Homeward Bound

 Surprised myself and made it to 83 on Monday. Birthdays are something I no longer celebrate, but rather a day to assess the ravages of time on my aging carcass. It has occurred to me that I am now burying friends at roughly the same rate as I am becoming acquainted with new physicians (not a cheery thought). I'm currently weaning my self off a med prescribed by my cardiologist (a recent addition to the medical team), that I was told would slow down and strengthen my heart beat. What it does is lower my blood pressure to levels that, if converted to golf scores, would enable me to pin Dennis Molter's ears back with regularity. 

It's been an uneventful winter here in the Florida Keys. There are almost no Ontario and Quebec license plates to be seen but the traffic on US 1 is the worst I've ever experienced. Have not seen a bonefish skiff on any of the flats all season. The Keys are warm and sunny, it never snows, but with the disappearance of the bone fish, they hold little allure for me. We have been in the process of shutting the place down for the last week and have scheduled our departure for early Saturday morning. If there are no major traffic problems, (a big if this year), we'll be back home sometime Sunday afternoon.

Have been watching the weather up north and am not hopeful for an early start to the fishing season. The river was frozen over all winter, the reservoirs are all now full and there is a flood watch. For sure there will be boats on the water with people throwing streamers but the dry fly fishing looks to be almost a month away. Will have plenty of time to get the Lordville Estate up and running before worrying about the increased cost of my daily excursions along the river looking for rising fish.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fishing A Cold Blow From Out Of The North.

  Jean came down and we spent the weekend watching wildlife in the backyard, driving around the area and enjoying two "nights out", one with David and Maryann, (the apprentice Troutfitter Inn cleaning lady). A shout out of thanks to her for spending four hours on the road to have dinner with us. Not sure the company or the meal was worth the drive. We drove up to Stilesville to witness the hordes of anglers, and then along the reservoir all the way up to Walton, where we usually stop and go in some of the shops. It was threatening to rain so we elected to keep going. It was raining on top of the mountains but we took route 206?? to Downsville anyway. We hit the rain part way up the mountain and then drove down the other side to Downsville in a torrential down pour. Came out of the rain at Downsville and drove down route 30 with the intention of checking  out the trout in some of the BK's thermal refuges, saw the muddy water at "Jaws" and drove back to the Lordvi...
Read more

Don't let that that rain come down.

 My South Holston river friend, (one of only two people who will fish with me), (the other is currently on injured reserve), is up for a visit (he brought his boat) and today we floated. There might have been some question about where we chose to float (no one else launched where we did), but we enjoyed the fact that we never saw another fisherman, let alone another boat, on the river all day. The weatherman might well have gilded the lily a bit when he predicted a chance of showers and a high temp of sixty degrees. It rained all day, and the temperature peaked at fifty three degrees. When I read the forecast for the rest of Mark's stay (rain for the next four days) I was thankful that we got in the day that we did today.  How was our day? We sucked it up, paid an extra $5.00 to launch (didn't have the proper change), parked in the wrong place (got a note from the owner where we put in), never made it to the predetermined takeout place, and had a delightful day counting bugs (...
Read more

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....
Read more