June 6th, 2009: The Black River with Bob's TU buddies

5:30 am. Bob and Karen's house. Good coffee. Nice Landscaping stones. Probably a little too early.

7:00 am. Boonville Burger King. Crap. Still too early. More coffee.

7:30 am. Bob's TU buddies are all on time, and it's on to the Black River. We drove down into Hawkinsville and took Edmonds Road to the closed bridge and impromptu parking/picnic area. It was here that Dave planned to set up lunch in the afternoon. Bob gave a quick rundown of the waters and fly strategy for the day as I sluthed the hatches and bug activity on the bridge. Bob wanted to hike up stream a half a mile and work our way back to the bridge. It sounded like a good idea, but I wish I looked at a topographical map first. I'm sure that the deer and imaginary mountain goats handled the trail fine, but I was petrified. Nothing like a 1 foot wide trail of sand and rotted wood on a 45 degree incline sloping down 50 or 60 feet to the river below. Mom? Thanks for buying me the "studded" Simm's Freestones.

By about the 1/4 mile mark the trail got off of the "cliff" and leveled out into a bog area. Although there were posted signs, there was also a public fishing sign among them. Naturally, we followed the instructions of the public access sign. Let me just say that this river is beautiful. And incredibly fishy.And very fisherman friendly in access, casting clearance, and even stream bed traction. It just made you want to explore all day, because around every bend was even more nice water. The day's statistics: air temps in the upper 60's to low 70's, water temps from 60 to 66, and the water level was low and clear. We found a smooth pool book-ended with some pleasant riffles with fish rising. I hooked up on one but found the fish to be all too picky. We continued down through the pocket water. Bob brought up a small mouth bass and lost a nice fish. I landed a few more small stockies and lost a few flies in the process. Despite the multitude of hatches, the key was skittering a bushy fly through the pockets. There really was too much nice water to cover and it was getting to be lunch time.

Lunch was great. Thanks Dave for cooking and organizing. Thanks everyone for all the food. If only we had some chopped onions to go with the burgers...

We decided to finish out the day at the pool below the bridge. Figuring out what they were feeding on proved to be difficult at first, because there were a few caddis and midge species about, as well as march browns, cornuta olives, light cahills, and quill gordons in various stages throughout the day. Once Bob got a rusty spinner on it was obvious what they were taking. I just want to go on record as saying that although I lost count of how many fish I caught, I really didn't catch that many ;)

As usual, a great day with the guys. The Black River did not disappoint today.

Muddler