I Was A Great Day To Be Alive!

 

Left for Lordville at 9:30 this morning with three tasks and the possibility of either deer hunting or fishing on the agenda for today. Called Vicky on the way down and got a pruning appointment at 12:30. Drove straight down to the Lordville Estate and mowed/raked the front and two side yards before the hair cut. That left the reseeding of the areas of the lawn destroyed by the grubs the only unaccomplished task. After the hair cut I stopped and chatted with Dave at the Troutfitter who was on his 220th straight day of work, (three to go 'til closedown). He told me Al C., a lifetime Delaware River fisherman, had a lights out day on the upper BR a few days ago with olives hatching and rising fish everywhere.

The fishing - Left home  reasonably optimistic about the fishing. Why?  The WB release water is the warmest water in the system. It's been running at over 1,000cfs for ages, too high to wade most places and too high for most fish to come up and eat little olives. I've been home climbing a tree while the bucks pose for pictures on the trail cam at the scrape, between 11:00pm and 4:00am. The weather person says that a good rain is coming. The River Master, understandably dubious about the prediction, only allowed the release to be cut back to 525cfs, but I felt that would be enough to open up the lower WB for wading and get fish up and feeding, and it was.

How'd I do?  It has been a challenging year. Even the best athletes in all sports have self doubts when they don't preform up to their own expectations. I haven't had a single 20 fish day this year, (and I still haven't), and while I'm cognizant of how the ravages of time have diminished my fishing skills, I'd still like to think I'm not an embarrassment to myself. Today an angel touched me on the shoulder and except for the fish I lost trying to rush them to the net, I was A-119 from 20 years ago. It was exciting and fun. Landed 19 and 18 inch browns, (neither of which showed any evidence of having spawned), a 17 inch rainbow and a mix of browns and rainbows between 12 and 16 inches. The 18 month old rainbows, (now almost all about 11 inches long), filled out the catch and accounted for all but two of the losses. It was my best day, numbers wise, on the river this year.

Was back in Lordville in time to sprinkle a bag of seed on the areas of the lawn decimated by the grubs. Thankfully the skunks have polished off most of the grubs while roughing up the lawn in the areas where the grubs had been, so that the seed could hit the ground. 

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