West Branch Delaware - 6.7.2008

[dcabarle]

So here it goes. I woke up a little later yesterday (7am or so) because I had a late hockey game on Friday night. I got home and went to bed at 3am. Why??? Because I'm an idiot.

This week, I knew my only option was going to be wading the WB. I left the pontoon boat at home and instead, brought Kramer, my dog. I was a little nervous about getting on fish with him but I hoped he might just chill on the bank while I fished.

CLICK TO ENLARGE.

Not what I had in mind. :) I had to let him go for a few swims.

Golden Retrievers are however one of the most playful dogs on the planet. They crave lots of attention, just like a baby. He was far better behaved than I would have ever imagined. He was on a leash all day but I did let the leash free from my hands. He stayed by my side all day and never left. This is good and bad... See.... I'd try to sneak up on a fish but with 4 paws kurplinging almost simultaneously in the river, it was quite difficult.






I know I posted the following picture up above, but it seams like people don't click them too often. I'm including this one in the post because I thought the fly in front of his nose was pretty cool looking.

If you want to see the x-large version, click here:

http://www.njflyfishing.com/photopos...flyfishing.jpg

Fished where I'm standing and far beyond what you can see in the picture.

I finally made it to where I wanted to fish, then sat back for a while and hung out with Kramer. I finally managed to start casting to a rising fish when 7 anglers with what appeared to be a fly fishing school of sorts came stumbling down the river. The 4 people up front never fished before. The easy tell was that while walking in the river, they created a wake in which I wish I'd brought my surfboard. While the fish were down, I could have been surfing. Speaking of surfing, thats where I really should have been yesterday. Anyhow, the 3 people in the back of the crowd (although too late) where courteous enough to walk on the bank as much as they could. I suppose it didn't matter anyway. The fish were rising so sporadically, you never knew where to put the fly. Blind casting was an option but after every cast or two (depending upon how unlucky you were), you had to peel off the nasty algae. So why waste a cast?

There was hardly any wind through-out the day and hardly any bugs on the water. BUT.... There were bugs.... Big nasty black flies. At any given time I had 5-6 of them on each arm, hat, back, neck... everywhere. I could have probably kept them off of me with a little bug spray which I actually remembered to bring with me but then forgot it in the car . I was at least a mile from the car, and the majority of the walk was in the water so I wasn't going back there to get it.

So basically, No bugs, lots of algae, and that was it until 8:30 or so.

Deer crossing.

At about 8:30, I saw two fish working pretty good in a riffle. I put on a little sulpher and stung one of them. Went to lift my rod and it was a little heavy. The algae was all over my fly. I got most of it off but changed the fly anyway. I put another sulphur on and a few casts later hooked into another fish. He jumped out of the water 3-4 times then I lost him. No big deal, right? It just started up so I'll get to fish to rising fish for an hour or so right? Uhhhhh NO. I saw 1 more fish rise about 5 minutes later and that was it. Done. Deer are a dime a dozen. They're like big rats. This one was good enough for a picture.


CLICK TO ENLARGE.

Just to give an idea of how much algae is in the water.

So that was the day, and as mentioned in This Thread (West Green Scum)... The algae was terrible. If you click the picture, you can get a good idea of what was in the water. I'm not talking about the March Brown either.





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