Slip slidin' away.

 Personally I like to fish in the rain. Thins out the crowd, covers up poor casts, gets the bugs hatching and the fish up feeding. Yes, it makes my CDC flies harder to fish but I learned a long time ago that life is full of tradeoffs, it's why I like the color gray. 

Drove down this morning with a band aid on each arm, one for the covid shot and one for the flu shot. It started raining at about Whitney Point, not hard but steady. If you pay attention to the weather there has been a more or less stationary rain event (Ian remnants?) sitting just south of us in Virginia and southern PA.  Despite predictions to the contrary it came up here today and is still, at 7:00 pm, depositing rain on the river system.

Arrived at the Lordville Estate about 11:00 and after turning on the heat, unpacking food and clothes and having a bite to eat I was ready to go fishing. It was 1:00 and still raining quite hard so with the air temp a chilly 47 degrees I decided that I would  tackle the ego inflating Monday crossword and sudoku in hopes that it would warm up a bit.  It didn't. Highest air temp the Tahoe reported all day was 49 degrees.

 Checked the water temps before leaving the house and the BR at 53 and the WB at 52 were the warmest. I didn't think it would stop the pseudos (maybe delay them a bit) and my first stop at the Buckingham access showed that they were undeterred by the weather. Bugs on the water, one angler (with a Troutfitter decal on the window of his vehicle) was fishing, but I didn't see any risers. It didn't matter, with the release from Cannonsville down to just above 100 cfs, I wanted to fish the pseudos on the WB, and I did. 

The fishing - The hatch was just too good. There were far too many pseudos to give yours a reasonable chance of being eaten. When you have to make a dozen casts to a feeding fish in hopes of getting his attention, the outcome is predetermined. You will put the fish down (along with those downstream of the target fish who are spooked by you repeatedly picking up your line to cast again). In half an hour of fishing in the pseudo only hatch I got two fish to eat, one open mouthed refusal and put down at least two dozen fish. Then the worm turned, bigger olives and isos started to hatch along with the pseudos. The fish ate both my big (#18) olives and my isos. The only problem is that nothing lasts very long in the fall. By 4:30 everything had shutdown but the rain.

On the way back to the fishing camp I again pulled into the Buckingham access and glassed the water, not a bug to be seen, but as I started to back away from the ramp I saw a rise, then another. Parked the car and slipped and slid my way out to within casting range of the two fish who were seemingly eating nothing but raindrops. Took four casts before a 16 inch rainbow ate a #20 pseudo. Netted him and then hooked and lost the second fish two casts later. Carefully made my way back to shore and at 5:00 I was ready to call it a day.. 

The dreaded fall algae that everyone experiences up on the Salmon River is starting to rear its head here on the Delaware. Be careful wading, the rocks are becoming very greasy.       

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