TodayGas price might keep me closer
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Article RatingSomeone once told me, when the wind blows over the oat stubble, fall isn’t far behind.
With the price of corn and wheat clinging to record price levels, I haven’t seen a field of oats this year but I’m sure someone in our valley has a field out somewhere that they probably planted with their alfalfa rotation.
At any rate the old farmer, who told me about fall coming right behind the oat harvest, probably isn’t that far off. It’s already the last Sunday in July, next weekend we have to fill out our applications for our antlerless deer licenses. I try to remember to mail them Sunday evening, which will meet the requirements of a Monday postmark. It also means that if you plan to apply for an antlerless deer license, you must purchase the annual license first.
With the population of smallmouth bass crashing on the Susquehanna, and according to Bobby Clouser at Bass Pro Shop, this year’s young of the year seem to have crashes again, there’s not much sense in traveling to Harrisburg to fish the white fly hatch. That doesn’t mean there are no white flies. It just means I won’t be spending fuel money at close to $4 a gallon for the chance to fish the late evening hatch, then drive all the way back to Shippensburg.
I might try somewhere closer on the Conodoguinet Creek. Down stream of any of the points where our little spring creeks flow into the big freestone should provide dry fly fishing opportunities with the Size 12 white flies. In other years I’ve found hatches of Cahill’s late in the afternoon into the evening before the white fly emerges.
Not only can an angler catch some river smallmouth but with the cold water pouring in from the spring creeks there’s always a chance to land a nice trout or two, since they also pay attention the white flies.
A bit later in August look for the white flies on the yellow Breeches below Allenberry Playhouse and Lodge. The Allenberry water seems to be the social gathering place for area fly fishers during the hatch. Sometimes I like to pause long enough to chat with old friends but prefer to find a place further down.
Was it Henry David Thoreau, who said “I’d rather sit alone on a pumpkin than share a velvet pillow with a crowd?”
At least someone once wrote it down in some forgotten book but I liked it. Don’t you?
Dove season is only five weeks away. All the ammunition companies look forward to early dove season across the country because most hunters miss a lot more than they hit. Fast flying doves are not the easiest bird to hit but with a little pre-season practice at some clay targets increases should increase the chances of hitting a limit of birds before full dark and before going through three or four boxes of shotgun shells.
