Yough Float

Love this river!

  

David and I hit the Yough for our first 'full' float of the year on the middle Yough. I wanted to do most of the oar work and get another run with the hard boat under my belt, so we took the RO.  We saw there was a chance of rain, but decided the risk was worth the potential reward of catching an epic Hendrickson hatch that neither of us have ever seen on the Yough.  Well, we gambled and lost.  haha.  It rained all damn day and then the wind started.  Felt like the West Branch all over.  My rain jacket apparently didnt work too well either.  Soaked and cold, but rowing and fishing and having fun. 


 








David started it out good with a couple fish on a new streamer he tied up the night before including a palomino that proceeded 'lay' eggs all over the boat after this pic was snapped. Sweet. 










We tried nymphing, but apparently didnt bring our A-game cause we couldnt move a fish.  We chalked it up to a slow nymph bite, which sounded great in theory until later that day we talked to anther boat who was cleaning house on nymphs.  damnit.  The good news was the streamer bite was great for us so we rolled with it all day.  The fish were nailing the streamer, at times taking 3-4 strikes before connecting on the surface and some right next to the boat.  I was rowing and having just as much fun watching.  It was nuts.  And they were all rainbows with the odd goldie and an even more rare 10" brook trout that ate that streamer!  But on a cloudy overcast, miserable day, we never did catch a brownie.  So weird. 





 






















Anyways, I felt much better behind the oars on this run, but it helped having those extra few hundred CFS.  We saw a few BWOs, caddis and even a couple Hendricksons, but the rain downed the hatches for sure.  No worries...the Yough is just heating up and the fish are looking fat and healthy.

     

Steelhead???....Nope just a Yough fatty that ate some meat

Wild Leek (Ramp) Recipes

 

I didn't have a banner mushroom year, but did find my share of wild leeks (ramps.)  This was the first time I got into these guys and won't be my last.  Think cross between onion / garlic.  But a little more earthy and just popping with flavor.  I picked bags of them and then had to figure out something to do with them. 

The soup recipe came via Southern Foods online and it was out of this world.  So good.  After frying them up or eating them in salads, I didn't have a ton left, but I decided to pickle a few jars for later in the year just to try something new.  I can't say I've even tried these yet, but they do look really, really good.  I'm thinking fishing / hunting camp with some good cheese / crackers and a nice strong IPA.

Potato and Wild Leek (Ramps) Soup 

 

Ingredients:

• 4 to 6 slices bacon
• 4 cups chopped ramps (including green)
• 4 to 5 cups diced red potatoes
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup heavy cream
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation:

In a large skillet or Dutch oven, fry bacon until crispy; set bacon aside. Add ramps and potatoes to the skillet; fry on medium-low heat until ramps are tender. Sprinkle with flour; stir until flour is absorbed. Stir in chicken broth; simmer until potatoes are tender. Stir in the cream and heat thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serves 4 to 6.

  

 





Pickled Leeks

 

 

I found this brine online on another Blog. 

- 8 cups of leeks bulbs
- 5.5 cups of 5% white vinegar
- 1 cup distilled water
- 2 teaspoons of canning or Kosher salt
- 2 cups sugar
- 8 teaspoons mustard seed
- 4 teaspoons celery seed
- 2 teaspoons coriander seed
- 2 teaspoons hot pepper flakes

Simmer vinegar, water, salt and sugar for 3-minutes before adding the leeks. 

Once you`ve simmered for 3-minutes, add the leeks and bring back to a gentle simmer for 5 minutes (start timing once you`r back at a boil). Add into hot sterilized pint jars (leaving a half inch of head space), remove any air bubbles and place in a hot water bath under a full boil for 10 minutes.



Morel mushroom hunting

 

Spencer, her Dad, and myself took Cooper and the kids out for a little mushroom hunt.  It was an awesome day to get the kids out in the woods, walk around, and explore.  I hit up a couple spots that have produced in the past, but as soon as I set foot in the woods, I knew it was just a little too early.  Need more rain, more green on the trees and another week. We did find some more ramps, but I have so many at home, I just let them be.  No morels today, but we'll find some this year with the babies.

 

What a little trooper!

West Branch of the Delaware - Day 3

 

 

We had big storms roll through at night which brought the rivers up and muddied them up.  Unfortunately, the temps also dropped like 20 degrees and the fish did not like that.  The wind was Still here blowing 20+ mph winds again, but this time blowing us straight down the river.  Honestly, I don't think we could have gotten 3 crappier days of weather and this one was going to be by far the most challenging.

We started early around 830 and we came throwing the meat.  Big meat.  We pounded the banks relentlessly every 10 feet.  strip, strip, strip, cast, repeat.  And we didn't move a single damn fish.  It sucked.   I mean that water was something that makes you day dream of monster brown trout explosions and we didn't even get a look.  Weather just sucked.  We planned to float to Buckingham, but at home pool we changed plans and Bart at DRC adjusted the shuttle to go upstream.  At lunch we hustled upstream and found the water levels to be perfect.  We didn't paddle too long til we saw bugs galore.  Baetis everywhere.  Quill Gordons, hendricksons, blue quills, and caddis.  And not a single damn fish on them.  Talk about a major bummer.  I think drastic temp changes just turned them completely off.  We found 2 fish rises the entire stretch and only one to cast to.  And we fished our asses off ...streamers, nymphs, head hunting with dries, wade fishing.  Just plain work and nothing. 

 

As we rounded the bend to Hale Eddy, we both commented on not remembering a time when we were skunked after an ENTIRE day of fishing.  Its pretty hard to do at this stage of fishing.  I decided to finish strong anyways and kept pounding the streamer.  The fish Gods must have felt pity on us and a nice 17" brown pounded my articulated streamer putting our first fish in the boat in 10 hours of fishing within 100 yards from the take out.  What a major relief!  And once David was able to get back into his honey hole at the takeout, he was able to get one rainbow to bail him out too.  We both landed one damn fish.  Somehow, it was still an awesome float and we learned a lot more of the river.  I read the reports the next day (why would I do this to myself??)  the onslaught of the wind  had completely died down and the trout ate the Hendricksons without abandon...Oh well,...always next time.

 

 The trip was a total blast and so nice to get out on the water no matter what the conditions.   The make things even better, the next morning on our way home, I bought a used shovel at a farmers store and went back to my wild ramp honey hole.  Leek on!  I could have filled my pickup truck full of them, but instead took two bags.  Plenty enough for some soup and some pickling.

Ramps as far as you could see.  Oh baby!

Pounds of fresh wild mountain ramps!

West Branch of the Delaware River - Day 2

 Tom's wife got really sick on this trip and he had to go back home which was a pretty big bummer for all of us, but definitely the right call for him  It got me thinking that if this had happened to Spencer with the twins, that would have canceled the whole trip for everyone.  Or maybe they would have sent me in a rental from Binghampton and David took my boat?? 

 

 

I left David at the Hale Eddy put in while I ran Tom to the airport and in that time he managed to land a dozen fish with 4 of them at the 20" mark including both rainbows and browns.  Not bad.

When I got back he had the boat sitting right in the riff and his rod was bent in half.  If there was any place to be left on the river to nymph before the bugs started, this was the spot.  I waded out to join him and he had all the rods rigged (guide skills for sure.) He handed me a rigged rod and within minutes I had a nice WB wild rainbow to hand.  I was instantly much, much better. 

 

 

 

I liked the top half of this section a lot and we managed to find quite a few rising trout that were taking blue quills.  The only problem was the trout would only cycle for 2-3 rises on average and then just stop.  So when we saw one rise, it was row to position quickly and make a cast.  There was no time to piss around.  The nice thing with the wind and being early season was if you made a decent cast and drifted the fly through the lane, the fish complied nicely and typically ate it on 5X. 

 

 

Nice fish on a dry

There were Baetis and Blue Quills out and David's showshoe dun probably didn't match either perfectly, but it had a nice profile and we never changed that fly once.  It caught probably 8 fish including my fish of the trip - a nice 20" brown. 

 

 

 

 

We had floated through a really nice section and there were actually hundreds of Hendricksons on the water and we saw a nice rise along the bank behind a big rock.  One cast, one drift and that pig ate it.  That is why we drove 7 hours to this river.  A 20" fish on a sz 18 dry.  money.

 A bald eagle's nest (with an eagle in it) on river left before the Ball's Eddy take out.  We seriously could have fit the boat in it and had we got any closer, one may have plucked David off for fledgling food.

We totally missed Tom on the water today.  He's a dry fly dude no doubt and though this wasn't nearly as good as it gets here, it was a pretty good day for mid-April and crappy conditions.  I only happened to get one pic of Tom on the way out before he left....

West Branch of the Delaware River - Day 1

This was the first fishing trip without Spence by my side.  She held down the fort this weekend with the six month old twins while I took a fishing trip with a couple buddies....I know, I'm a lucky dude.

Needless to say we were pretty amped up.  Dave and I left early in the morning...say round 4 am to get to the Delaware in time for the afternoon hatch.  We picked up Tom in Bellefonte around lunch and rolled on. While we were driving, we happened to notice an entire hillside of ramps (aka wild leeks.)  We used some mountain stone to work enough out of the ground for our burgers over the next few days....But I would be back for more...
















We got to the Delaware River Club and were greeted with  20+ MPH brutal winds forcing us to at times to have to paddle crew style backwards just to go downstream from Balls Eddy down to Shehawken.  The wind forced most of the fishing to be streamers, which would have been fine if the streamer bite would have been on, but it certainly wasn't.

We did manage to get into about 10 fish into the boat on various nymphs, but none very big.  Not a banner day but a decent start. 




First fish to the boat.  A nice strong Delaware River rainbow.



Back at the DRC camp. Figuring out the next day's float over an IPA.



New Custom built 10' 5wt

I added a new weapon to the arsenal - a new 10' 5 wt from Dan Craft's Five Rivers company.   It's a Northwest Guide Series GXT.  I know....what a mouthful. 

Reviewed and regarded similar to a Loomis GLX or Sage Z-Axis this rod is going to be my go-to river nymphing rod. 

I've built about a dozen rods now and they're honestly pretty damn good quality now.  One day I hope to build more for friends / family and even a little business.  Right now with the twins, this one took weeks to get done....haha.



The pre-workshop....part of the setup

Now ready to wrap some guides....yes that is a baby bouncer on the work table.  I usually have an audience.

A Full-wells grip is the perfect choice for this 10' footer

 

Tight wraps pre-cure

Finished rod with inscription. 

Mushroom Growing Experiment

When I was twelve, I worked for an older couple maintaining their property that happended to grow shiitake muchrooms.   Shawn and I would rotate his logs a couple times a year and he would get some amazing fresh mushrooms that were just rediculously delicious. If you think you've eaten fresh wild mushrooms from Giant Eagle,....well, sorry, but you haven't.

So I finally got my act together.and decided to invest in my own stash.  I got a couple buddies to chip in and we bought thousands of plugs from www.fungiperfecti.com.   Oysters, Shiitake, Maiitake, and Reishi's (for tea.) 

Mushroom plug spores

Jeremey and I decided to plug a trial log one evening in his garage.  I cant say we had everything laid out exactly how we needed it, but with a few beers and a garage full of everything you can imagine, we just 'improvised.'

Logs plugged with shroom spores

We needed to melt the wax chips to seal the log.  It was raining like hell, so we opted to find a way to melt the wax in his garage then 'give in' and retreat to the house.

You could say this worked 'quickly'

Then we didnt have a paint brush....so Einstein found us a (clean) cement brush..  We did the whole log in MINUTES!  You cant argue with that efficiency!

 

 

 

 

Before wax

After....maybe a little overkill??



 

Who knows how this log will fruit....hope to get the others done soon and then just let mother nature run its course.