Righ place, for the wrong reason.

Last week I sat on the bank of the big river talking to another angler.  We were talking about where we had been fishing and he mentioned the Neversink.  Said he had done well there on isos.  Kind of filed the information away as the BR was wadeable and fishing well and I wasn't interested in fishing anywhere else. 

A week later, with the entire Delaware system too high to fish safely and only a few places wadeable at all, I took a look at the flows on the Neversink.  The release was 200 CFS and the flow at the next gauge was 450 CFS.  On the hope of finding some isos and wading that was less of an ordeal, I headed east on 17.

Started at one of the DEC "Angler Park Here" signs up near the dam and  did nothing and saw nothing.  At the next parking area I saw flying ants, lots of them.  Also saw rising fish but the pool is too deep to wade.  Then took a torturous drive downstream (none of the roads follow the stream) until I came to a stretch where the stream and road run along side each other separated only by an unbroken string of multicolored POSTED signs.  Of course there were fish rising all along the road.

Finally got to an unposted piece of water just as an angler (the only one I saw) was getting in the stream.  Drove just a short distance to another unposted pull off and got in the water.  There were lots of ants and enough rising fish to provide me with entertainment for a couple of hours.  Now there has been no scarcity of ants on the Delaware this year.  In fact there have been more ants than I ever remember, however, they have been too small to ever imitate and the trout have ignored my offerings.  Today the big ants (both black and brown) were in the air and on the water.  My ants were eaten with relish.

Unlike Hendrickson time, when I got into some good fish, the risers were 1.5 and 2.5 year olds  (9 - 13 inches) and they were considerably leaner than Delaware fish of the same age.  Like the BK the Neversink gets quite warm because of the low release.  Fish survive but growth is limited during hot summer months.

Almost forgot the isos,  saw two of them.

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