Upper Delaware float

[Lard Almighty]

My dad and I took our annual spring float down the Big D this weekend. We pulled into Hancock about 4:00 on Friday, and decided to check out the 191 bridge in town to see what was going on. Water was up, and slightly murky; perfect! EXCEPT... there was tons of green slime tumbling down the river. Every other cast we had to pick it off our lures. In between the slime, we both managed a small brown, and I missed a nice 15" brown that cartwheeled about 5-6 times before he spit the hook. Saw a couple of fly guys, and one drift boat came down, surprisingly quiet for a Friday evening.

Saturday morning we met up with Mike at Long Eddy, then drove up to Buckingham to launch the boat. My dad was on the rainbows almost immediately, catching half a dozen before I even landed my first fish of the day. After lunch things heated up for me, including a 10-minute stretch where I landed two browns and a rainbow, all over 16". At the end of the day we landed about a dozen trout, one shad (my dad's first), two smallies, and two walleye. Big fish of the day was a 20" rainbow that my dad plucked right out from behind another drift boat that was chilling out along the bank. One rainbow I caught was bright silver, could have sworn it was a steelie! Silver spinners did most of the damage.

Sunday morning, still a little sore from all the casting/catching from Saturday, we stopped by the fireman's field in town. We didn't fish too long since it was very cold and windy, but I was able to score a short walleye to close out the weekend. After a stop for breakfast in Callicoon, we were back in the Dirty Jerz.