Yough River Run - Finally!

Whoooaa doggy!  Finally time to man up and run the middle Yough.  After running a few other rivers in the drift boat over the past months and having David take me down the Yough once and show me the lines, it was go time.

David manning the front of the boat

David and Joel and I put in around 7 am in Confluence near the tailraces to start our all day float.  I was about to learn more on this float than all other combined.  The Yough is damn technical and your constantly slipping around boulders and sliding through holes the size of your boat to get through the many sets of rapids.  David did a great job coaching me on the approach for each rapid and the proper lines to run. If you don't hit these lines, and you can't turn the boat on a dime, you're in for a brutal ride. Plain and simple.


While I was busy learning the river, Joel and David were sticking it to the fish.  In the morning they caught fish on nymphs.  Again it was mostly rainbows, but there always the chance at a monster brown.  Joel took care of lunch and brought this little propane camping stove to grill up some burgers and potatoes at one of the middle islands.  High class baby!

Chef Joel grilling up some burgers on an island

In the afternoon, they switched to some dry / dropper fishing.  We found a lot of risers all afternoon, but these were much tougher than the fish we worked a couple weeks ago. Typical to the Yough, these fish were cruising around like a pod of killer whales munching on really small emergers / nymphs.  All you would see is thick backs and tails and then they would rise again a foot or two somewhere up river.  This is like fishing on the Henry's Fork and can be down right addicting and maddening.  We coaxed a couple to take a dry, but we're going to have to change our game if we want to consistently catch these fish. 

David with a chunky Yough bow

After running through some of the most difficult rapids on this stretch and with about an hour to go in the float a huge thunderstorm snuck in on us over the mountains.  Realizing what inevitably was about to happen, we put the graphite lightning rods down and I paddled like crazy to get down the river.  But that storm chased us down like a trout on a midge and we ended up in the middle of torrential thunderstorm.   I'm talking the center of some of the loudest thunder booming and the most ridiculous lightning that I have ever been in.  This was not cool at all.  20 minutes later we were soaked to the bone and had about 3 inches of water in the boat.   But we managed not to get electrocuted, so I'll chalk it up as a win.

Maiden middle Yough run

It was a pretty memorable float and one I was glad to get under my belt.  Now, I just gotta remember those lines and run it another half-dozen times and I should be straight.