Banger dry fly daze.

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.

Nice weather to be on the water

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.

A dynamic day on the Delaware

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.

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.