River Herring, 2 for 3 in Carp Outings, and Meteorological Phenomena

I went on my third carp outing of the year today. I got one great shot, and I screwed it up. It was entirely my own doing, I messed up and missed a shot at a really big fish. That's fine. It was a leg shaker, but it has happened before and I'll be surprised if it doesn't happen again. That being said the outing was certainly no skunking. I caught a number of chunky yellow perch, including one beast that was quite beat up from spawning but very fat!

I do have something to blame the general carplessness of the outing...

Virga. Precipitation that evaporates well before reaching the ground. It occurs when ground level temperatures and dew points are well above that of the upper atmosphere. This actually causes strong downdrafts, and today these were just enough to mess with the water's surface. In extreme circumstances virga can cause powerful microbursts.  

Speaking of meteorological occurrences, here is footage of a weak area of rotation passing over the Salmon River yesterday. It was a vague attempt at a funnel cloud, though there was no chance of it becoming tornadic:

In other news, I am participating in CT's citizen scientist project to monitor river herring. The meeting to instruct the members hasn't even occurred yet and the first herring of the year are already beginning to show up, so my friend Ehren, who is also volunteering, and I went to our adopted stream to take a look. We didn't see herring, which isn't too surprising, but we found the places they are likely to hold in during the run.