Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

Headed out at noon today with a fresh batch of sulfurs  that I had put on the car dash to cure the water shed I put on them. Usually an hour in the hot car and they are dry as a bone, not today, with a heavy cover of Canadian smoke the sun couldn't do it's job, shrugged and headed for the WB. 

Arrived streamside at about 12:30 with sulfurs all over the water and the fish up. Suited up, left the new sulfurs on the dash to finish drying and went fishing. Picked a pool that I hadn't fished yet this year and for about an hour I wondered why I hadn't. Hooked six fish, landing four when I noticed things slowing down, fewer bugs and fewer rising trout. At 2:00 I was walking back to the car past another angler who said "the waters too cold, no sun", and the light came on in my head. Without sunshine the water often stays below the 52 degree temp the sulfurs love to hatch from.

Drove both up and down stream and saw neither bugs nor rising fish. There was not a single wade fisherman above the Red Barn and the Stilesville lot was empty. Downstream the story was much the same with most anglers having called it quits when the bugs stopped hatching. 

Didn't want a repeat of yesterdays 4:00 to 6:00 performance so I drove back to the Lordville Estate and did a couple of crosswords and maybe caught a little shuteye. Was in the car by 7:00 and decided that with the cooler than expected water it might be a good time to try downriver again. It was, sorta. Never saw another fisherman or a drift boat, (17 drift boats went by me the last time I fished down there). But there were also no bugs hatching. Put on an attractor fly and promptly hooked a nice brown, then donated the fly to a fish that slammed it just as I was picking up the cast.  

Switched to a sulfur and hooked a yearling rainbow that was promptly swallowed whole by a large fish. Played the fish for about five minutes on 6x, and got several good looks at what turned out to be a big striped bass. I would guess the fish to be over 30 inches in length. Clamped down on the reel and broke him off. 

In the last half hour of light, when it was hard to see my fly, a few fish began to rise and were surprisingly willing to eat a Cahill with a hook in it. It rounded out a surprisingly good day despite having the afternoon fishing shortened by the effects of the smoke.

 Drove over to my GHOF's place and spent a pleasant hour and a half straightening out the world's problems, reliving some of our western trips and discussing todays fishing.

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
                                                    BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO Arrived back in Florida from the annual bone fishing trip on the 10th. Packed up and headed back north on the 12th. It’s the 16th and I’m in the process of opening up the “Lordville Estate”. It appears that the refrigerator and hot water heater (both entering their 31st year), may well out  last me as they both started up as soon as I plugged them in. Last fall when I wrote the “ Adios” page I said that my pen was running out of ink. At the time it was my feeling that the blog was becoming stale. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the high water from early July right through the end of the season left me with very few fishing options which in turn led to a dearth of new information to provide fodder for blog pages. The second possibility is that after seven years of writi...
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