Labor Day Float Report

[chub minnow]

We took the boy on his first full fledged overnight float trip.  He made his dad proud even though he wasn't too interested in fishing.  We put in at Twin Bridges on Saturday mid-day and camped just a ways past Hammond Camp that night.  At camp we had a major rock breaking session to see what was inside.  We discussed the geology that created the rocks and how long it took the river to cut down to where we were.  He seemed genuinely impressed (finally!).  Floated to Patrick on Sunday and he did all the rapids including the falls on his own with applause at a couple of locations.  We had to stop at Upper Rainbow Springs so he could extinguish a fire someone had left burning on the gravel bar.

 

There were a fair amount of people on the river but that section was never even close to crowded especially for a holiday weekend.  Everyone loved it.   I didn't get to fish as much as I would have liked (never do!) but I did manage a North Fork slam; smallmouth, kentucky, goggleye, rainbow and a brown.  None of them had much size, but I was happy!  I did have a really nice rainbow on for a minute just below Blair but lost him before I got a really good look.  The wife caught the big fish of the trip, a nice 14-15" smallmouth.  All of the bass were caught on bitsy tubes and crawbugs.  I caught a couple rainbows on a prince nymph and the brown came on a Pat's rubberlegs I tied myself for the first time before I left. That was a nice treat as well!

Below Blair bridge I saw a group of 3 big fish that I'm 90% sure were stripers.  They appeared too slender to be hybrids and were all three probably 24-30".   I tried to get a cast in but they were gone before I was even close.  All in all a great weekend, I even got a commitment for another trip out of the boy, I think he's hooked on the white water.

[Johnsfolly]

CM

Great to see you get out with your wife and son! Sounded like a great trip. You will have to work on long arming your fish photos. I'm sure that they were much bigger than in the photos . my daughter really enjoyed going through the rapids, particularly the Falls. Floating in Oct, my wife and I were just happy not to get soaked with cold water in cool weather.