Cold water, bugs and feeding fish, who can ask for anything more.

Left the Lordville Estate last Thursday to have dinner with friends of over fifty year who we first met on a First English Lutheran couples club (neither Jean nor I are Lutherans) canoe trip. Friday was spent doing the mowing around the ponds. Mario Andretti (Jean) cuts the yard crass but the edges of the ponds are no place for her two wheel turns around corners. With the temp in the 90's and the pond inlet dried up, the trout were in trouble.  Decided to run water down the overflow line from our artesian well to the pond for thermal relief. After a  trip to the local hardware store, one to Home Depot, and half hour of Youtube videos we replaced the leaking frost free outside spigot and made the necessary connections to run cold water down to the pond. Sunday I said no mas and headed for the cold water in the WB.

The fishing - There are sulfurs, lots of them, and yes, if you are willing to take a ticket for the next available spot at the red barn (I'm not), there are fish to be caught by almost everybody. Did a drive by Sunday morning and counted over a dozen anglers in the water and along the shore, didn't see the group in the parking lot suiting up until it was too late to even count 'em. Found a run/riff  in the "Zone" that was unoccupied and had three hours of frustration all to myself. Did see three nymphers a hundred yards below me land several fish amid much whooping and hollering. Me? I landed a 16 inch rainbow and six fish between 11 and 13 inches. I felt the hook hit about 15 other fish that were probably refusing my fly when I lifted (four of which ended up hooked in some portion of their anatomy and broke me off). I was refused by fish of all sizes and left at 3:30 feeling I didn't want to do this anymore. Got back in the saddle at seven, following a wind, rain and lightning storm, found and area with only one other fisherman and worked on bank sippers. Hooked four, landed three and felt much better until I returned to camp and found the power was out from the storm.

It was still out in the morning and all I could do was to buy ice (had to go all the way to Deposit to get it) to keep the food in the freezer from thawing. Power didn't come on until almost two, which mercifully saved me from another afternoon in the Sulfur Zone.  About 6:00 I drove back up to Deposit where there was still a que waiting for space in the pasture pool. Found an unoccupied run with sulfurs hatching and fish feeding. I'm not saying they weren't careful and I was refused many times but a dozen good fish ate my flies and eight actually ended up in the net. Today's three and a half hours of quality fishing more than made up for yesterday's nightmare. 

If  you enjoy the social banter that goes with the Sulfur Zone it's easy to find, however, if you pick your spots you can still fish to "relatively" undisturbed fish where a good presentation of a convincing fly has a decent chance of ending up in a fish's mouth rather than other parts of his anatomy..

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