Learn to love your bad casts.

If you read yesterdays report and were on the river today there is no way you would believe a word I said. I didn't get out this morning when the rivers were the coolest. Was two hours later than yesterday getting to the river, there were still Hendricksons and apple caddis on the water but people were leaving and there were next to no fish rising. Stayed two hours and it just got worse. Threw at one surface feeder who rose to my fly, shook his head and went back down to wait for a better tied fly.

At six yesterday I went to the EB and had both bugs and rising fish until dark. Today with the hot sun and water temps in the freestones at or near 70 degrees, I took the high road and picked a spot lower down on the WB. I had a very nice stretch of water to myself. There were enough bugs (an array of the big may flies and caddis that were nimble enough to evade my attempts to catch them), and enough boils to let me know fish were ready  to eat. I fished as well as I can fish (you'll note I didn't say that last night) had four fish eat my tiny caddis, one just didn't hook up, the other three, all three year old 'bows, jumped, ran (into the backing) and finally ended up in my net. For reasons known only to people who study 80 year old brains, at 8:00 I decided it was time to leave and try the BR. Please note, I had at least 200 yards to the nearest angler both upstream and down, hatching bugs, and the occasional riser. I drove downstream only to find there were so many wade fishermen at each stop that I ended up back at the Lordville Estate. Will try the morning fishing tomorrow.

In driving around both yesterday and today I saw a total of two fish hooked (one each day). What I did see were a large number of anglers making the same mistake over and over again. What was it? Trying to fix a bad cast. As I've said many times before, for a fish to take your fly, you need to put it at least two feet upstream from him and float it drag free down his two inch wide feeding lane. So how many perfect casts do you make in a day? Not many. None of us makes a perfect cast once in a ??? times. So, what about the bad casts?  I watched anglers drag a cast that was too long back into the feeding land, casts that are too short are immediately picked up to cast again and if a fish dares not take your cast, the fly is picked it up as soon as it is six inches past where the fish was supposed to be. All of the above let the fish know you are there and the game is over. What should you do? Treat every cast (no matter how bad)  like it is the most perfect cast in the world. Let it float its merry way well beyond the intended target, start your pickup slowly so as not to scare the fish and cast again. Maybe this one will be perfect.