Mainstem floats

[dcabarle]

Bard Parker, little windy (click to ENLARGE)

Last weekend (April 19th), I floated the mainstem. I didn't post a report because there really was nothing to report other than the fact that I've never seen the river so windy. Through-out the day I saw 3 fish rise (1 time each). Even if they were consistent, the wind would have put a quick damper on trying to cast to them. TERRIBLE! Needless to say, the skies were blue and about 80 degrees outside. I saw a few Hendricksons and a few caddis but that was about it. Take a look at the first picture. That's the Bard Parker area on the Delaware River. It's normally pretty flat with no wind and when I took this picture it does look a bit flat. It was still tough rowing through that.

Tons of Caddis. There are clumps of them on the water surface. (click to ENLARGE)

Yesterday (April 26th), I floated the same stretch of river. What a difference a little wind makes. I loaded up the old Hardy with the Sharkline flyline and strung up the new Winston. I made my way down the West Branch and saw a few rising fish. 1 of them caught my eye pretty good. Using a marooned body gray wing fly and a few casts later I hooked into a beauty. I suppose one of the things that made this one so nice was that it made my Hardy reel sing like it's never sung before! Yeah, that thing is a noise maker but that's ok. Unfortunately, the reel caught a bit of laryngitis while I was fighting this fish. Too bad, that was a nice fish. This bruiser made off with my 1 and only fly like this. There were quite a few Hendrickons popping until 1pm or so and caddis were hatching all day long, and I'm not talking a few caddis here and there, I'm talking swarms of them.

The good news was that the fish had their heads up through-out the day and the bad news was that even if you did happen to see a rising fish, your chances of getting a cast to it was slim to none. The wind seemed to be fair unlike last week, but that was until I hit Bard Parker. Well... I thought last week was bad... This week was 10* worse than last weeks wind. In areas of the river that were normally flat, there were whitecaps pushing the water in the opposite direction.

Lake Lenor waves (click to ENLARGE)

For those of you who know the Lake Lenor area, you know it's always a flat calm piece of water. Yesterday there were 2 foot waves pushing the water in the opposite direction. Rowing through this was painful. Just picture a target on the bank; you're rowing and rowing and rowing and the target just doesn't seem to move. No matter how hard you rowed, the wind just blew even harder. The picture doesn't do much justice because of my angle. Either way, you'll know what I mean! Poor Lee Hartman had to get out of his rubber boat and walk for a while. I felt bad for him. He had 2 people with him and with the wind blowing as fierce as it was he was dragging the boat through the wind with both people. At one point, one of them got out and helped.

This was the calmest part of my day. See if you can find the guy crapping in the woods. Noticed this when I got home. (click to ENLARGE)

There were a few portions of the river that weren't as affected by the wind. I was lucky enough to spot a rising trout taking caddis then being able to position my boat just far enough away whereas I didn't spook him. A few casts later and I had my first Delaware trout to the net. He was a nice 16" brown.

Other than the wind, I had a good day on the river and a helluva workout. My arms are killing me!



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