For those of you who are
woefully uninformed, next Monday is Memorial Day, a National Holiday and
the official beginning of summer. Therefore, this weekend is a three day
weekend and we will have a lot of vacationers in the Twin Lakes area. In fact,
this will be one of the busiest, if not the busiest weekend of the year. If you
are a local angler who cherishes solitude on stream, this may be the weekend to
stay home and watch Dialing for Dollars. If you do venture on-stream, take a
bit of patience with you.
One of the problems is
that many of the anglers you may encounter are new to the sport. As a result,
they may not be up to date on angling etiquette. In particular, they may be
fishing what you believe is too close to you. Be polite and explain the
predicament and how far away he or she should be fishing from you. If they are
struggling, now would be a good time, to give them a suggestion or even a fly.
In the past other anglers have done this for me and it was greatly appreciated.
It is important that we all become ambassadors for the sport.
Another problem that you
will encounter is an influx of watercraft. It is what I refer to as an anything
that floats weekend. You can expect to see a lot of canoes, kayaks, kick boats
and float tubes. In addition, you may run into some unexpected types of
watercraft. Several years ago I watched someone launch a twenty foot pontoon
boat at Cotter. He was pretty much limited to the water there in front of the
ramp.
It seems like somebody
always brings their bass boat. I watched one guy launch a bass boat at Rim
Shoals, where he proceeded to terrorize all of the anglers there with some
pretty big wakes that almost swamped several boats. He eventually hit a
submerged rock at a high rate of speed and took out his transom. For that, he
received a standing ovation.
Make sure that you carry
rain gear with you when you are fishing this weekend. The weather channel is
predicting a sixty percent chance of rain on Saturday and Monday.
Do not let the rain deter your fishing. I have had some of my best days fishing
in the rain. My theory is that the fish are already wet and they don’t care.
The rain will have the benefit of keeping a lot of anglers from fishing thereby
reducing fishing pressure. Nothing thins the herd like a little rain.
Water conditions should
be good. I have not seen a prediction for the generation this weekend yet but
the pattern has been for minimum flow on the White River and for moderate
generation on the Norfork. The White has significantly more fishable miles of
trout water and there is more room to spread out. While there is a significant
algae bloom, this year it seems to be on the wane.
Finally, I have been on
the river several days in the past week and the fishing has been good. In
addition, to guiding, my wife, Lori, and I have gotten in the rare day here and
there, where we got to fish together and we had some great days. For us, the
hot fly was the ruby midge but I have talked to other anglers that have done
well with olive woolly buggers and partridge and orange soft hackles.
Happy Memorial Day and
good luck out there!
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