Time flies. I have intended to post a report before this but time moves too quickly.
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| Jeff Church, top guide. Photo credit to Sam Batschelet |
I have been able to get out on local central New York streams quite a bit and last week on Thursday I had the opportunity to float the East Branch of the Delaware River with good friend and guide Jeff Church. Jeff runs trips for West Branch Angler and recently won the award for top guide in the
2012 One Bug competition, an annual event in support of
FUDR. Jeff works hard and the award for top guide is well deserved. The East Branch had plenty of water and no crowds, however, fishing was mediocre at best, no real bugs happening so not alot of action. I did manager to land 5 or 6 nice browns. These are wild fish and fight like it. They were carbon copies of each other, about 14" and fat. Took them on a mix of patterns, Iso duns, BWO emergers, and sulfer duns at dusk in the foam. All in all it was a great day and was good to fish with a good friend.
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| Nice chunky brown |
Locally the trout fishing is super. Lots of trout and some big ones in the mix. Most trout are being taken on BWO drys, March Brown drys (comparaduns) and recently Sulfer drys (thorax).
The water has dropped steadily and the trout are moving into deeper water during the day time. Evening, however, finds them moving shallow feeding heavily in the riffles. I find working a good dry pattern on the current seams where the riffs empty into these deeper pools produce the bigger fish. Often it's not even a matter of matching the hatch so much as it is matching the size and siloette of the hatch. Right now either a BWO comparadun #16- 18 or a March Brown comparadun in #12 do the trick.
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Nice 16" brown on a Sulfer #16 thorax.
Notice the unique spots. |
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| Big 20" brown caught at dusk matching size and siloette |
I have noticed the Sulfers showing up heavier each time out and have seen a few Light Cahills recently. The caddis hatches are the primary hatches for the trout, every evening at dusk. Soon should see some trico's showing up and I know this is premature, but I can't wait for the Hex hatch to begin here in August. Towards the end of August we are getting not only the Hex but also the White Fly, Potomanthus distinctus. When fishing in late August I can't decide if I want to tie on the Hex spinner or the White Fly spinner, both seem to get the same response from the big browns.
I'll keep posting as the summer moves along. Only 3 months till we start fishing salmon in the rivers again.
Tight lines.
