful in compiling the blog pages that are designed to put you in the right place at the right time AND to explain why things aren't quite as good as you may want them to be.

Not withstanding all the BS in the last paragraph, I made a complete mess of it today.

This morning I decided to go after big fish, (after painting a second coat on three windows and two doors and hitting the sedge nut with a second round of Sedge Hammer), and selected an empty run where three weeks ago I fished to a pod of big fish during a sulfur hatch (hooked four and landed two nice fish).  Today there were risers and they ate my fly. None of the fish were over 12 inches. Where have the big browns gone? Probably nowhere, they just have switched to eating small trout.  Have you noticed you are catching fewer yearlings?

Thought I was saving time and gasoline this evening.  Last Friday night I couldn't find a place to fish in Deposit so I drove all the way over to the UE and ended up having a nice night.  Tonight I went straight to the UE. The portion up to and including Harvard was once again over 70 degrees.  The Shinhopple Pool and the run up to Thayer Hollow had at least 11 fishermen in it.  I've never thought of stopping if anyone else is fishing the pool.  Drove on up as far as the abutment pool above Corbett, saw a few more fishermen, no risers or bugs.  Turned around and drove back to the Sulfur Zone.  Arrived at 7:45, found an empty pool and caught 4 fish before dark.  The last fish was a 17 inch rainbow that went well into the backing on his first run and was, by a good head and shoulders, the fish of the day.

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