Yough Tailrace Float

Dave and I hit the Yough Saturday morning.  With the warmer temps and my schedule (aka: honeydew list #9: Nursery) we just floated the top section.  Its only maybe 1.25 miles from put-in to take-out, but we took our time and worked the many runs on the way down. 



An angler standing in the early Yough mist


It was raining early right around 9 AM and I thought the BWOs would pour off the water, but to our surprise we didn't see one little BWO.  We did see a decent amount of cahills - both yellow and orange coming off around 10-11 AM, but not one fish took that size 12/14 bug.  We even saw a couple yellow drakes that were 2XL, but the fish didn't seem to care. 



When this fog lifted, there were about 10 fisherman below the bridges!

What the trout did like though was the venerable caddis.  When the sun came out, so did the splashy tell tale rises in the runs.  This is such a more welcome site to see then when they are in impossible killer whale mode cruising and taking size 20 something micro emergers. I loathe those fish. 


We had a good 5 hours on the river and caught a good amount. I lost a 20" palomino due to dry rotted tippet that apparently had the breaking strength of a piece of hair. Sickening. There is enough other things that can go wrong when you hook a pig, but bad line shouldn't be one of them.



Typical Yough bow

When we got to our take out, there were plenty of fish still rising. This is always a problem and makes it damn hard to leave. If I had my choice, I would rather have daylight force me off the river. Leaving at mid day, I basically had to turn away and just bee line from the river and not look back. All it takes is one cast and I would have been stuck there probably til dark.




Dave working a run behind his boat

The Freedom Float - Yough River

Did a little Fourth of July float fishing with David. God bless America it was hot out there!  We put in above Ramcat around 7:30 and floated down to Ohiopyle.  Big rubber hatch on the river with the rafts and kayaks.  Unfortunately that was about the only thing that was hatching.  Not many bugs at all - just a few BWOs and caddis and that was about it.  The fishing pretty much followed the bug activity and they just wouldn't eat.  We found one small pod of fish that were rising and were able to trick one on a BWO dry, but that was it for the top water.  It may be time to focus on the upper tail race section and hit the late evenings / early mornings only for now. 

But we had a great day as always and spent some extra time stopping the boat and checking out the river lines so we can continue to learn.  David manned the oars in his boat and we definitely learn more each time we get out.  This section below was the one that really jacked me up on my first trip down.  Of course the picture doesn't really do it justice, but as you can see, there is no real clear line to get through.  And I know for a fact there is one big pointy rock that is currently tattooed on top with some white drift boat paint.



This time around, we followed a couple rafts that tucked in behind the big rock on the left in the picture below and the rapid was butter after that.  I'll remember that line for sure.  Live and learn.

Towards the end of the float I was throwing big streamers and my sinking line was lazily dragging under the boat as I took a break and sat down.  We hit a rock and I just knew what had happened....cut that $70 right in half.  Ahh, just one of those days!  But any time you can get onto the river on a Wednesday, you can't ask for much more!  Happy Fourth!

Dog Training / Bass Fishin'

I've been knee deep in getting the house ready for the twins this fall and this weekend was dedicated to installing a Pergo floor in the new guest room.  By Sunday evening I needed to wet a line in the worst way and the dog needed to get some exercise, so we took a little family trip to a local training pond.  We had the place to ourselves and did some water retrieves for Cooper to wear him out a bit in the heat.

Then on the other side of the pond, I worked some poppers for small sunfish and bass.  I never fished this pond before and I rarely even fish any little bass ponds.  But it was 10 minutes away and the Yough is 1.5 hours.  I ended up catching a bunch of little less than discriminating sunfish and bass on a little top water popper and had a hoot.  Spencer brought her chair and just hung out on the bank.  It was a good way to get my fix in before starting the work week again.