Angler 119's Delaware River Fishing Report

  Decided to skip the morning search for hatching caddis and Hendrickson spinners and rest up for the Hendrickson hatch and the caddis spinner fall. Tied a few caddis egg layers, did a crossword and a sudoku, made two sandwiches and it was time to go.  Drove up river and there was no way you could count the trailers at the launches without a calculator. The game lands parking lots had a mere five (lower) and eleven (upper) cars, (clearly some wade fishermen are put off by the high releases), normally there would be about ten in the lower lot and at least seventeen in the upstream lot. The WB above Hale Eddy is still sparsely populated. It's always the last stretch to have Hendrickson hatches and everyone knows it, but if you want a piece of water where you don't have to worry about hooking someone on your back cast, it's the place to go. The bugs - I'm somewhere between flummoxed (did anyone know there were two m's lurking in fluMMoxed?) and perplexed, by the bugs.

Had a busy day yesterday. Mark was on the road back to Greensboro before 8:00am and I began the process of catching up on things that were neglected during his visit. Broke down the accumulation of boxes in the garage, gathered up the rest of the trash and made a dump run. Mowed the yard for the first time this year and presto it was time to go fishing.  Checked the stream temps and flows as well as the weather forecast, made sure the raincoat was in the car, (severe thunderstorms with high winds and hail were in the forecast for Hendrickson time), and set out fish. Fished the upper WB, which has been the only place where the Hendricksons had not yet made their appearance. Today, with cloud to ground lightning and booming thunder, in modest numbers and for less than an hour, they did. I stayed close to the car and did my count of the time between the lightning and the thunder (five seconds means the lightning is about a mile away). I've always thought that the only important number

  Back on the river with pearly white teeth after driving home for my annual dentist appointment. Had a nice dinner out with Jean Sunday night, washed both the car and my clothes and was on my way back down by 9:00AM this morning. It's Mark's final day before heading back to North Carolina. He teamed up with my GHOF yesterday and had his best day of the trip hooking seven and landing six. This morning we found bugs (caddis and Hendricksons), but the fish have had so much to eat they seemed indifferent to the smorgasbord Mother Nature was providing. Went up above "Barking Dog" launch on the WB and had a brief flurry of action on Hendricksons about 3:00. It was over by 3:30. We had heard good things about paralep and Hendrickson hatches on the UEB, so we drove over. To put it kindly, the hatch at about 4:00 was sparse and rising fish were hard to find. Drove back to where we first encountered bugs sans fish and more or less saved the day. There were fish going when we g

This will be short, there's just not much worth talking about.  The weather - It didn't snow! Temp on the porch this morning started at 33. The sun quickly took it up to 60. From there, things went down hill. Clouds rolled in, the "warm" southern wind had all the flags out straight as the temp went from 60 down to 50 during prime hatching time. By 5:00 o'clock everything was shut down, boats were being rowed to the take outs and we were headed to the Lordville Estate. The  bugs - Never happened where we were. Yes there was the occasional Hendrickson and some paraleps hugging the windward bank, but mid- river there was nothing but drift boats, very few of which had people casting. The water levels - Are now ideal for both drifting and wading. The fishing - Not what we hoped for or expected. The hatches were sparse at best. The wade fishermen were virtually non-existent, the drift boats were numerous but created no problems. The wind was fierce in some places but th

  It's not easy being me, and it's certainly not easy being Mark. Yesterday was magic, today not so much. Yesterday the guide swung three times and hit three balls out of the park. Today, he never got a ball out of the infield. After a fruitless trip into a spot on the EB where the Hendricksons were done for the year and the fish had already eaten their fill of both Grannom and Apple Caddis, we drove over to a pool on the BK where the water was being churned into a froth by a pod of feeding trout. The only problem was that they were on the far side of the river across a deep channel and impossible to reach. From the BK we went to the WB where the Hendrickson hatch was just starting (2:45). We did exceptionally well on the fish that were feeding within casting range (Mark landed a beautiful 19 inch brown), but most of the fish that were dining on the Hendricksons were well back in a deep water pool  again well beyond our reach. As the hatch waned we drove upstream looking for a

Yesterday was (hopefully ) as bad as it gets. High water, clouds, a cold north wind, frost, no bugs and no risers. As if by magic, at midnight things began to change,  The NYC, DEP cut the releases on both the WB and UEB. The clouds went away, the wind forgot to blow, once again there was frost, but with cloudless skies and bright sunshine the water temps rose rapidly into the bug hatching zone, and the rivers became wade-able.  Mark, the N.C. bone fishing friend and South Holston fisherman, is back to get his boat after being flooded out of his fishing last week. Today, with the water dropping everywhere, we waded. Left the Lordville Estate at 11:30, ate lunch streamside while watching for risers. Before lunch was finished there were fish chasing nymphs and by the time we suited up and were fishing there were both bugs and rising fish. It was that way for the rest of the day. The fishing - During one frenetic period I hooked and lost seven out of eight fish I hooked, and never even th