A Peaceful Easy Feeling

 

Spent the day catching up on work around the fishing camp and yard. Found time to reorganize my spinner box, tossed a couple dozen flies that were either beyond repair or poorly tied to begin with and then sat down and tied a dozen new ones. Went through my fishing vest, removing the small Hendricksons, grannoms, gray foxes and green drakes which gave me room to add my sulfurs.

Fished from 10:30 until dark Monday and found I was in no hurry to get to the river today. At about five o'clock I got in the car and drove up as far as Hale Eddy. The upper WB is still in the post Hendrickson doldrums, yes there are some olives and sulfurs but the drift boats tell the story. By the time I got down to Monument (WBA) I had caught up with the Armada which was mounting a sustained offensive from there all the way to Buckingham. This is the transitional period, post big bugs and pre sulfur zone. There are bugs and rising fish but both the size and number of the fish feeding on top during the day is noticeably smaller. The big fish don't come to the table until the hour before dark.

The fishing - Finally got to it around 6:30 on a freestone away from the boats. Found a mix of spinners (isos, march browns and gray foxes, a few stenos and caddis). If you saw a fish rise and made a good cast you usually got a look. Had zero hookups casting upstream over their backs but ended up hooking eight rainbows, landing five of them all of which were between fourteen and fifteen inches.

Had an eagle watching me from a leafless Sycamore tree the entire evening. He was joined by his mate sometime when I wasn't looking as the two birds were silhouetted (even spell check couldn't figure out what I was trying to spell - thanks Merriam-Webster) against the western sky as I slowly walked back to the car.

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