Angler 119's Delaware River Fishing Report

For perhaps someday I'll catch a mermaid!  With flies to tie for my western  trip, I stayed at the camp and  gave the upper East Branch sulfur eaters a rest.  Left camp at about 3:30 and drove up to Deposit where I looked over the mist covered river and took a pass.  Drove down stream, chatted with a friend and watched a river sans bugs, risers and fishermen flow by.  Undaunted, at about five I put on the gear and walked upstream.  There were no bugs hatching and no fish rising. In an hour of blind casting I hooked one nice brown.  Then for about half an hour, just before a rain storm, the fish ate my fly.  The rain didn't amount to much but the "air changed"  and for the next hour I never rose another a fish. Walked back to the car and drove further downstream to where it had rained harder and found a spot with mist on the water and no fishermen.  There were rising fist and some ate, not like last night, but enough to make...

 Maybe now I'll stop whining about Montana. Yesterday I might have been a tad down.  Even with no one fishing I couldn't  find bugs and feeding fish enough to get  excited or enthused about. Today it started out worse.  Didn't head for the river until mid-afternoon and when I did - the river (WB ) was shrouded in fog, even in the fog I could count six boats anchored within the Deposit city limits.  There were probably two or three more upstream and at least a dozen wade fishermen vying for space along the river. Couldn't get out of there fast enough.  Even with no boats and less than half a dozen anglers, I couldn't find fish there Tuesday. Over to the upper east I went and low there was a red pickup truck (with two anglers) parked right where I wanted to go.  Onward  to the next spot which was unoccupied when I drove by ten minutes earlier- it now had an angler donning waders.  The next pool was blissfully vacant and had fish ...

Montana  looks good right now. With the hot sunny weather the cold water loving summer sulfurs have moved into their upstream summer quarters.  Fished early yesterday morning on a stretch of water in the lower regions of the WB.  Saw no bugs but raised seven fish on attractor patterns.  Three of them ate and stayed stuck all the way into the net. After Tuesday's poor showing on the upriver sulfurs I stayed home, tied flies and mowed the lawn in the afternoon. Went out at seven and tried three places on the upper EB, none of which had sulfurs.  In the last half hour the fish fed, on what I couldn't tell - I hooked half a dozen - three of which were landed. With the hot dry weather and stable flows things have quieted down.  There is little hatching on the river system until just before dark.  Fishing is, in a word, tough.  This is the time of year I usually go out west - I should have gone!

TGFSS It was a tough afternoon on the river.  Partly cloudy with a hot sun beating down more and more as the afternoon wore on.  There were  sulfurs but very few fish were impressed. Walked over a quarter mile of the WB  and saw but one head.  It turned out to be a fat sassy 18.5  inch brown who ate my fly and let me know how he felt about it.  The rest of the after noon sulfur hatch was spent just looking for a rise. Changed rivers and found more sulfurs on the upper EB.  There, at least the fish were eating, albeit subsurface.  At least there were boils to throw at, which I did for several hours with very poor results.  When the sun went behind the hills and the fog enveloped the river, spinners began to fall.  It took a while but finally I started to see noses and sure enough the fish began eating spinners.  For the last half hour what was previously impossible, became the norm.  Make a good cast to a rising ...

It's July now and - - - - - There is no doubt about it the fishing has changed.  The iso hatch has been meager at best and the summer sulfurs (at least up river ) have failed to hatch in numbers sufficient to get the "big boys" feeding.  I fished three places between Deposit and Hancock and never saw a drift boat.  Parking lots are almost empty and in many places there isn't an angler in sight. Why?  The number of big fish feeding on top has dwindled to a precious few.  I fished from one-o'clock until dark without throwing at an 18 inch class fish.  That said, a Troutfitter regular, warming up for his trip to the Missouri, hooked and landed a nice 18 inch rainbow just upstream from me. It's not that there isn't good fishing.  I had a good day catching fish.  It's just that almost all of them were two year olds (now 12.5 to 14 inches).  Just before dark a nice 16 inch brown ate my pink lady and was the "fish of the day" in a runaway. I...