Annual Report for 2023

As I turned 74 just prior to Christmas, I reflected on my outdoor adventures during the past year.

My fishing year began auspiciously. In an earlier column I related that my first trout of the year was a husky 22-inch rainbow. It was a prelude of fine fishing to come. I landed another trout even larger than that.

The May fly-fishing during sulphur mayfly hatches on the BFO River was outstanding. (Clover Creek’s sulphurs have been wiped out.) Unlike other years when I often cannot find room to fish there during these wonderful hatches, I was able to find stretches of river where I could enjoy an evening’s action most of the time I visited there – and the trout cooperated. I caught quite a few larger-than-average trout. A pair of lunker browns were the best of these.

I did not fish much during the long, hot summer because most streams were too warm to fish ethically. But when I found water cold enough to catch and release fish without overly stressing them, small nymphs proved their worth.

When autumn arrived, dry-fly fishing in the absence of hatching flies provided exciting action from the first day of autumn through Veterans’ Day. Some surprisingly large trout came to net, including several oversized rainbows. Since I had to use light tippet (nylon fishing line) to fool fish in the low, clear water, I also lost several nice trout. The only real downers of this year’s trout season were the two fine rods that I broke and had to have fixed. These were expensive repairs.

My turkey hunting adventures were successful. In recent seasons my son, Bob, has called in the turkeys I have tagged. Not in 2023. On the spring season’s opening morning, Bob had several turkeys running toward us, but another hunter was between us and the birds and shot at them. The next Saturday Bob killed a 20-pound gobbler that he got up at 2:30 to hunt. (I wasn’t there.) The following week while he was at work, hunting near where he’d had the gobblers coming to us on the opening day, I called for myself and put my tag on a 19-pounder at 6:15. During the autumn when we had only one week to hunt, I called in a nice young gobbler on Monday afternoon.

If it were not for Bob, I would not have killed a deer, managing to hunt only twice because of Donna’s and my illnesses during the first week of rifle season.

This briefly summarizes my outdoor adventures during 2023.