Oh, Say Can You See?

 

With sulfurs hatching with regularity and the fish eating them at both lunch and dinner, I've settled into a routine. Tie new sulfurs and repair salvageable ones each morning, drive up to Deposit in time for the mid- day hatch, return to Lordville for R & R, and then head back to Deposit for the seven 'til dark feeding bonanza. The results vary depending mostly on what pools are available, and how well  you fish, or so I thought. Tonight Mother Nature took things into her hands and summoned up a rainstorm, perhaps to give the fish a break. At 7:00pm it was pouring in Deposit, and the fog was enveloping the air above the river when I made my U-turn and headed downstream hoping the storm was heading east and not south, it was.

The mid-day fishing -  The unit of  Troutfitter regulars assigned to the pool I was fishing certainly did themselves proud, as I witnessed two doubles and saw bent rods and fish in the net of each of the anglers. The hatch started slowly and the fish were hungry, if you made a good cast to a riser, there was a good chance he would eat. When the hatch intensified, the fish had more flies to choose from and the action slowed. By 3:30 I was on my way back to Lordville.

The evening fishing - At 6:45 I opened my eyes, assembled my gear, and left for Deposit. Heading up route 17 from Hancock the skies began to darken and as I arrived in Deposit the rain began to fall, hard. It was black as night, you couldn't see the hills in any direction, and as if by magic, the water in the river disappeared in the fog. Made the aforementioned U-turn and picked a place down river where I could fish near the car, put on my raincoat and walked down to the river, where I watched bugless water flow by, chatting with half -a -dozen anglers as they made there way back to their cars. None claimed to have caught a fish. Wandered down along the bank of a long slow run, saw not a single rise. Put the fly in the hook keeper, turned on the flashlight and walked back up towards the car. Stood on the bank for a minute watching the sky light up from the fireworks when I saw a little dimple not fifteen feet out from me, made the cast and was refused, hmm, another dimple, another cast, and I was fighting a hot jumping rainbow that had me into backing before I knew what hit me. Two more casts both produced hot rainbows. One came loose on the first jump, the second, like the first, I slid up on the gravel bank. A pair of  rainbows 17 and 16 inches caught in the glow of  July fourth fireworks.