How Things Look From Meaker Hill.

 😊

Have been in Lafayette since Thursday morning and will not be able to return to the Lordville Estate until Monday, (social obligations).

Glad Hackelhouse got in some fishing on Thursday, when I drove over the town bridge at 7:30am, the river was solid mud. I try to keep people from making a long drive for no reason. The gage at Stilesville is above Cold Springs Brook, (CSB), and only measures the release water from Cannonsville. Most times during a heavy runoff the water on the Stilesville parking lot side remains clear while the far bank, (where the bugs hatch), is muddied by CSB. During the first storm, (when Oquaga hit 600cfs), there were between twenty to thirty guys lined up trying to fish the clear water. Oquaga peaked just short of 3,000cfs Thursday morning and I assume that CSB was also proportionally higher, thus my recommendation to stay home. If you were already up here and were able to fish great, but to tell you to drive up with all but a few hundred yards of the river system an orange colored raging torrent did not, to me, make much sense.

Have noticed that the release water coming out of Cannonsville has crept up a degree. This is an early indication that the water beneath the thermocline is being depleted. Within the next couple of weeks you should start to see a tinge of color in the release water as the silt suspended above the thermocline starts to be sucked into the release. The base water temp will continue to creep up but will pose no threat to the fish as it will remain quite cold. The gray tinge first becomes apparent in the little deep pockets in the stream bed. They go unnoticed when the water is clear. Be sure to cover the "gray pockets" with a blind cast when you see them as the fish like the security of the deeper water.

The two recent storms have resulted in the water temperature below Oquaga being elevated, first into the high 50's and then well into the 60's. I know that when the temp was in the high 50's the sulfur hatch was modest at best. Would guess that with the temp in the 60's there were few if any sulfurs below Oquaga. It remains to be seen if the hatch will continue once the release water is able to get the temp back down to the high 40's and low 50's. Way back, over 20 years ago, the reservoir spilled for a week during the summer sulfur season and the hot surface water ended the sulfur hatch prematurely.

If you are fishing this weekend any info on where you fished and the strength of the sulfur hatch would be helpful to all. 

Hope to see you on the river Monday.


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