Adieu, Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, Adios

No, I haven't closed the Lordville Estate or even taken my gear out of the car but deer season opens Friday and it's pretty much time to move on. If I'm down at the camp fishing, I'll write, but reports are likely to be both sporadic and intermittent.

The eastern side of the system remains very high and even without any additional precipitation it will probably be a week or more before you can safely wade the BK. The maxed out release from Pepacton  coupled with runoff from the most recent rains pouring in from the tribs makes the UEB also too high for waders. The EB below jaws  at 2,900 and the BR  at 5,900, are both floatable by experienced boaters but way to deep to wade.

If you are familiar with the WB and know the levels you can safely wade as, it is now down below 2,000. There are several places I can fish at that level but I'm probably not going to. Why? The Cannonsville release is at 1,400 and the accumulated silt is being pulled out of the reservoir. It doesn't hurt the fishing but reduced visibility makes wading more dangerous. Under present conditions fishing is best done from a boat with an experienced oarsman.

While the excessive heat and rainfall since early July has had a negative impact on the fishing this summer, it offers hope for the future.  The summer of 2018 also had very high water but resulted in the survival of an enormous year class of fish (those 15/16 inchers) everyone has been catching. Assuming a good survival rate, this years class will either provide food for the 2018 year class or good fishing for us all in a couple of years.

With people moving on to fall activities I thought I'd take the opportunity now to thank everyone who has participated in the blog during the last six years for adding their comments. As I've said before it has made it more fun for me. To those who have just been readers, I hope you have learned things that have made you better fishermen. That was why I started the blog in the first place. It's been fun writing and April is a long ways off, but right now I kinda feel like Angler 119's pen is running out of ink.

Heading out this morning to change the chips in my two trail cams. Two days ago I brought the chips in for the first time. One camera wasn't working. The second  had a picture of a beautiful 10 pointer staring at the camera as if to say "Oh it's that time of year again".  

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