[ScowardNJ]

Well…we pussed out, but still managed to salvage a fun weekend. The weather report Thursday night said 2-3 inches of rain for Friday at Tupper Lake with possibilities of up to 4” at isolated ADK areas and landslide warnings with thunder storm warnings all weekend. A call to my buddy in Watertown, NY who we were supposed to meet up with sealed the deal. He said they have been getting pounded with rain for the past month (who hasn’t) and 2-4 inches of forecasted rain for Friday made us all agree the 5 hour drive up was not worth it. The 4 of us Jersey guys were at my place at 4PM Thursday and we started drinking, and thinking, and planning.

6 PM on Friday, haha, we were loading 2 ½ cases of IPA’s, a 30 pack of Miller’s and a bottle of Fighting Cock Whiskey into 2 kayaks and a canoe at Dingmans Ferry and banged out a 2 night-40 miler down to Belvidere, NJ where the Pequest dumps in.

Friday evening we paddled through a lightning storm that dumped at least an inch on us, coincided with a dam release we heard of up in NY had us flowing at 6mph according to the Garmin- We eventually invaded a campsite inhabited by crew of jabronies from Long Island who had no choice but to welcome us in. Good dudes!

We woke up Saturday morning to a river that rose at least 5 feet over night, flooded with chocolate milk, it looked like the Amazon. The river remained totally unfishable for the rest of the trip so you can probably guess what the only thing left to do was. Lots of nice eye candy in rafts between Smithfield and the Gap. We ran out of adult provisions around 10PM Saturday night at a campsite we poached just down river of I-80 on the Jersey side.

Stopped in Portland, PA Sunday at noon to resupply hearing the news of a missing guy in the river who was tubing, we paddled by the search effort-not a good scene, I think he is still missing. Got to Belvidere at around 4 yesterday, loaded our gear and finished the trip with a stop at Bea McNally’s in Hacketstown (def recommended). It wasn’t the trip I hoped for, nor the fishing report I wanted to share, but man do I have some stories to tell from this weekend!

Got a text from my buddy in Watertown last night who stuck with plan A. He said they had torrential rain Friday morning until noon, the weather mellowed out and on Saturday they got over 20 LM to 3lbs and fried up a stringer of 12 inch plus’ers at camp Saturday night fishing top water in Bog Lake.