This last weekend my wife blessed me with a weekend to float a section of the John Day with my Brother-In-Law, Father-In-Law, and my wife’s cousin.  We generally go in late August and do a day trip hiking upstream from Priest Hole in search of 50-70 fish days.  We’ve never floated this section, let alone any section of the river, but thought we’d give it a chance before the levels got any lower.  A friend of mine at work was nice enough to lend us his Willie drift boat for the float.

We left Bend at about 5:30pm on Friday and started on our 2 hour drive to our camp spot at Priest Hole.  With one short stop in Prineville to grab the Krustez mix, we were on our way.

We were met by a 11yr old boy scout camp and loads of other people, but our tent was setup and we were fishing off the bank in no time.  I brought the spey with me to try and get a little practice in and found some willing bass on a black pencil popper.

The next morning, we had a great breakfast of egg’s, sausage, pancakes and coffee and we were ready for the fishing that would entail the remainder of our day.  We drove up to Twickenham and was on the water by 9:30.

The fish were eager and we were willing, the catching started not 5 minutes into the trip and lasted the remaining 8 hours we were on the water.  We couldn’t have asked for a better day, 95 degrees, light wind, lots of laugh’s and lots of fish.

The John Day River is a beautiful one.

We wrapped up the day, shuttled the cars and packed up camp that evening.  We were exhausted, the sun really drains you especially when you leave the sunscreen at the tent!  A quick stop at Dairy Queen in Prineville, we were finally back home around 10 that night.  Whirlwind trip that I’m still feeling today!

There are a few more photo’s at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/corypratt/sets/72157620633391345/