"Dog Days of Summer"

As July quickly comes to a close, not much in terms of trout fishing happening right now. We're being hit with what most likely will be our 4th heatwave of the summer-not exactly trout fishing weather. However, July has been generous to me, even despite the heat. Around the second week of July, I had the opportunity of fishing some private waters in the Poconos, thanks to a friend & colleague of mine. The weather, thankfully, was not overly hot - maybe the mid to high 70's in the mountains. The stream, however, seemed way to warm (low to mid-70's) to even bother. I worked with Charlie, the friend who made this trip possible, on some nymphing techniques, then I moved up closer to a dam, where I belived it might be a little cooler & a little more productive. A little cooler it was & a lot more productive! I put myself below an old bridge tressle (the bridge was blown out like 50 yrs. ago!) & threw a couple of casts upstream. I was using a tandem rig of bead-head princes & biot-bodied baetis numphs. No sooner did I cast, when I had a heavy rainbow fighting me & leaping, as he tried to throw the fly. I had forgotten my net-actually, I really wasn't sure I'd need it when we first arrived-so, the "release" part came a little sooner than I had wanted, but it was just as I grabbed my leader. This same episode was repeated again, only with a larger, deeply colored brownie, who snapped my leader at the last instant. Switching from a 5X to a 4X leader & arming myself with Charlie's net seemed to improve the situation. By now, my fishing buddie was starting to get a little steamed that I kept hooking up with these nice fish (average size: 19"/20" range!), until I promised to buy lunch. I quit the pool after hooking & releasing about 9 of these lunkers.
Trying not to be greedy (after all, Charlie is the one who introduced me to these waters), I "guided" him a little bit later in the afternoon, same spot. I didn't even line up-I just wanted to see him get one of those beautiful trout. Charlie caught & released 2 really nice fish-one, a brownie, must have been about 22". Not bad for mid-July!
2 weeks later, Charlie & I were back, except this time was preceded by a pretty rough heatwave. His "connection"-friends of his who own a place in this private area, were gracious enough to allow us to stay with them in their cabin & use their boat, complete with a 9 hp outboard motor. Our quarry on this particular day were the warm water inhabitants of a man made lake that feeds into the stream we fished before. Things were a bit slow in the morning, but picked up tremendously in the afternoon. We didn't even have to go out in the boat very far-bass & panfish were attacking the surface. Big, brawny bass poppers were the ticket here & Charlie was able to land his first largemouth on a fly. The fish were more than cooperative, although they tended to inhale the flies that they attacked. All in all, July hasn't been terribly bad-probably my best July fly-fishing in a long time!