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....