With Grandma holding down the fort and watching the twins for the day, I was finally able to get Spencer onto the Yough for a float over Memorial Weekend. It was exactly one year ago she was out on the Delaware in the boat and its been a long and wonderful year since then. This was the first time she was away from the twins for any period of time longer than a grocery trip and I was glad she was really excited to go out.
Dave, Spence and myself hit the water around 8 ish and had a wonderful day on the water. It was a little chilly to start but a bluebird sunny day that hit the mid-60’s, with the only knock being the ridiculous wind. Dave had been seeing good numbers of March Browns, but the wind really hampered the hatch and the dry fly fishing. We did pretty well on nymphs anchored with a big thingamabobber and heavy stoneflies and were able to boat some nice Yough bows. We didn’t catch one single brownie. Full moon and a blue bird sky - I wasn't too surprised...but still a little crazy. And no matter how many times I go out, I'm still amazed how hard a 16” Yough trout can jump and fight. These fish are all muscle. No squishy stocked trout here.
Half way through the float, we were able to find a couple rising trout lazily sipping march browns and caddis along the bank that seemed completely unaware of any wind. The highlight of my day was watching Spencer make a nice quartering downstream cast and feeding this nice Yough 'bow a March Brown dun. The fish ate and left her with about 40 feet of slack line as it ran right towards the boat! She got tight and landed him like a pro. She may not have fished for a year, but it was like riding a bike for her.
The water was around 1000 cfs and it felt great to get
behind the oars again on the river. I’m
really looking forward to many more floats this summer.