Rainy Day Float

     Summer continues to cruise by at a fast pace, July is right around the corner and those of us lucky enough to call the river our home water get to enjoy cool stream temperatures for another two months. The dry weather pattern seems to be gone and the heavy rains that eluded this part of the state earlier in the week haven't missed us the last two day's filling up the Reservoir to it's banks.  Steiner (www.brooksbrownsandbows.com) and I manned the oars and floated 4 guys down the river yesterday. The morning started out with a torrential downpour that added to the already muddy the feeders instantly. The first mile below the damn fished poorly and unfortunately this was the theme on this float trip. We did manage to bring in a few smallies throwing streamers at the beginning of the trip but the trout bite was weak throughout the float.

     We tried various techniques to try and move fish but found out streamers were the only thing that would fool a fish and only a few ended up eating the big nasty flies. We did have 1 BIG BROWN on for a few minutes but it got off after the wise guy ran us through some rocks. We also saw one of the biggest browns I have ever scene on the river chase a chub that was caught on a fly which was really cool to watch. Because of the rainy weather I wasn't able to get any pictures. We got a torrential down pour today so I would imagine the Yough will not be fishing for the weekend and into early next week. Rumor has it they are going to jack the flows up out of the damn too so hopefully the tailrace won't be fishing either.......the trout need a break :)

     On the insect end of things the bugs seemed to of slowed down considerably. We were not around for the typical late night Cahill hatch but only a handful of Slate Drakes hatched and the BWO's were sparse at best. We did see a few Cahills around 8pm but not in good numbers. The caddis on the lower end were slim too. Could of been the barometer screwing with us or it could be that the insect activity is truly winding down and won't pick up again until fall.