No Bath Before It's Time.

There are still Invaria up at Stilesville being attended to by unprecedented hoards of anglers. Just a historical note and suggestion. When the little Stilesville lot was purchased the farmer complained when cars were parked along the road, and no parking signs were put up, which was fair, (the State could have come up with more money for a bigger lot). This year anglers are again filling the Stilesville lot and parking down the road, some almost half way to the Red barn pool. Many are walking down the road and entering the Red Barn pool through the open gate and of course fishing without paying. If you are fishing above the riff, fine. If you are parking on the road and walking down to save five dollars please consider paying the five dollars and parking at the barn. No parking signs would eliminate access for a lot of fishermen. Just a thought.

Based on what I've seen so far the Dorothea hatch looks to be a good one. There are bugs hatching both afternoon and evening from the 17 pool all the way up to the grass island above the Men's Club. Above the island the hatch is still building.

The fishing - It's strange, last year I did not spend a lot of time up river during the sulfur hatch, it was as always crowded and the hatch was a poor one. My evening fishing was both good and consistent. This year things have done a flip flop, (which is very different from a freefall). I've had consistently good afternoon fishing during both the spring and summer sulfur hatches. The hatches have been so good that even the big browns have been attending. The evening fishing , however, has been, for me, a complete disaster. Sat. and Sun. were rained out, and Wed. was a blind cast hookup away from a skunking. Tonight I bit the bullet, drove up to Deposit, the river above Oquaga was deserted. The river from there down was jam packed with anglers, the Men's Club lot was full with cars parked on both sides of the entrance road. By 8:15 I had to fish or cut bait, with no knife in my pocket I tried to fish. It stopped short of being a complete unmitigated disaster only because I didn't fall in. There was a blanket hatch of Dorotheas along with a massive spinner fall. Anglers were everywhere, feeding fish had so much on their plate that there was virtually no chance to get them to eat your fly. Put a second shirt on, (the water's cold up there), and got into a lather walking around an island hoping for something better around each bend. The best thing that happened is that with my flashlight on, I saw a sunken log while walking out that would almost certainly have caused me to take an early bath.