Took a weekend off from boatbuilding as promised. Spent one day partying it up at my 4 year old's birthday celebration and the other day chasing shad in the Delaware water gap (for a friend's birthday). Although the party was a hoot, I'll spare you the details of the former and concentrate on the later.

In eastern PA, the shad run is our version of the steelhead, chinook, or other seasonal run. Basically, it's all we got without driving 5 or 6 hours to the great lakes. For the uninitiated, shad are a bony mess to cook and not nearly as big as the migratory salmonoids, but one look at their body shape and you know your in for a tussle. Anything with a forked tail and a shape like a large tea service tray has got to be pretty good.. even if the big ones are only 5 or 6 pounds. Early in the run, while they're still fresh, is when they are best. I've had them take my fly line back and forth across the whole river (~100 yards) several times in just one encounter. If you've never had the experience, I recommend it. If you have no local shad run, the next best thing is an excellent book by John McPhee called "The Founding Fish". It's all about shad fishing, with the first chapter titled " They're in the river". I always think of this book on the day of our first outing. Unfortunately, in the river was exactly where they were not.

We fished where one of the tribs dumps into the river - usually a good shad spot. The added bonus is you can get just about anything else on the fly line you can think of: trout, striper, largemouth, smallmouth, catfish, carp, muskie, walleye, and panfish. A true cornucopia of sportfishing. Sunday it was slow. I caught a decent rainbow, Jimmy had a monster hit that broke his line, and we heard from (but did not catch) a few shad. The shad hit is a peculiar thing, they're said to have "paper" mouths and that's about what it feels like when setting the hook on a strike- like your pulling it out of a piece of notebook paper. Often more misses than takes and today it was all dissapointment. The good news is, my boat may be done in time for a float when they're in there thick.

The good news was, that was not the end of the day. After a few hours down on the river, the day saterted to get too hot and bright for shad fishing. We decided to migrate up one of the tribs to do some trout fishing. dingman's creek is locaed in the largest patch of virgin hemlock forest in PA (or so I'm told). It's one of those places that is 15 degrees cooler than anywhere else in the surrounding vicinity. The trout were still in spring mode - mostly going for nymphs, but the action was spectacular. Appropriately, for a horseracing weekend ( the preakness, I believe), I hit the trifecta. The flyfishrman's trifecta that is: brookie, brownie, and rainbow with several of each to be had. A nice consolation prize for the lack of shad. Below is a pic of Jimmy (it was his B-day trip) in one of the many good fishing holes.

For the rest of the week, I got back to boat. It won't be done for memorial day, but i think I'm only about 1 or 2 weeks away. Just don't want to rush the finish - stuff always turns out bad when that happens - especially the paint job. So below are a few pics summarizing the progress to date: sealing the hull, laying the fabric (layers of kevlar and glass), and then flipping the boat and installing the outside shear rail.

It's comming together fast now. Uncle Danny is comming over tonight to sand in exchange for a few beers. We'll see where that leads to...