Fisherman love rivers for their own sake, but we always look at them with the knowledge that it can take years to begin to see what's actually there. That's why we can't take our eyes off them. I've been in cars that almost crashed because the driver and all the passengers were looking at a river instead of the road" - John Gierach
The drought continues. The freestones are down and the Swift is up. In fact, the Swift did it's impersonation of the Deerfield on Tuesday by dropping about 80 cfs and then gaining them back. It didn't stop the brook trout from rising for the struggling sulphurs that managed to hatch. The reports of good dry fly fishing are real with the Parachute Adams getting the bulk of the work (see comments by Lenny and Sam, aka "Parachute Adams", in the last post). Brookies were bending the bamboo for me on Tuesday evening!!
The Millers and the Ware have been excellent this year but I think I want to give them a rest until we get some rain. There is a practice on the Millers to fish the mouth of Whetstone Brook at the Kempfield stretch during low water because the trout are stacked up there. Try not to do it. The trout have to dodge blue herons and otters at that spot and they don't need to dodge us. I saw an otter with a trout in it's jaws last August swimming away from Whetstone.
Throw the EB into the same freestone mix. The flow there is way south of 100 cfs. Fish the deepest holes/pools and do this VERY early or well into dusk and do it with dry flies.
This blog - I am a numbers driven person and I've had a good handle on this site as to it's popularity and range. Thanks to you this is, by any measure, an extremely popular regional blog with a good and growing readership. Here are some stats:
Past 40,000 page views per month a while ago and still growing. This is far more than 99% of the regional sites with the exception of Small Stream Reflections, a great site.
A very healthy COMMENT SECTION!! I just don't count comments because blog hosting sites can't distinguish between a READER'S comment and the blog Owners comment. Most comment totals on most sites are a 50-50 split between readers and blog owners. I know one site where author comments actually outnumber reader comments!! I don't comment on reader comments for the most part because I believe that the comment section belongs to the readers. I will occasionally answer questions but will answer multiple questions in a SINGLE comment so it doesn't skew my comment numbers. Every two weeks I check the trends on this blog. Here are some numbers:
A rolling 10 post average of between 12 and 14 comment per post.
73% of the comments are from readers with only 27% coming from me. That means that the last 10 posts produced 130 comments of which 95 were reader comments. NOBODY DOES THAT!!!! As I said a few months ago, the comments section of this blog is a gold mine of knowledge and not just pom-pom wavers. They know their stuff and are not afraid to share it.
In almost 9 years I have never "mailed in" the effort by posting someone elses video on the front page. Everything is original and will continue to be.
I don't endorse fly fishing products. I have no brand loyalty and get no discounts/products from any of them. There's a lot of snake oil out there and I keep clear of it but if the makers of Flex Seal want to give me a free can I'd take it!!
There are millions of websites in this country. This one is ranked in the top 600,000. Not too bad!!
One would be hard pressed to find a site with a better/larger comments section. You are the drivers behind this effort!! Ken
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