Angler 119's Delaware River Fishing Report

Where to go - Tricos are warm water flies and won't be found in the upper WB or above Shinhopple on the UEB. Look on the WB below the game lands and on the BR down to Stockport. Below Stockport you get into water that is too warm to fish.   When do tricos hatch - The hatch begins in mid to late July and can continue into early fall. The flies hatch daily with the spinner fall occurring over the riffles in early morning as the fog burns off. Most of the spinners fall as the temperature climbs through the sixties. When and where do the fish feed on them - As the spinners hit the water in numbers, the fish will appear in the slow water pools below the riffs, often forming a line of a dozen or more fish slowly moving upstream gulping the trico spinners. How to fish a trico spinner fall - Try to cast downstream to the feeding fish. For a trout to take your fly, it has to be floating drag free and right at a fish. If your fly isn't eaten, slowly retrieve the line and if the fish are...

  It's noon on Friday, wasn't going to fish this morning but I will be heading back to Lafayette this afternoon to pick Jean up at the airport so I decided to give the tricos another try. Yesterdays early spinner fall brought into serious question the Orvis pronouncement that trico spinners fall at 69 degrees. Some of them do for sure but a good many run out of gas earlier in the morning. Arrived streamside at 8:45am today with the car showing it to be 64 degrees. Found tricos on the water and fish rising. How'd I do? Fished about as well as I an capable of fishing. Hooked ten fish, two came unstuck right away, two more were lost during the fight. Landed six fish, five rainbows and one brown. In previous years, my trico fishing was mostly to pods of yearlings, (8 to 10 inchers), with an occasional hatchery holdover and rarely a wild brown to add excitement to the event. This year I'm fishing to adult rainbows, and haven't hooked a juvenile fish. As was the case Tues...

  Woke this morning and looked out at the plum tree branches. Mom, her sister and the two kids were walking around looking for a leaf they might have missed. The branches were as bare as they were last January.   Headed back to the UEB this morning intent on proving that Tuesday wasn't a fluke. Got there almost an hour earlier than Tuesday and Wednesday and with the air temperature still 65 degrees. The tricos were all on the water and the fish were going. Fished the place where it's hard to make good casts. Solved the problem by walking way up stream and crossing over to the other side. In the time it took to get back to where the fish were feeding, they no longer were. From 8:30 until I was back in the car at 10:30, I cast at four trico eaters, put two down and hooked the other two, landing a nice16 inch rainbow. At 3:00 I drove up to Deposit for my hair cut appointment at Vicky's, stopped to chat with David at the Troutfitter, picked up spools of 6x and 7x, a bottle of...

  Headed back to the UEB at 9:00 fully expecting to duplicate yesterdays fish catching bonanza. Picked a riff that required a walk almost three times as long as yesterday's, just knew that the fishing would be at least three times as good. Turns out I'm not well versed in the new, (no longer new), math. The walk was indeed three times as long, but there were only a third as many  tricos and fish. Hooked three fish and lost them all. The third fish was a good one that I had within 20 feet of me before the hook pulled out. Up the hill from where I was fishing is Tom's Cabin where three people were out on the porch enjoying the nice morning. The cabin's been there, it turns out, since the early 1800's. I've long admired it and it's location high above the river and after walking back to the car, I decided to stop and introduce myself and perhaps get a look at both the view and the cabin. Was greeted like an old friend, shown the camp and a video one of them too...

  With a family of skunks following me around after my two one fish days, I got out of bed this morning  resolved to do better. Had breakfast, checked the temperature, (62), and left for the UEB hoping to find tricos. It was 65 when I headed up route 30 past the Sunoco station. Saw a car parked just upstream of the Sunoco station at the "crusher pool" that may or may not have been a fisherman. The only for sure trico fisherman was in the five star spot. Saw neither waxwings nor tricos over the riffs but there were fish rising in a pool I passed up because it's hard to get good drifts over the fish there. The spot I chose came with a decent walk and required faith that when you got there there would be fish rising. There were. It was my first trico trip of the year and to be kind, I didn't start out very well. Added 7x to a long piece of 6x already part of the leader and it just didn't turn over and lay out. When I finally got a fish to eat he effortlessly broke th...

It was an eventful weekend. On Saturday Jean drove down and we took in the Summerfest at the Fly Fishing Museum in Livingston Manor. Watched some of the casting competition, looked at the displays of old fishing rods, reels and miscellaneous other equipment, chatted with a few old friends, and walked through the buildings. It didn't take as long as we thought it would and we decided to head back to Lafayette rather than overnight at the Lordville Estate. Jean is heading to Florida with one of our daughters and granddaughters to visit the other daughter and granddaughter and had last minute things to do before leaving. On Sunday while I was out gathering food for the coming week's trip to Lordville the car, with only 139,000 miles under it's belt, decided to get cantankerous, the engine light came on and it started to vibrate when starting up and when going up hills. I checked the air pressure in the tires, the oil and window washer fluid levels, (the only things I know how ...