Afternoon Delight

Sky Rockets in Flight, Afternoon Delight

  I know when the Starland Vocal Band wrote those lyrics they were talking about something a little different than fishing(nudge, nudge, smirk) but what the heck, if you are old enough to remember that song, you might not have the energy to indulge in those types of afternoons activities anyway, and besides, both Skyrockets and myself look better in the dark.

  The river was dropped back down to 253cfs and has moved the fish back into tighter quarters. The last few weeks with the water above 400 gave the fish a better chance to spread out and it seemed that each hole would only net one or two fish and then it would be time to move on. I had not fished the Nature Center area in a while and decided to give it a try this afternoon. I had been fishing mostly just May Fly imitations as of late but with the warmer water temps, I went to my Winston caddis as my point fly and dropped the FOD and a RS2. The first thing I noticed when I got to the water was the smell, with the water up last week and down the last few days, there are a lot of places with standing smelly water,get used to it. The next thing I noticed was that the water was tea green with a fair amount of small debris. I started off in the riffles but really didn’t find many feeding fish. I moved to the weirs and found the fish to be sitting in the soft seems and the tailouts. Lots of 10 to 13 inch fish landed with the largest being a skinny 16 incher. I also hooked one that absolutely ate my lunch. He took me up river around some rocks and then down into the rock and flipped me the fin. All three flies were taking fish, and none seemed any better than the other.

 The river has stayed in very good condition longer than we thought so get out and enjoy every last moment you can. The Drift’s lake expert Cody Hale has been experiencing some tremendous days on the reservoir, lots of small mouth and if you are really good, some monster carp  and on the right day you can get into trophy sized wipers. Whatever your fancy, get out and enjoy and if you are anything like me, you won’t be able to get that song out of your head. Just do like me and change the lyrics “ gonna grab my flyrod, gonna cast it tight, gonna grab some afternoon delight, oh oh oh, afternoon delight”.