Unfortunately, after the lovely evening the sky darkened and thunderstorms pounded all night. The next day was sunny and humid. We had a possibly too hearty breakfast and set out with low expectations.
I really wanted to show James Otter Creek, so we headed there first. On arrival there was a spin fisherman drinking coffee in the parking lot. And wowza was Otter Creek blown out. A raging, muddy torrent, probably not safe for James to even cross. We chatted with the other angler for a while – he said he fishes exclusively panther martins – then headed off to find somewhere to fish. Grannis has in the past often been clear in blowout conditions, due I guess to the geometry of its drainage and a mostly spring-fed flow. I wanted to check out the upstream stocked portion of Mink that I hadn’t been to before, so we headed there, but it was completely blown out as well. So we went to Grannis and, sure enough, it was running clear. Grannis doesn’t do much for me, though. We tried for a while in the little isolated bridge pool but didn’t catch anything. Then we decided what the heck, let’s try home water. There was a truck in the parking lot, but that doesn’t usually mean you’ll have trouble fishing. It did this time, though, as a couple of baitfishing jerks buzzed around us, passing us and fishing right beside us. I try to be a good human being, but I have dark thoughts about bait fishers and virtually every interaction of any kind I have with them leads me further down the path. They didn’t even say hi. Two moonfaced clowns in polo shirts who looked like they belonged on a golf course, messing up our casts like we weren’t even there.
They eventually left, having splashed around spooking all of the downstream pools. By then it was midafternoon and just sweltering. The water was high and off colour, but fishable. We agreed we had to each catch a trout just to make us feel like we’d done something for the day. We managed it. I caught one at the little cliff pool, and James cashed at the bottom pool.
Once that had been managed, we were seriously drooping from the heat, irritated from the bait idiots encounter, and ready for the air conditioner, so we bailed.
We haven’t had enough campfires this year, but we got a fire going in the evening at the cabin firepit and had a go roasting marshmallows with our fancy new set of smores sticks.
