Another year another Spring trip to the West Branch of the Delaware River. This year’s trip included about 14 members from our Canandaigua Trout Unlimited Chapter. As always everyone had a great time fishing with each other and enjoyed their stay at the West Branch Angler.
Every year I think I have learned enough from the previous year to think I can conquer the West Branch. Every year the West Branch teaches me a lesson. This year I learned how important it is to have long leaders (at least 12 foot), to cast down stream to a rising fish, and to learn how to nymph between hatches (make sure you are scraping the bottom with your nymph). These lessons prevented me from getting closed out of fish on this trip. In total I caught 6 fish two of which were of any size. That may not sound like much but for me it was a victory. I know I have more to learn but the West Branch is such an incredible challenge and beautiful place those victories are very rewarding.
In fact this video shows how challenging the West Branch can be. Watch as my friend, Dave, gets shut out by 3 very large brown trout. If you have ever fished the West Branch you will feel Dave’s pain. Watch and weep.
The front that moved through Saturday brought gusty winds, rain, hail, sunshine, no wind, rainbows, bright sun and then clouds. Challenging conditions for fishing the ever fickle West Branch. We saw decent tan caddis and a limited hendrickson hatch (2:30 pm) w/ spinner fall (5-7 pm). Between the shifting winds, we managed to locate a number of rising fish. Attached are a few photos. I don’t know of any other East Coast fishery where you can consistently land a 20″ or greater, wild brown trout on a dry fly. Long leaders, drag free presentations, specialized flies and spooky fish are the rule, but they sure are gorgeous if you can fool them.
Well the first week of May is here and I finally slipped out of the house last night to get some fishing in before dark. I went down to Irondequoit Creek just in time for the evening hatch. There were midges, mays, and dark caddis coming off. I almost never see the fish on Irondequoit creek feed on the surface but tonight they were. I put on a size 16 elks hair caddis and a beadhead pheasant tail dropper. My nymph got caught up on the bottom right away so I switched to the just the caddis. Although my caddis fly was much lighter than what was hatching the fish started striking it right away. I ended up catching this small but feisty brown and had a couple more on. One was a 15″ brown that I played four about a minute until he got off. I think I will go back this week and see if I can pull him out of his hole. Stay tuned…
A friend of mine called me up a couple of weeks ago and said that his brothers-in-law were coming to town and wanted to go steelhead fishing. Of course I said I would join him and suggested that we go to Oak Orchard in Carlton, NY. My friend had never been before but heard quite a bit about the legendary fight of these Lake Ontario steelhead. We went out last Saturday. It was a beautiful but cold day. The sun was shining, but the water was still around 47 degrees. The fish seemed happy rolling like tarpon as they moved upstream, but nothing. We threw egg patterns, streamers, and even a tube fly at thess fish but nothing. Since we drove separately I decided I would leave at noon but my friend Cody and his brothers-in-law decided to stay. They fished from approximately from 9am til 4:30 pm and finally caught the steelhead pictured below. I believe they caught this one on a streamer, but had the advantage of site fishing. I wish I was there for the catch, but I understand it was a thrill for my friend Cody to catch this fish. Looks like yet another who is addicted to our wonderful New York steelhead. Tight Lines Cody!
Need something to do while you wait for the first hatch of the season? Go to the Fly Fishing Film Tour in your home town. It is a series of high energy films about fly fishing. They are the kind of flims that will make you want to grab your gear and go fishing right after the film. Our Trout Unlimited Chapter - Canandaigua, NY, announced that the Fly Fishing Film Tour is visiting us on March 21st. If you live in the Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse areas, you are not going to want to miss this. Click here for ticket information.
We are truly fortunate and thankful to live in Western NY where we have great trout streams and rivers. In addition to this we also have world class steelhead and lake run brown trout fisheries. Yesterday I got out with a few of my friends to try our luck for some Lake Ontario steelheads and browns. The conditions were a bit tenuous with quite a bit of snow and rain with very cold temperatures. The first Lake Ontario trib we tried was running too high and cold. The fish were just not responding to our flies. After a few hours we decided to try a tailwater to Lake Ontario which would have some better water conditions. It did and as a group we were able to land 6 large lake run browns. Although the browns do not fight like steelheads, they are beautiful and do put up a good fight. It was a nice way to start my Thanksgiving holiday.
On Saturday I decided to go take a look at some of the streams closer to my house. Most of them have been subjected to heavy farming and runoff and don’t look so hot. They tend to be very muddy, have lots of algae and have limited bug activity. From time to time when I am on streams like this one I have noticed foam on the water. My first reaction when I see something like this is that it must be polution. Fortunately I have a fly fishing friend who is a toxicologist. He once told me that the foam is not pollution but a break down of organic material that is agitated by the stream. Just in case you ever wondered about this there is a more detailed explanation on this site: http://www.lakesuperiorstreams.org/understanding/foam.html
Well I decided to spend my last morning of vacation fishing the Indian River. I had a number of hits from Rainbows but was only able to pull in the two pictured below. I caught one on a stimulator and the other on a beadhead nymph. They were nice little fish and fought hard. I would like to spend more time on this river because I know there are some larger fish and some brookies here.
Once again my father-in-law and I made our way up to the Adirondacks for our family Summer vacation and once again we called on Rich Garfield from Fly Fish the Adirondacksto guide us. This year he took us to the Salmon River. Most of you probably know the Salmon River as the river that is just north of Syracuse by Pulaski NY. The Salmon River we fished is near Malone NY, is close to the Canadian boarder and is a tributary of the St. Lawrence River. Although we did not land any wild browns we caught quite a few in the morning. They seemed to be most interested in stimulators and a large stone fly pattern. As always we had a ton of fun with Rich and look forward to guiding with him again real soon.
Good news everyone. I just came from the West Branch of the Delaware and actually caught a fish. In fact I caught two nice fish and had three others on the line that got off. I cannot stress how important it is to check your knots and play the fish to the slower water as quickly as you can. These are all wild fish and they are all escape artists.
The conditions were much improved from my last post. The state was releasing water from the dam which cleared out some of the algae and on some stretches of the river the bug activity was quit strong. Where I was, we were seeing cornudas coming off in the late morning with sulphurs in the evening. The sulphurs would create such a feeding frenzy you could throw a grenade in the water and they would not move from their spot. I tried a number of sulphur patterns and these fish would only take a number 16 CDC sulphur pattern. Of course I ran out of this fly the last night and was relagated to watching 20″ browns feed in front of me. Very frustrating!
On Saturday I decided to go take a look at some of the streams closer to my house. Most of them have been subjected to heavy farming and runoff and don’t look so hot. They tend to be very muddy, have lots of algae and have limited bug activity. From time to time when I am on streams like this one I have noticed foam on the water. My first reaction when I see something like this is that it must be polution. Fortunately I have a fly fishing friend who is a toxicologist. He once told me that the foam is not pollution but a break down of organic material that is agitated by the stream. Just in case you ever wondered about this there is a more detailed explanation on this site: 
