"If you're weary, sick but still ambulatory, fed up, overworked, angry, frustrated, heartbroken, need to think things over or need to stop thinking things over for a while, you should definitely go fishing and you should go alone so you don't bother anyone. But then fishing, like most other human pleasures, is better when it's done out of love than when it's used as a painkiller." John Gierach
June represented the best and the worst of the trout fishing calendar. Anyone who could tear themselves away from the Farmie and the Swift and fished at the right time of day did well on the freestones The Ware and the EB held their own with the Millers picking up the slack during the second half of June. These are true New England trout rivers!!!
Right now it is too hot and the flows are too low on my favorite streams. We are having another G.D. drought so I'll wait for some RAIN. I'll drop by the Swift after July 1 to see what the DFW gave us for our change-of regulations stocking and then enjoy a nice July and August stalking sippers, chasing stripers and anticipating Fall. One thing I will do is avoid the crowds. To get what I mean go back to the previous post and read the comment about crowds by one of my readers.
It was T.S. Elliot who coined the term "prenatal darkness", that time of night when the stars and the planets still grace the night sky but there is that faint glow in the east signaling the start of a new day. From the last week of June to the 2nd week of July I would find myself at 3:30 facing upstream at the Upper Trestle Pool or at the Kempfield Pool as trout rose EVERYWHERE. This action would last until dawn (5:30) and then would come to a hard stop. What I was witnessing was "behavioral drift" - the habit of some aquatic species of insects to pack their bags and migrate downstream. It was the best dry fly/emerger fishing that I've had of the Millers. A small (size 20 to 22) buzzer suspended 4 or 5 inches below a tiny indicator or just (at times) a Griffiths gnat was all it took. If you thought that a mile long nymph rod and a half ton of tungston would be your weapon of choice then think again. Your fishing day would be over quicker than a knife fight in phone booth.
We Need Rain!!
Ken
5 comments:
We need rain badly....I was up in the White Mountain National Forest poking around for some brookies as a change of pace this weekend and it was ugly low and the water temps were marginal even up in the higher stretches. I heard the upper Andro is ok water-wise but thats a bit more north than I was going to go. They have had quite a bit more rain in upper NH and Western ME as compared to the Whites down through southern NE. If we don't get rain and a good amount of it its going to be a throwaway for July and August except for the tailwaters. Scheduled to go to Yellowstone in Sept but that could be in jeopardy as well due to drought out there. Commencing rain dance at the signoff of this post!
Ken this reminds me of hard times trying catch trout when I was a kid,the idea of a trout to me was an elusive one my dad was a triple B fisherman, beer bait bobber but would always tell stories of the Laker he caught in the lake my grandparents had a camp on, by age 10 or so I was obsessed with the idea of catching a trout, one day I saw a show with guys fly fishing for trout and a light came on, I had been fishing with the wrong gear you see, so a young Paul would find himself on a canoe in the prenatal hours of July and August hanging an Elk hair caddis amongst hundreds of rising fish without a look or take, awfully frustrating but enough to keep me at it, if only I had thought to try a midge!!
Bob T,
Throw a lot of VT into the "dry zone" too. I really liked this past May/June because the freestones were in good shape but these past two weeks seem to be a decade long trend.
Paul,
Oh, the days of our youth where hope springs eternal!!!!!
Ken
Let it RAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!
my rain dance worked perfectly!!!!
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