All the changes keep on changin'
As everyone who fishes the Delaware (or any other stream for that matter) knows, things change. Yesterday I tried to follow a trail into the river that a Troutfitter regular opened up with pruning shears in early May. The last time I fished there ( probably ten years ago) you could just walk down to the river from where you parked your car. The "trail" now winds it's way endlessly through goldenrod, giant rag weed, multiflora roses, honey suckle and fallen trees. Everything is over your head tall except for the trip logs. It was bad enough that I made sure to come out before dark (something I never do).
The bugs - The predicted cloudy day turned out to be mostly sunny (except for one T-boomer that passed just south of me). The water was still down in the fifties so according to my olive hatching theory, the sun shouldn't have mattered but for some reason the bug bonanza of the last few days did not happen. There were olives on the water and for about half an hour and there were fish up but it was nothing like earlier this week.
The fishing - It was surprisingly good, before the bugs came I hooked six solid fish blind casting four of which ended up in the net. When the fish got going on the olives I hooked another four good ones and with a couple of hours of daylight left was anticipating another fish catching bonanza. But it stopped dead with the sun still shining brightly on the west facing hills. Both the fish and bugs called it quits and with the "trail" ordeal still to be faced, so did I.
Water releases - Not sure what is happening but the flow at Montague has been over 2,000 for the past two days (daily average needs to be a minimum of 1750 cfs), so I sorta expected a cut back in the release today. A quick check of the Stilesville gage shows that the release has been cut back to 1,000 cfs and may still be dropping. By all means check the Stilesville release data before deciding where to fish as the river flow is quite likely to vary from day to day if not hour to hour.
I think someone somewhere said this August was the best August fishing ever. About 20 years ago when I had fished the Delaware only maybe 5 or 6 times, I decided to splurge and get a guide. The shop suggested Danny Peterson, a high school kid and we scheduled for the following Wednesday. As luck would have it, the flows had been low all summer and this was the first day the flow was 750 at Hale Eddy. We put in below the WBA and above the Gamelands. The day began slowly as he had me fish an emerger across a riffle for about an hour as we waited for things to get going. And Wow, did they. Danny tied on a sz 14 CDC Cahill and fish began eating, but not really the Cahills, but the fish were looking up and not refusing a big fly. Danny was fantastic at spotting subtle rises from fish in the riffles and putting the boat close enough for me to cover them with good drag-free floats. The fish cooperated. I really don't know how many fish I caught, but it was enough that he had to find a spot with cell reception to call and get his truck moved up from Hancock to Balls Eddy. I know I got about 6 good browns at the top of the pool in the upper gamelands; everytime he spotted a fish, I covered it and caught most of them, never changing the fly until the light started to fade. (a guess would be 30 fish from 2 PM to 9 PM) He switched me to an olive emerger and I continued to catch fish all the way to the big pool above Balls Eddy when my atttempts to set the hook on a fish that was probably too far away ended in a hopeless tangle. I don't think Danny guides anymore, the last time I called him he confessed to having gotten married and was working in his wife's family business, so he did not have the time to guide. I really should give him a call again, beyond that phenomenal day, I fished with him a few more times while he was still an excellent guide, but we were not as lucky to find so many eager fish. Moral of the story, sometimes it pays to be lucky.
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