I arrive at the river at 10:00 am. It is another typical Maryland summer day, hot, humid, and borderline unbearable. I pull into the parking spot and see another car parked at the bridge access, which is rare. I see a man fishing downstream of the bridge so I decide to go upstream to avoid him. After wading about 10 minutes up the river I arrive to one of my favorite holes in the river. It has a rush of water that swirls out into a large circular bowl with boulders on one bank and a beach on the other. I figure this will be a good spot to spend the next hour.
While I was leaving the river during my last visit, I was flipping rocks, and under almost every rock were juvenile crayfish. I took this as a sign and tied some crayfish flies the night before. I stand shin deep in the water casting to the banks and jigging my crayfish creation into the deepest part of the water. Immediately the fish were all over it, the next 20 minutes were spent pulling fish after fish out of the water with little downtime in between bites.
After the excitement I take a moment to just exist in the river, I walk to the sandy bank and sit down. While sitting I noticed the large amount of animal tracks around me. Raccoons, deer, ducks, and who knows what else. As I’m pondering the activity of these creatures I catch something out of the corner of my and see that a beaver had snuck up on me. It was the smallest beaver I had ever seen, no bigger than a rugby ball, and it was walking straight towards me. It must’ve been just 15 feet away, and as I reach for my phone it darts into the bushes. Who knows if it didn’t see me, or didn’t care that I was there, or just wanted to say hi. I think to think that he was coming to say hi.
After that I continue fishing, and notice that a sulphur hatch was happening. While I know what a sulphur looks like and know what flies imitate it, I know very little about the bug. So, I took it upon myself to learn more when I got home. Epeorus vitreous is a species of mayfly that spend their nymphal stage at the bottom of the water. When they hatch they leave their shuck at the bottom of the river and move up to the surface, before drying their wings and flying away. They then fornicate and repeatedly dip their abdomens in the water to disperse their eggs. After this short period they die and fall back to the water, making them easy prey for fish.
Sketches:
The creature that I made my fly to imitate
Among the many animal tracks were by where I was sitting
The bugs that were hatching
The sneaky fella who crept up on me
Conclusion:
I felt more engaged while sketching my observations form the site. For the next time, I would like to improve on the speed of my sketches even if they don’t turn out as well. Many of the things that I drew, I only got a short glimpse of and ended up having to find pictures to finish the sketch.