Angler 119's Delaware River Fishing Report

The comment section seems to be growing by leaps and bounds.  While I enjoy reading the comments, the job of responding is becoming more onerous by the week.  Will be attempting to lure someone off their $600.00 a week unemployment to work on the answers and do the typing. Chris Z - The mousing craze has sure resulted in an increased demand for mouse patterns at the Troutfitter.  It is a nighttime thing and to be both safe and effective you need to do it from a boat.  There will be some good fish hooked no doubt but I will leave that fishing to the younger anglers, I don't have a boat and need my sleep.  As to the small fish in the summer.  DEC fisheries biologist Tim Pokorny would be the one to ask.  If he happens to read the blog perhaps he'll chime in.  Two thoughts: When big fish are feeding you rarely see small fish (they don't want to become part of the meal).  In the summer the hatches don't attract the big fish and the small fish chow down.  Although there is

July is in the record books.  It's sure to be one of the best for me in numbers of fish caught and one of the worst in percentage of fish over 17 inches.  I'll pass along the relevant info when I've added things up. With apologies to Ed Smith (and I'm sure many others), it's time to come clean. I'm a fish counter.  I have kept journals for over 60 years and the information has proved invaluable on many occasions.  The data I've compiled while fishing the DRS has hopefully been useful to the DEC in past years and continues to provide me with a better idea of when and where to fish as well as what I can reasonably expect the fish population to be like in a given year. The information is also useful in compiling the blog pages that are designed to put you in the right place at the right time AND to explain why things aren't quite as good as you may want them to be. Not withstanding all the BS in the last paragraph, I made a complete mess of it today.

With my wife coming down late this afternoon it was my plan to take in the afternoon sulfurs and skip the evening hatch. Was a little off my feed in the morning and decided to pass on today's hatch. By eleven thirty I was tired of looking at U-tube videos and doing crosswords.  Went out and did the painting I had planned for the morning.  By 2:30 I was ready to kick back in the recliner again. Jean showed up about 4:00 and we spent the evening watching a thunderstorm pass through Lordville.  If it hit Deposit everyone will once again have had to deal with the fog. Enjoyed a nice steak with fresh corn on the cob and a baked potato for dinner. Expect to play in both games tomorrow. If anyone wants to report on today's fishing - - - jump in.

Got a call from a blog reader in North Carolina who wants to know when I'm gonna finish the paint job on the camp - he's tired of reading about it.  He's also tired of me talking about how good our sulfur hatches are.  He fishes the South Holston in Tennessee and that pretty much is their hatch.  I've fished there and sometimes there are several sulfurs on the water at the same time. Said he has caught over 600 fish this year and his biggest is 16 inches.  If I can figure out how to do it, I'm going to take a video of our sulfurs and send it to him along with pictures of a couple of  our twenty inchers..  Ask an angler on the South Holston, "What's a good days catch?"  Odds are he'll say "Enough for dinner".  It's a different culture down there and our Eastern Europeans would fit right in. Today I had a South Holston day, caught a bunch of fish and all were between eleven and thirteen inches.  Never knowingly cast at a big fish, it

Sulfur fishermen, there's just no excuse if you're not catching fish.  There are two hatches. both about two and a half hours long. The hatches are heavy enough to get the fish up.  Bright sun in the afternoon seems to limit the number of big fish that are up but the evening hatch gets 'em all going. They are fussy, a lot of them refuse your flies, many are feeding subsurface and don't look up but come on, Dave from the Troutfitter snuck out for a little over an hour tonight and landed five nice ones.  Said "He's never seen so many rising fish".  Anthony, who has been helping  Dave at the Fly Shop and Inn,  fished both hatches today and his total of fish landed was in double digits. You've been told when  and where the hatches occur.  You need to fish small 18s and 20s, you need to target risers, you can't stand in one spot and cast at the same fish all hatch. Get out of the slow water pools, where it is the easiest to see, but hardest to fool

The timing worked out just right.  Left Lafayette at 9:00 which gave me plenty of time to get down to Deposit and find an empty pool in the Sulfur Zone before the hatch.  Turned out the first pool I looked at was empty, suited up and waded in.  As has been the case all year it's either SRO or more pools than fishermen. Today it was the latter.  An old river friend joined me and both of us meandered around the pool as we have many times before. The sulfurs seem to have settled into a schedule of a midday hatch of two to three hours and then they hatch again in the couple of hours before dark. The midday hatch was very good, lots of bugs and a lot of fish up.  There weren't many big fish feeding on top and the three I did hook all came unstuck, evoking a reference to excrement that all fishermen know and understand on more than one occasion. Did a fairly good job of casting to the two year olds and up but still hooked several of the eight inch yearlings.  Things quieted down ab