It ain't over 'till it's over, but it's over.

With thunderstorms and rain predicted for this afternoon and evening I decided to try to get some fishing in this morning. Was thwarted by a tractor trailer that was trying to turn half of a sectional house around right in front of the Lordville bridge (and across the railroad tracks). Did a U-turn, drove back to the camp and walked down to the river.

The water was covered with the same little spinners that I found on the EB yesterday but there were no fish interested in them. Blind cast several flies in the riff for about an hour without raising a fish and was about to leave when I noticed little may fly duns floating down the river. The trout noticed them too (they knew they were coming all along). Spent the next two hours casting my smallest flies at dainty little sips made by trout eating the duns. Pretty much got my tail kicked. Got refusals from probably a dozen fish. Hooked and landed the village idiot, a 15 inch rainbow, whose mouth looked like he worked as a taster in a glass grinding factory. Hooked another rainbow that came unstuck and  landed a 15 inch brown. The BR has been pounded hard by both drifters and waders alike the past two weeks.  The fish are beaten up and are very careful about what they eat. The fishing was indeed a challenge.

Spent a rainy afternoon trying to lend order to a chewed up array of flies.  It's never a bad thing when the fishing is so good you don't have time to tie enough flies. Left the Lordville Estate about 5:00 and saw the dark clouds when I drove over the bridge. Elected to take a recon drive and wait for the rain to pass by (it never did).  There were only three trailers at Buckingham (a season low) as a sunny day would have put the water temp above 70.  Stockport was a different story as there were a combination of nine cars and trailers there. Even if the sun had come out the colder water from the WB would have made the BR down to Stockport OK to fish. The Shehawken access site was packed full of trailers as with current water temps and levels, the WB is the only place to float.

Drove over to the UEB where green and brown drakes were hatching last week.  There was one angler at Long Flat and one car between there and the Sunoco station in East Branch.  'Nuff said. The BK was much the same, no anglers at jaws or for that matter all the way up to Peaksville. Drove for almost two hours, saw three rises, and a dearth of both bugs and anglers. Ended up fishing the BR in the rain, there were almost no bugs but the fish were hungry. If a fish rose I got a look. As was the case this morning they looked closely at everything and refusals outnumbered takes. It was still a better night than I expected (I like fishing in the rain).

The big bug season has come to a close.  Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you what that will mean for fishermen on the Delaware River System..  


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