Last couple of days.

We racked up the numbers with Ray and Steve. But these guys had high standards for photos as he set his PB with me last year with the last fish of the season measuring in at a 27” brown trout. There’s an appreciation post of Steve’s big brown at the end of this post .

Here is a photo of an injured and healing rainbow trout. Only speculative to know how the injury took place. But it is interesting to see how the rainbow trouts body regrows with different shades of colors around the injury. I have seen this before where talons from osprey or eagles are clearly defined on a trouts back and the skin heals and almost looks like different skin when it heals.

Then Bruce and Charley came out for a dry fly day. We had good action on Caddis and March browns in the middle of the day. But the hatch window only lasted about two/three hours. These cold nights have been shutting the bugs down early in most cases. With limited spinner falls in the evenings. A few Hendrickson spinners were seen yesterday.

We boated some feisty rainbows. We got to play a chess game with a big brown. We finally got him to eat our fly, hooked and fought him right to the boat. Just before he got to the net, the hook popped out. Oh well. Thats fishing.

We also identified some native Marsh Marigold flowers that are ever so gorgeous.

Here’s Steve’s 27” brown from last fall.

Bill and Bill round two.

The water came up a bunch overnight and we fished on a turbid bubble with off color water and debris. It turned off the trout bite pretty hard. But the walleye came to play. We had over 20 walleye and 4 over legal size.

These guys are “bird nerds” too, so we get to identify countless bird songs and flights. Always a pleasure fishing with these guys.

Bill with a 24” spawned out walleye.

A king bird perched hunting March brown mayflies.

Bill and Bill

These guys fish hard all day and are full of laughs. The fishing gods shined down upon us.

These were two of the first three fish.

We also had two rainbows on at the same time. I was able to net one, remove the hook, and scoop the second. But during the scoop the other fish snuck straight out. Whoops, sneaky rainbows.

Here’s one of the two from the double rainbow!

Many trout, walleye and bass were landed today.

The bug hatch was short and sweet from about 3-5 pm. Had to make the cast through the wind to connect with big trout. Many different kinds of bugs on the water.

Rain day with the Gurda boys.

These guys fish with us through thick and thin, year in and year out. Today was cold, windy, rugged and wet. We fished until we were soaked to the bone. Between two boats we landed brown trout, rainbow trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, fallfish, and red breast sunfish. The variety of the species never ceases to amaze me. We barely had a moment to take the camera out, but were able to catch the glamour of this rainbow.

Blue skies

The last few days were high pressure with blue skies and wind. We targeted Shad under a sun dog and it represented a large 0 for shad numbers. We talked with local shad die hards who also got skunked. One fallfish prevented our skunk on Thursday.

Friday with blue skies again we did okay in the early morning but the fish shut off and were mostly short striking spinning lures throughout the sun. A bonkers apple Caddis “popcorn” caddis hatch broke out. A few fish were rising for them but overall a tough day.

Clouds and Rain in the forecast.

Day one with CD and BK.

These guys have been fishing the Delaware for over thirty years with late guide Billy Frasier.

They know how to work lures and are always working hard for their next fish. We were fortunate enough to have active fish sub surface with minnow style baits all day long.

There were very few trout rising for the blanket Hendricksons and quills but right at the end we spotted a few noses and Bill and Chris were nice enough to offer a guide cast to the rising fish. Here are a few photos from the day! 3 browns measured in at 20”. A baby beaver, many eagles and a variety of ducks and bugs. The Upper Delaware is coming to life. Happy Spring!