flyfishingchronicles.com

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!

See this guppy?  He is the only fish that allowed me to catch him in 2 and a half days of fishing on the West Branch of the Delaware River this past weekend.

Thinking about going?  Bring lots of alcohol and a book or two to break the boredom.  The water was low, bugs were not consistently hatching, tons of algae (they call it spinach) rolling down river from the dam, and plenty of wind.  Probably the worst conditions I have ever seen on the West Branch in the 6 years I have been going.  On top of that in the time I was there I did not see a single angler pull a fish out of the river.  My friend Craig did catch 2 average size Browns but he is a very skilled fly fisherman.

Believe it or not, I am going back on June 13th for the weekend.  I am not sure why but I will fill you in on the carnage when I get back.