Filler

The cicadas are still pretty thick in the trees. I saw a few dead ones in the parking lot and as I surveyed closer I noticed 10 more. Hmmm guess what pattern I'm trying? I was fishing with two buddies new to the river and the water was the lowest I had seen in a long time.

From Filler

Walking to the edge I could see the wakes of movement that signal a fish fleeing. They weren't big, most likely sunfish but it's nice to see something moving. The weather has been so hot I went to this spot on a hunch that it would be good. The flows are hardly ever consistent and fishing was great the last time the water was this low. We spread out and worked all the spots where over hanging trees made shade.

From Filler

I went with a sneaky pete first and as usual the sunfish demolished it. Sunfish are fun but sometimes they can be annoying and I think they stop bigger bass from going after your fly. Why would they compete with 50 smaller fish? The only luck you'd have is the bass might want to eat one of the sunfish on the way to your fly. After catching a few sunfish I switched to a monster size fly that kept the little guys off. Then I was concerned at the lack of interest in my fly. At least when sunfish hit it, I felt it looked like something good to eat. The fly just sitting there with no small swirls or fins slapping against it made for kind of a boring experience. That's when I started doing what I call filler. It's what you do in between the times the fishing is great and the times nothing is going on. The first is usually an attempt to talk to other fisherman. The comical part is we know it's hard to hear anything someone says over a certain distance, especially when there's running water nearby.

From Filler

But we still try, "Catching anything?!" Usually the yelled at fisherman doesn't even look or just gives back a blank stare, they might say What?!! Or go back to fishing. If they hear you, they usually say something back but now you can't understand what they're saying so you give back the same stare. The conversation usually ends the same way just with one person saying Yeah! or just nodding having no idea what was really said and we both go back to fishing. Another thing we might do if we are close enough to hear one another is the wouldn't it be nice conversation. My buddy and I were observing the water in front of us watching the rises just outside casting distance. There's a point in fishing at times where you're just really hoping something happens, you don't know what else to try. You've switched flies, tried different retrieves, went subsurface, topwater, in between but nothing has worked. Eventually you just kind of make conversation just for filler.

From Filler

My recent one was "this spot would be great if you had a kayak. You could spend the day in this pool." Yeah that would be great but this is reality and neither of us had a kayak so why I even said that was kind of pointless. It's just something you do on the water to pass the time I guess. The next thing I did which is usually what happens when the fishing is slow is start back tracking and fish where I started. I'm not really sure why I do this, maybe it's because I know I'll be closer to my car and can leave shortly. Sometimes I get lucky and there are fish where I think they are. But usually it's uneventful. That's pretty much how the day went. My friends had some decent luck. One guy caught two catfish on a popper. That's rare. The other found some hungry bass in a small pool. This river is very strange. The water looks like it should hold tons of fish but there really doesn't seem to be many bass here. The river might not be the problem could be the fisherman.