There's a sucker born every minute! Friday 6/1

[rford]

Friday, after a long courtship including PM's and long phone conversations Darth Wader and I were able to finally co-ordinate our schedules and head north for a day of fishing together up in the Catskills.

We left NJ at 5 am and arrived on the West Branch at 7:30.

The official report was that they had started releasing 425 cfs at midnight, so we figured the water would be arriving at the game lands just about the time we got there. As scheduled, the temps were in the high 50's.

At that time we had the area we fished all to ourselves. For the first hour risers were sporadic as were the bugs. By 9 am there were more fish and more bugs. Cornutas, Sulphers and March Browns Made up the lions share.
We picked off a couple fish each by 11 am.

The rest of the day became long. There were bugs all day but never what I would call a blanket Hatch. In addition we had Iso's and Grew Fox and later in the day there were even a smattering of Green Drakes.

The fish were far and few between on the rise, in fact I spent over an hour stalking this huge splash rise that I say 200 yds upstream. As I slowly approached as most of the fish we did stalk would go down for good once upon them, I was surprised to find once in this fish's sites, that it was no trout at all. It was a pair of mongo lampreys doing there mating thing , twisting and writhing in there disturbing fashion. I must have stepped in 20 eel reds that day, and really got the lamprey hebe jebe's, I hate those things.

My theory was that with the new increased release, many trout took this opportunity to move upstream and others were just a bit spooked by the 20 degree change in water temps.
My bet is that Saturday was going to be the better day after the fish and bugs had a chance to acclimate.

After 7 hours of boredom / frustration, we decided a change of venue was in order. Several people we met that day told us that Green Drake coffin flys spinners were spinning on the Beaverkill yesterday.

We decided to end our day there and cut some time off the long trip home.
After several attempts we finally settled into some open real-estate between Barnhart’s and Hendrickson’s. The water was warm the fish were scarce but there was still Green Drakes Hatching. As evening approached Darth Wader moved upstream and I stayed in the "wrong spot" He was able to pick up several fish on drakes and I was able to pick up a couple of beaverkill specials.

The moral of the story is, don’t leave a tailwater to go fish a freestone!

The Beaverkill Specials....






The 9 AM - 11 am Fish in the Gamelands...