Floating the Stone on June 2nd!!!

Saturday June 2nd: Yellowstone river "Bird Float" with Jamie, Madeline, Mason, Shook, Rhiannon, Kylie, Jade, Tater, Reese, Moira, Kylie Lemp, Hailey and Trico. Flows on the Yellowstone were 7850 C.F.S. and there was over two feet of clarity in a greenish tinted water. I have never seen the stone in this shape this early and it is a bit worrisome for the rest of the summer. We will have to wait and see what mother nature brings us in the coming months. The air temp was in the mid 70's and there was hardly a cloud in the sky.

We had been planning on taking all the kids on a float over the weekend and on Friday night we had all made plans to meet at our hometown source of cheap plastic shit, otherwise known as Walmart, at 11 am on Saturday. We packed up the coolers and everyone was ready to go by 11 as we had planned. We left the Shook's car in the parking lot and jumped into my truck and Jamie's and headed for the stone. I arranged the shuttle with Toots on the ride over and we were at the ramp putting in by noon. There were about a dozen other rigs in the parking lot at Grey Owl when we arrived and Jeff and Karen Blatter were getting ready as we pulled up with our own little circus in tow. Jeff and Karen were slightly overwhelmed with all the kids and dogs running around but they have had all of us over at their home for BBQ's in the past so they were used to the ciaos that follows those of us with children around. We launched the boats and secured all the kids life jackets prior to setting off down the river. There were not many plans for fishing, with the exception of slinging some panther martins and blue fox vibrax spinners as we floated down the river. Jamie had several fish on before we hit the first bend and it was apparent that the lure fishing was pretty solid in the high off color water. There were plenty of fly anglers on the water as well and they were all doing pretty well, as long as you got it close to the bank. Ryan Eisfelt and Andy Chu had clients with them and we ran into them at Mill Creek eating lunch. They were doing pretty well fishing buggers and worms under and indicator. We let the older girls try casting the lures on the kids rods and the two twins did very well with watching the lure on the back cast and making a long enough cast to catch a few fish. Both Hailey and Kylie landed a whitefish all on their own at the mouth of the creek and the other kids ran around throwing rocks and sending sticks down the fast moving flows of Mill Creek.

After letting the kids blow off some steam we jumped back into the boats and continued our float on down the river. Moira, Reece, myself and the twins were in the drift boat and the rest of the clan were in Shook's raft. The raft was a great jungle gym and the kids were having a great time jumping off the tubes and using the floor of the raft as a trampoline.

In our boat the kids were a little less rowdy and Kylie was quickly becoming addicted to fishing. She stood in the back of the boat with Trico and kept to task throwing the Yellow Panther Martin towards the bank. She managed to land another 5 whitefish and two small brown trout as we floated towards the take out at Mallards Rest. Reece and Hailey sat on the bow of the boat and had a great time being silly and looking at the birds, deer and other animals that inhabit the banks of the Yellowstone River.

We made one last stop at the Loch Leven picnic area and while Kylie fished Hailey and Reece threw sticks and played with Trico. The other boat caught up with us and they had no interest in stopping. Shook and Jamie told us that they were over stimulated by the kids and were ready to hit the take out. We hit the takeout at around 5 pm and everyone was tired and ready for some dinner. A great time was had by all and we all turned in for an early night when we got home.