Too Many Peaches, Plenty Of Bugs, Paucity Of Rising Fish.

 

Was in no hurry to do yard work this morning. It was both cool and wet. Fixed my malfunctioning garage door, finished the novel I was reading, and had lunch before climbing the step ladder to continue my assault on the over abundant peaches. The peaches are only about the size of ping pong balls but the magnitude of their numbers have bent the branches almost to their breaking point. At about 3:30, I said enough, climbed down and went fishing.

Because of the cold cloudy day I thought there was a good chance that there would be olives again on the WB. At the Hale Eddy bridge there were both rising fish and an gaggle of fishermen. Drove further upstream to a place where I had elbow room. There were several fishermen both upstream and downstream from me, but I had plenty of room to fish. Right from the start there was an in progress sulfur/pseudo hatch. There were lots of pseudos and while the sulfur hatch was nothing like in years past, it was a good hatch for 2024. The only thing missing were rising fish. Yes, there were risers, quite a few yearling fish were up, and I did fish to three big cruising browns, (never got a look from any of them), but the good fish that did rise were not sipping off the surface They would make one splashy rise and then not be seen again. In two hours of fishing I landed two browns, one an 18 incher.

At 6:00 I was back in the car driving over to the BK where I encountered a nice pink lady/sulfur hatch with a few other flies tossed in. The fish ate mostly subsurface, but were happy to let me know that my flies needed work. Caught three browns between 11 and 13 and one nice rainbow of 15. It would have been a much more impressive evening if I hadn't lost four rainbows, one of which was 17 inches or better.

There is no question things have gotten harder. Talked with two guides who both said the last ten days have been tough. The yearling fish now 7/8 inches long have started to appear in numbers. A good sign for the future, but most of the bigger fish are conspicuous by their absence, at least where I've been fishing. It's not at the stage where I say don't come, but if you do come, expect to work hard for every fish you catch. 

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