You'll Never Know Unless You Go.

 

Didn't leave Lordville until 3:00 this afternoon and there was no doubt in my mind about where I was going. Drove up route191 to Hancock and then headed east on route 17. Got off at East Branch and took route 30 up along the UEB. It's a mess, still muddy and there appears to be lots of silt covering the bottom everywhere but in the riffs. The creek at Shinhopple now flows in an upstream direction under the bridge. The creek at Corbett pushed tons of rocks into the UEB. Saw two cars at power line and one at buck horn. Never saw a bug or a rising trout. Returned to 17 and drove up to Horton. The Beaverkill seems to have recovered nicely, is running at 500cfs and is clear. 

The fishing -With the water temp at 66 degrees I decided to fish my way back down to East Branch. Stopped at four pools, rose seven fish, landing two, (both of which had multiple hook marks in their mouths). Never saw a bug or a rise except to my casts, all of the fish were rainbows except for a 14 inch brown that I landed. No one had been down three of the trails and there was but one set of tracks on the other one. Clearly the fish were somewhere else during the last two months. 

Headed back to Hancock at 6:00 and ended up having to drive all the way  to the middle section of the WB before finding an empty pool. Was in the river by 6:30 and it was dead, not a bug hatching or a fish rising. Threw an olive for about an hour without even getting a look. Saw a few pseudos in the air and then saw what I thought were even smaller flies on the water. Within 15 minutes the water was covered with the smallest ants I've ever seen and still no fish were rising. Went over to shore where I could see the entire river and waited. It didn't take long and I didn't have to move far. Straight up stream from me fish of all sizes started eating the ants. My ants? Back at the fishing camp. Didn't matter, none of my ants are nearly that small. Put on a tiny string thing and started casting over their backs, (some were within 10 feet of me), pseudos looked huge in comparison as they floated by untouched. I was able to locate my fly most of the time and was both surprised and delighted when six different fish ate it. Landed three, lost one at the net and two good sized rainbows when they jumped a good 80 feet out in the river. 

Was encouraged finding that a few fish had moved back into the Beaverkill. But what really made the day special was the totally unexpected ant flight. Just when it seemed that it would be another fishless night, I got to spend an hour throwing the tiniest fly in my box at a bunch of rising fish and better yet, some of them ate it.  

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