6/12/14 West Branch Upper Delaware Wayne Co.

[DrNymph]

First time up there.

Started around 1pm. Humid. Air temps in high 60's, high humidity with light sprinkles. Water temps in mid 50's with flows 520-530.

Fished game lands and walked right into about 4 hatches...Sulphurs, Green Drakes, March Browns, midges...

About one angler every 200 yards.

I fished one of the side channels in a soft riffle. Started out high stick nymphing with little success but as soon as I saw one riser, I switched up the rig and put on a sz 14 sulphur dun (wild guess as to what they were taking) and fished to risers and a prospected and immediately hooked and landed 3 smaller wild browns and hooked a large brown (16-18") but it broke my fly off after an athletic jump. Fished the same fly to a finning rainbow and took it on the rise, had my net out but took one last run and broke me off...sucker was probably in the 18-20" range...apparently rare for the West branch. Unfortunately I don't have the game to land it. I went on to land an additional 2 rainbows and one more brown, all in the 10-12 inch range.

Tried nymphing in the faster shallow riffles with little activity.

Then tried the slicker, deeper pools to risers with a sulphur dun with a few splashy refusals. Unfortunately didn't have anything smaller than a 14 to throw at them. Seemed to be a similar story in the slicker pools with other fisherman. One older gentleman seemed to have more luck with a CDC emerger pattern, he said he was throwing green drake emergers.

Stepped out of the river for awhile and went back to my car to wait for the spinner fall...which, surprisingly, didn't really amount to anything.

Was planning on staying, but overnight it dumped rain for a good hours. Flows shot up, and I woke up and decided to head home. All in all, not a bad 1st solo trip to a legendary east coast river.

 

[dryflyguy]

Nice Report.

For the first time there, I'd say you did rather well.
And fish in the 18 to 20 inch range, are not rare on the WB.

Too bad about the stream rising. But that's been pretty much the story of fishing for me most of this whole spring too. Have had to spend more time looking for fishable water, than wetting a line

 

[krayfish]

As Bill posted, lots and lots of fish in the 20+ range. Almost all are browns. The strain of bows in the system have a relatively short life span (4 yrs on average). In 25+ years, I don't think I've caught 4-5 bows that would have actually met or exceeded 20" in the tape measure.

As you got to see, the fish are not the easiest to fool but that is only step one. Big, strong, wild fish are tough to control when they aren't pinned into a tiny creek like most of our streams. What size tippet were you using? If it was less than 5x, you had little chance of landing one. I hooked 32 fish over 2 days and handed the rod to my nephews. Of the 32 I handed them, only 1 made it to net. The youngest asked "Hey, how are you supposed to land these things? They keep breaking the line.". LOL.

I'm sure a spinnerfall did come. How late did you stay on the water? Most don't occur until it's too dark to see and often continue until 11pm-midnight.

 

[camdogrs]

I floated the WB/MS on 6/7 and our coffin fly spinner fall did not happen until like 9pm. I hooked two rainbows on a cdc sulphur emerger just casting blind in the general direction to where I could spot riseforms. We had an almost full moon and the glare was pretty tough to deal with. All in al had a great float. Caught and landed 3 fish with the largest being a fat 18" brown. My buddy on the boat end up landing a 21" Brown that was slashing caddis on the banks. We fished him for an hour and finaly hoked up with a spent caddis with caddis pupa dropper trailing.

 

[MrMustard]

Nice report. I'm heading up there for the first time in 2 weeks. Hoping to find some similar success.

 

[krayfish]

Just remember....sometimes, a good day will be 1 or 2 fish. Carefully read rises so you don't waste time on dinks. :-D

 

[mcwillja]

Bring your A-game Mustard. These fish are already picky as hell and have sulphurs in every shape size and color.

 

[JeffK]

I generally fish 4x and go to 5x reluctantly (they do get snooty about sulphurs) on the Delaware system. I leave the 6x at home. At night I cut back to the 3x. Maybe put some fish off, but then I have a good shot to land them.

I was up 6/6 to 6/9 fishing mostly the East Branch. The spinner falls started 9:30 to 9:45 PM, but when they did a lot of big fish were slurping all around.

The most successful guy of our group used a sulphur nymph 3 feet below his dry and got most of his fish on the nymph.

 

[MrMustard]

Thanks for the tips guys. I am looking forward to bringing my A game, and I understand that success will be relative. I'll be there over the course of 4 days so as long as I put a few fish in the net I'll be happy.

Currently beefing up my sulphur box with some smaller offerings (18-20). Also tying some 20 and 22 bwo emergers and WD40's.

 

[krayfish]

Rusty spinners & cahills as well. Your buddy has some pretty detailed emails from me. Going along with what's been mentioned so far and other tips. Just have fun. It's a pretty area.

 

[mcwillja]

Jeff were you fishing the upper/lower east?

 

[MrMustard]

Kray- John forwarded me your emails. Thanks for all the help, we really appreciate it. We definitely owe you a couple beers if our paths ever cross.

 

[krayfish]

No problem at all. I understand you and DaveS might be Yough'n it up Sunday. I'd like to make that but doesn't look likely at this time. Might see you in NY next month though.