With Monday’s closing of this year’s spring turkey hunting season, many sportsmen and women’s lives can return to a semblance of normalcy or at least about as close as any avid outdoors person’s life can be described as normal when viewed by others of the primary coach potato sect.
After a month of beating the sunrise to their favorite turkey hunting locations, the luxury of sleeping in on non-working days must feel pretty darn good. At least with fishing, camping, hiking or canoeing/kayaking or whatever, the participant can pretty much choose what time they begin their days afield or on the water, and this month is normally a fine month weather-wise to enjoy being outdoors.
While some anglers may view May as THE fishing month, June is often even better for many species of game and pan fish species. Plus, bass season will open on June 19 (although they could be caught and released prior to that) and with the abundance of smallmouth bass in our area rivers, and largemouth bass in many of our lakes and ponds, anglers shouldn’t have difficulty catching them. Another benefit will be that walleye, pike and assorted panfish are often caught incidental to fishing for our river smallmouths.
Insect hatches have been accelerated by our recent warm weather, which means fly fishermen have and will continue to benefit on their favorite trout waters. While fishing the St. Lawrence River last Thursday, the hatch of caddis flies emerging was so dense, it looked almost like it was “snowing upwards.” Small bass and panfish near shorelines were glutting themselves on the spinners that fell to the surface, the dimples made it look as though it was raining there. This increased feeding activity also carried over to the larger pike and walleye, which started striking our lures in abundance.
Speaking of insects … while most of the blackflies have expired, mosquitoes have taken their place and even with the recent dry conditions, they’ll no doubt be lurking anywhere near a water source. So if you’re fishing a stream or river, make sure you apply repellent. This is especially true along our rivers, where those dense Ostrich ferns grow to head-high levels.
From a personal standpoint I’ve always enjoyed fishing streams and rivers because of the constantly changing scenery and opportunities to catch fish. Although the pool I just fished may not produce, hope springs anew when I drop a line in the next one. This is true whether I’m wading or fishing from a canoe or small car-top craft. Regardless of how lousy the fishing might be, success may be awaiting just around the next bend. Both the Chenango and Unadilla rivers as well as the Otselic are great examples of this.
