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..

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Had To Get Out The Neosporin For The Tooth Cuts On My Index Finger.

  To say the Delaware  is a hard river to figure is an understatement. Yesterday was an overcast day that had fishermen thinking olives. Turned out the water was probably too warm for olives and too cold for sulfurs, in short, a dud. Today the air temp was a little cooler, (I think), with a mix of sun and clouds and the sulfurs, (both yesterdays and todays), hatched. The fish? At least where I was, went nuts, threw caution to the wind, and ate everything that came down their feeding lane, both with and without hooks. Heard from two sources that the sulfur hatch at the red barn was also very good today. If my last report on the red barn sulfurs was erroneous, blame it on Ed who has been in Hawaii for the last two weeks, (hence no reliable red barn reports). The fishing mid-day was so good, and the number of fishermen in the "Zone", (it's Friday afternoon), so high, that I decided to fish down river during the evening hours. Fished a pool in the middle section from 6:30 unt...
Read more

Fishing A Cold Blow From Out Of The North.

  Jean came down and we spent the weekend watching wildlife in the backyard, driving around the area and enjoying two "nights out", one with David and Maryann, (the apprentice Troutfitter Inn cleaning lady). A shout out of thanks to her for spending four hours on the road to have dinner with us. Not sure the company or the meal was worth the drive. We drove up to Stilesville to witness the hordes of anglers, and then along the reservoir all the way up to Walton, where we usually stop and go in some of the shops. It was threatening to rain so we elected to keep going. It was raining on top of the mountains but we took route 206?? to Downsville anyway. We hit the rain part way up the mountain and then drove down the other side to Downsville in a torrential down pour. Came out of the rain at Downsville and drove down route 30 with the intention of checking  out the trout in some of the BK's thermal refuges, saw the muddy water at "Jaws" and drove back to the Lordvi...
Read more

Don't let that that rain come down.

 My South Holston river friend, (one of only two people who will fish with me), (the other is currently on injured reserve), is up for a visit (he brought his boat) and today we floated. There might have been some question about where we chose to float (no one else launched where we did), but we enjoyed the fact that we never saw another fisherman, let alone another boat, on the river all day. The weatherman might well have gilded the lily a bit when he predicted a chance of showers and a high temp of sixty degrees. It rained all day, and the temperature peaked at fifty three degrees. When I read the forecast for the rest of Mark's stay (rain for the next four days) I was thankful that we got in the day that we did today.  How was our day? We sucked it up, paid an extra $5.00 to launch (didn't have the proper change), parked in the wrong place (got a note from the owner where we put in), never made it to the predetermined takeout place, and had a delightful day counting bugs (...
Read more