Coming To A Stream Near You Soon.

It's 6:54 and I am sitting down at the Lordville Estate with my first celebratory Perfect Manhattan of the season. The last ten days have tested my resolve, but a day like today purges a lot of early season frustration. For those new to the reports, I play a game with the trout each week. It's a win for me if I land ten fish in a day. It's a win for the trout if I don't. If I land 50 trout in a week I win no matter what. Until today the trout have had a perfect record. 

Did the annual cleaning of the upstairs sleeping quarters this morning. Was done by 12:00, made sandwiches, packed the little soft cooler bag with the sandwiches, a Gator-aid and water, and I was on the road.  If you are a regular blog reader you know that my visit to the Neversink two days ago coincided with the onset of the  Hendrickson hatch there. Yesterdays drive- around the Delaware system required a double dose of my blood pressure medicine and produced but one fish. Where would you go?

Arrived streamside at 2:00, talked briefly with anglers from two cars that were assembling their gear, and then headed downstream. The Neversink is a stream out of the past, it's usually to shallow to float so it's almost all wade fishermen, who still, almost never get out of sight of their car. I walked a good quarter mile before getting into the water and fished my way downstream at least another half mile. Never saw another angler until I got back up near the car park.

The fishing - It was me, bugs, fish, and the wind. The wind blew upstream at 10/15 steady. You really didn't realize how many Hendricksons there were because it was 70 degrees and they didn't sit on the water, but the water had a nymph husk every 18 inches. Because the Hendricksons didn't sit on the water the fish weren't laying just under the surface gulping duns, but they rose often enough that you could locate a fish and make a cast. Getting the fly to float drag free down to a feeding fish was another matter. I had fish to cast to from 2:00 'til 4:30 and enough of them found my flies to their liking that I didn't mind one bit that a dozen or so fish refused my offerings, or that six fish came unstuck. I won the day and it wasn't even close.