We had warm temps and active fish.
Picky dry fly fish on the west branch, and some high number days on the lower main. Stripers are here for the summer in certain pools. We fish to them when the conditions are good.
Mark had a good day.
A rare moment of solitude on the West Branch. Shared only with the ducks, and Kieran.
Scott and Joe are the direct descendants of Harold Novick who once owned the infamous IHOP house on the upper Delaware. If you know, you know. Harold once wrote an outdoor fishing column in the river reporter newspaper. Now I, (Evan) have taken that role alongside another writer Tony Bonavist.
I am writing an outdoor column called “step outside” which prints biweekly for the river reporter newspaper.
Scott and Joe do a day or two on the upper Delaware with me every year. Harold often blesses them with good fishing. This year, good weather and okay fishing.
We had a nice day with smallmouth, walleye, rock bass, and fallfish to the net.
A nice morning with Steve, he caught some nice stripers and walleye early. And we chipped away through the hot sun at a few more fish throughout the day. We saw another Loon, and enjoyed our day on the water.
Black vultures abound.
Under water rock that has pot holes from pebbles rattling around inside for ages.
Dry fly targets most of the day. And some nymphing success kept Dom busy all day.
Finally got some nice weather. We took the day to learn some fly fishing tactics. And beat up on walleye and a Striper. We saw a doe teach her fawn how to swim across the river. It was a nice day to be out there!
Summer temps are here and the water is warming. We will still be able to target trout on the upper reaches of the river. But our favorite main stem areas will now be too warm to target trout for most of the remainder of the summer.
The last few days provided great hatches and awesome dry fly fishing. We did well on nymphs in the mornings and dry flies in the evenings.
A few light spin tackle trips have also been producing great numbers and a variety of species. We had our first Palomino trout or golden rainbow trout in over twenty years.
Give us a call to join us on a summer dry fly float, or a summer time bass fishing float.
With warming water temperatures the mornings are sometimes a better option. We went spin fishing with light tackle and caught 7 species of fish with few real nice ones.
Our first tiger trout of the year, and another striper in the 9th inning. A great time was had.
8 species made it to the net today. Dan Bias Jr. slammed a shad and landed it in 11 seconds. We also caught rainbows, browns, a brook trout, smallmouth bass, walleye, a sunfish, and a falllfish.
We also saw an adult Loon.
A good day with Steve and Dan.
We chipped away at them all day. And had a few heart throbs, missing some opportunities at the larger size class fish. But that’s all part of the game. A nice day had by all.
A beautiful night out with Ed. A near full moon and lots of insect life. These fish are “brutes” as Ed referred to them. Each one jumped multiple times in an out of control manor. We kept the line tight and landed two of them. Hooked a few more, but there feisty selves spit the hook on multiple occasions.
Guide Mike Padua and client Bill S. Battled the wind today but put up great numbers and many species of fish. A great day was had.
The last few days have been either late evening dry fly action. Or some early morning subsurface action. The bigger browns seem to be more active over the last few days. Lots of bugs on the menu and the occasional meat or metal eating brown as well.
Here are some photos of our successful anglers.
Eric’s PB 22” slob brown trout. Took a sulphur spinner.
As millions of Sulphurs mayflies blanket the water. The fish are eager to eat the March Brown emerger, which makes it nice to hook slob trout with a bigger hook and more likely to land them in the heavy cfs flow.
Wet weather and some cloudy skies have been favorable for dry fly. Now with some warming temps we’ll have to keep an eye on temperatures and surface activity as it will be susceptible to change over the course of the week.
Here are some photos from yesterday.
Noah and Vanessa worked hard for a few trout. Bill added to the count with a few extra species. We had walleye, rainbow trout, brown trout, smallmouth bass fallfish, pickerel, American Shad, and lost a tiger trout right at the boat.
We also witnessed another sun dog. A beautiful full circle rainbow created by atmospheric moisture high in the sky.
Bruce and Charley out in the rain. Dry flies and streamers for the win.
Shad for all on Thursday. Mike and Bruce weee on em with micro darts.
Dave and John had em on chartreuse and white/pink.
A nice day was had, where feeding dry flies to fish was the goal. We fished with the American Toad’s singing all around us as they did their annual procreation ritual. We also saw the first brood of merganser ducklings.
The trout were eating mayflies and Caddis today, but they were picky toward our flies and drifts.
Lindsey and her father Joe, enjoyed a nice day on the water. They hooked a few and boated one nice brown trout.
We had Ray and his Son Devon out today. These guys caught a total of seven species of fish. Red breast sunfish, rainbow trout, brown trout, walleyes fallfish, smallmouth bass and an American Shad. A few of the Walleye made it to the cooler for table fare.
These guys have been Shad fishing with Sweetwater Guide service for over 20 years.
We found a few on the sunny day 7 Roe and one Buck. Boated Some quality fish and great battles.
The Reitsma boys were at it again. Casting fly and spin gear all day, they managed Brown trout, rainbow trout, walleye, smallmouth, fallfish, white sucker.
Ten year old Wes was into them, with a slammer Rainbow and the best fish of the day, a fat 19” uniquely spotted brown trout.
We caught 5 species of fish in a variety of ways today. The streamer was cranking 16-18” rainbows and browns all day long. The Panther martin spinner caught a handful of trout. We had an awesome March brown hatch, and each angler hit a few on dry flies.
We landed browns, rainbows, walleye, fallfish, and a smallmouth bass.
Shane and Joe are always fun to have in the boat. They let me make a few casts, And I fed this nice 20” brownie eating sneakily on the bank. Always grateful. Tight lines everyone.