Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Season winding down and I'm not catching anything

A friend of mine just posted a picture on Facebook of a nice rainbow he caught at lunch today.  It seems that everywhere I turn, local fishermen are taking nice fish, even as we approach the end of the "regular" season here in VT.  And yet, I'm catching nothing at all, it seems.

I've gotten out just once each of the past two weekends.  The first weekend, I hooked a brown briefly on my third cast and that was it.  I was hoping to get out again that weekend, but my wife and I needed to help her parents with a few things, so it never happened.

Last weekend, I had a lot to do, but I did get out for a few hours on Saturday evening.  I was mostly working streamers with a trailing nymph.  We'd had a lot of rain and the water levels had come up over 18" since I'd last fished this spot.  I was a bit dismayed when a drift boat came by just as I'd started to fish, and the boat not only didn't go around me, but instead the occupants drifted right through my hole and even cast into the hole while I was fishing it.  I was livid.  This is simply not an acceptable practice on a huge river that they otherwise had to themselves.

I started with a chartreuse weighted streamer and had one soft strike early.  I'm guessing the strike was on the nymph rather than the streamer.  For a while, I moved to a tan streamer with no luck.  Eventually, at the best spot in the stretch I was fishing, I went to a weighted white woolly bugger.  On my very first cast, I had a hard strike only a few feet from where I was standing, but I didn't hook the fish.  That was the last strike I had that day.

The last 5 days that I've fished the main branch of the White, I've caught a total of zero fish.  It's been over a month since I've caught a fish in that river.  I've been catching fish on the Winooski.  I've been getting an occasional fish on the Third Branch of the White.  But, in general, I've been averaging about one fish per day of fishing over the last 2 months.  If not for a 7-fish day on the White river, the average per day would be well under 1 fish.

So, maybe I've got a mistake in my blog.  Others are catching fish.  Big browns.  Rainbows.  Lake Champlain salmon and steelhead.  Lake Memphremagog salmon.  Just not me.  So, maybe I was overly kind when I wrote that I was a mediocre fisherman.  The last 2 months have been very frustrating.

Unlike last fall, I haven't caught a single big fish.  I've caught very few fish recently.

As the season winds down, I know I've caught more trout in Vermont than any previous season.  But, I've caught no big fish at all.  And, I find myself questioning what is going on.

Due to changes in state laws, some of the waters I fish are now open year round to catch and release fishing, instead of closing on 10/31.  If I'm lucky, I'll get out this weekend.  The next weekend would normally be too late, but I can now continue to fish.  I will probably still be out there until I find myself skiing instead.

But, it would be nice to be catching some fish, especially when my Facebook news feed shows that others are catching fish regularly.

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