A Nice Day for a Float

Yeah right , maybe if you like 104 degree afternoon temps and a thirty mph South wind that makes it feel like you're stationed inside of a furnace duct. Oh well , it was the only day I had to work with this last week so you just make do sometimes. The plan was to head to a local river that drains into an even bigger river and try my luck once again with hooking up a gar.

 I couldn't find any able bodies that were willing to join me (wonder why?) so I loaded up the boat and hit the road on my own. If you've been following along you know that I got out a couple times last summer on this same river and tried to catch my first flyrod gar , unsuccessfully I might add.

Turn the page a year and at the end of the day the results were unfortunately the same. A lot less water in the river this year and I only saw a total of three gar the entire afternoon , didn't get a fly in front of any of them.
I did try out a new gar fly given to me by a fellow Drakian here recently , this one utilizes a treble hook instead of nylon rope for the business end.



 The thing looked fantastic in the water , great action and suspended at just the right depth to keep it visible. Definitely a winner and I'll be back out giving it another shot as soobn as I get the opportunity.
The bright point in the afternoon was having the company of three bald eagles for almost the entire float , an adult and two juveniles.

 With no one else on the river but myself they didn't seem to mind me too much and went about their business as if I wasn't there. The juveniles were constantly vocalizing every time "mom" flew off downriver to scout out a new fishing spot , soon after they'd follow and when I rounded the next corner they'd all be sitting in a tree branch together.

Pretty cool I thought , I've seen lots of bald eagles over the years but never had the opportunity to watch a family of them like that. I got a couple of shitty pics from my P&S camera but they stayed just far enough away to never allow a good in-focus shot.
Even with the lack of fish and almost unbearable heat , at the end of the day I was still glad I made the trip. You just can't have experiences like that if you're sitting home on the couch....