FUDR's One Bugger's will have lots of company on the water this weekend.

 Today was the last day of fishing for me this month. Looked back through my diary and was surprised to see that I haven't caught a single trout in either the UEB or WB yet this year. The high releases on the WB and initially on the UEB got me fishing elsewhere and the cut back to a very low release on the UEB (which allowed the water to warm and bugs to hatch) went unnoticed by me. When I did take a drive up rte.30 there were so many anglers that I turned around and drove back down to fish the EB.

Where did I fish? The freestones (BK, BE, and BR). April was very dry and the freestones became both warm and wade able and the bugs hatched there first. The BE was too low to float and you could wade it the and BR with ease.

How was the fishing? Very good. Before this year my top seven Aprils were all low water years where the flows were shut down in an effort to fill the reservoirs. This year the reservoirs overflowed and the WB had high releases all month. My total catch for the month was the fourth highest in the 33 years of record keeping and the only year in the top eight with high water. It was the first time that my April catch of rainbows exceeded my catch of browns. 64%  of the browns, 40% of the rainbows and exactly 50% of the total catch were fish over 17 inches long.

Todays fishing - It being the start of FUDR's "One Bug" tournament I picked a spot that required a good walk and would be boat free. The sun disappeared behind the clouds before I got on the water and as a result the caddis were no shows which left me sitting on a log waiting for the Hendricksons who showed up just before 3:00. Both the bugs and the fish were done by 4:30. Drove over to the lower section of theWB where at 5:00 I saw no bugs but as many as five and six boats trying to fish each pool. Shehawken launch site had cars and trailers out to the road. Stockport had a 13 car/trailer combo. Buckingham seemed less busy until I realized that the shuttle people, perhaps fearful of running out of room had parked all rigs at right angles to the road thus creating room for many more vehicles. Took myself farther downstream put on my raincoat (the rain had increased but the wind had died down) and and was treated to almost two hours of nonstop action hooking, losing and landing trout that weren't very fussy about what they ate. My fishing vest is once again hanging by the wood stove to dry and all the fly boxes are drying on the kitchen table. It was a great way to finish up April.

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