I Got This Funny Feeling, That We'll All Get Together Again.

 

Saturday's Fishing - The wind switched from the SE to the NW on Saturday which made much of the upper WB too windy to fish. There were two anglers in the pool I fished Friday so I drove down to Shehawken to see if there were any bugs hatching there. The parking lot had six cars on my arrival and I saw four anglers in the water within 150 feet of the ramp, (on November 8th!), didn't even stop to look for bugs.

Found an unoccupied pool farther upstream with a very modest hatch of pseudos and some hungry fish. If you were close enough to a riser and made an accurate cast you got a look. Hooked six fish, landed five, all but one of which were counters. The last two were 17 and 18 inch rainbows, and when a pontoon boat rowed behind me and started casting at risers about 100 feet downstream, I decided to reel it in and call it a season. Had time to drive back to Lordville to do some more bow hunting. It was a quiet evening with does and fawns ignoring the spike horn that showed up.

Sunday morning - Started the pipe draining process in the dark, then went out hunting. The live decoys were all positioned beautifully when a very nice eight pointer showed up and started walking towards them on a course that would give me a 20 yard shot. The buck came from my right where I had no shot but was less than a couple yards from stepping into the open when the doe he was interested in spooked and off he went after her. Checked off all remaining items on the shut down list and was on the road home by 10:00am.

It's been a challenging season to be sure, (I caught half as many fish as the preceding year), but I enjoyed every bit of it and I'm sad that it's over. A big thanks to all who contributed to the reports, Dave who posted the reports even when they may have been bad for business, the grammarian who makes them more readable, the associate editors whose combined knowledge and experience far exceeds mine and whose reports lend credibility and clarity to what I may be trying to say, and lastly all the fishermen, (and music lovers), who share their on river experiences, both good and bad, which helps keep things in perspective, (no you're not the only one getting skunked, and yes you're entitled to crow a little when the fish go easy on you or you fool a big one). Hopefully we'll all be here five months from now when the first fish start to rise next spring.


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