How far are you willing to drive for 45 minutes of fishing?

 

With hot sun and temps a good fifteen degrees above normal, it's a good time to ask your wife what she wants done around the house. There is no meaningful relief in sight until the weekend and with the cooling comes thunderstorms that may well put the rivers up again. The heat on my back, shooting the bow, was blistering, but only the BR went over 70 degrees. With the sun lower in the sky the time the sun is on the water is reduced, but the nights are warm and the water temps are creeping up daily.

Tried the BR in the dissipating fog this morning. There were good sized olive spinners in the air and tiny olives hatching. If there was a fish in the river he had his head under a rock. Never saw a rise to my fly or to anything else. Forty-five minutes was enough to let me know I was just wasting time.

With the hot sun there was no need to rush back to the river. Vicky kindly scheduled me for a hair cut at 5:00 and my plan was to hang around Deposit until 7:00 and fish what was a very good hatch last night. In the end I just couldn't do it. The algae is so bad that a hooked fish's eyes are covered on it's first run. When it can't see it just hangs on the end of the line picking up more clumps of algae until the hook rips out or the tippet breaks. 

Went down stream and fished the lower WB. The water was still a bit murky and I caught several chunks of algae on my dry fly but it was much better than up in Deposit. The hatch, however, might generously be described as sparse. There were a few of the larger olives and some of the wee little ones. If you saw a fish rise you walked towards it and made a cast after the fish rose again. It was slow going but there were so few flies that good casts got looks. Fished from 6:45 (too early by half an hour) until 8:00. Was refused by several fish, hooked four, landed three with a 14 inch brown the best of the bunch.

Right now it's just not worth the drive for anyone not living in the immediate area. Many of the better guides are, at present, turning down trips. Be patient, cool fall weather will get things going again.

 Almost forgot, Dave at the Troutfitter said a fisherman was in the shop today, raving about the sulfur hatch at 11:30 this morning???

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

IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK HOME AGAIN!

 It's Wednesday night, a fire is going in the fire place, an empty Perfect Manhattan glass is washed and back up on the shelf, 30 shrimp netted from Zane Gray Creek ((did you know that Zane Gray (famous fly fisherman and writer of westerns) was a dentist and that his office is now a museum that you can visit on the Delaware River?)), have been consumed by Jean and me, prior to the three pieces of venison backstrap that traveled from home to Florida and back, an early spring snowstorm is raging outside and most importantly, we're glad to be back home again! With that season opening sentence, Mrs. Haskins has no doubt thrown in the towel and disavowed all responsibility for my literary malfunctions. Run on sentences she could handle, but my never before attempted "double aside" was apparently beyond the pall. I sent her a "Go Duke" banner with apologies and hopefully she will cool off before the fishing heats up. Our trip back home was uneventful. Started at 2
Read more