What A Day!!!

 It was an interesting day to say the least. Started on the BR at nine-thirty and fished two hours without seeing a rise. Drove up to Deposit and had to wait until almost two for the sulfurs to get going but when they did they brought numbers. The lone boat that came by me said there were too many and you had no chance of a fish eating your fly.

 I was fishing downstream from them in a sparser hatch and didn't have that problem. The sulfurs were plentiful enough to get the good fish up and gulping duns and several ate the wrong one.. At 3:30 with a thunderstorm approaching, I  hunkered down on a little grass island while lightning flashed and thunder boomed all around me. The rain came down in buckets. The storm probably lasted about twenty minutes and then the sun came out in a clear blue sky. The fish were going nuts eating sulfurs that had been beaten into the water by the rain. I hooked a good one on my first post storm cast and was savoring the prospect of a fish catching bonanza when literally, out of a clear blue sky, came a flash of lightning and the simultaneous ground shaking roar of thunder. Scared the c---p out of me. Landed the fish as I made for shore and got to the car in record time (for someone 80 years old). Drove to the Troutfitter where Dave informed me that I had fished, for the second time since I've owned the camp, through a tornado warning (the first time there was a tornado that swept through Lordville, knocking down three trees in the yard as I unknowingly drove back home to Syracuse). With clear skies and radar showing the storm past Deposit, I returned to the river where the fish were finishing up their meal, a couple ate the desert that I put in front of them.

About 6:30 I headed back to the scene of yesterday's fiasco to try to atone for the shoutout pitched by the trout. The sun was shining and it hadn't even rained there. Heard the distant rumble of thunder and before I got to the river the sun went behind the storm clouds. I had no intention of repeating the afternoon performance but the storm seemed to be sliding by upstream of me. Like last night the fish were once again making hard splashy rises. Ignored logic and put on a Cahill which was promptly slammed by a rainbow who broke the tippet when it got wedged on something in the water. Tied on a new one and another savage strike had me hooked on to a big rainbow that ran across the river, jumped a good fifty feet upstream from me and in doing so broke the tippet. I felt the line go slack but it took me a few seconds to realize that the fish that jumped was on my line. Fortunately things turned around after that and I hooked and landed five BR 'bows, all "good ones". A 19 incher, that gave almost as good a performance as the second line breaker, was fish of the day. With lightning flashing and thunder rumbling I made an early exit (8:39) and was back to the Lordville Estate in time to thaw out the venison I forgot to take out of the freezer before I left this morning.     

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