The temps are all checking out now, at least they’re within a reasonable range of variance, so who knows. I emailed the USGS, don’t know if they’ll reply or take it seriously but at least the hot weather has broken for a few days. I hit the Water Works this evening because the Little Schuylkill is still too warm. I arrived at 6:00pm, water temp 64, skies clear and bright, water low and clear. I met an angler named Tom who was fishing about 120ft below the gauge block so I took up position upstream of him. It was a bad spot to get a decent drift but there were a good number of fish rising and I’m always up for a little challenge. #16 Tan Cdc Caddis was immediately productive, lots of “false takes” but there was a fish on the fly every few casts. It took a while to get the fish to actually take it instead of slash at it but I was using 6x, I would have been fishing 5x if I had any, which was good because I even broke off two big fish on that. I switched to my Tully Pupa(#16 Tan) and got three hookups within 5 minutes. Not a lot of fish landed but the action was good. I tagged a nice fish with the #16 Tan CDC Caddis at dark and also had a fish hooked up with a #14 Black Foam Beetle. Consider Fluoro tippets at this time, you can fish a larger tippet size and get away with it more often. I’ve been wrenching on a good number of fish with 5x Mirage on the Tully lately and I have some good fights where I was thankful for the extra strength, if the drift is extra tricky though you may have to switch back to nylon tippet to get a better drift. All in all I probably had 30 “false takes”(or whatever you like to call it when the fish attacks your fly but no hookup), 10 hookups, and 2 landed with dries in about 2-3 hours.

Since my last report some colder water has been flowing from Blue Marsh but the USGS reports and avrious internet reports need to be taken with a grain of salt as there have been moderate disparities in water temps between the Army Corps and USGS data. I took a temp tonight at the Stilling Basin of 66 degrees, which is reasonably close to the Army Corps number of 65.3 degrees, yet the Waterworks gauge is reading 59 degrees. I didn’t take the temp at the WW but I find it hard to believe that the water is cooling 7-8 degrees by the time it gets down to the WW. I had waded down about 3/4 of a mile from the Stilling Basin parking area and got a water temp of 69. Bottom line the USGS gauge is not reading correctly and only temps taken in person should be relied upon.

As for the fishing, it wasn’t bad. For my long initial wading period I didn’t see a fish rise, not even a bass or sunny. I was wading back up river when I thought I saw a nice fish rise. Then I saw it again. I got in position and tied on a foam beetle but nothing even looked at it. There were no real hatches though I saw a few Sulphurs and Cahills. Against my better judgement I tied on a Sulphur and missed one or two fish with it before slaying a few sunnies. They were all over it. I could see trout rising but still no bugs. I saw a few spent caddis and tried an imitation but no dice. For whatever reason I decided to tie on a #16 CDC Tan Caddis despite the fact that there were none hatching. Well, these fish must be imprinted on it because for half an hour I don’t think I needed to make more than three casts to a fish before the fish took the CDC Caddis. In 45 minutes I landed a bunch of nice fish including a 16″ bow that was just gorgeous. I should have netted it because the fish got loos in front of me while I was digging for a camera.
So the Tully is fishing well but please check the temps and do not rely upon USGS data at this time. Hopefully Mother Nature will help us out soon but the outlook is not good.

We’ve been busy with guide training and our travels over the past week have taken us to the Upper and Middle Delaware, Susquehanna, and Lehigh Rivers. Honestly, nothing has fished stellar. We had a large healthy trout caught by Colin in our guide school while targeting smallies, but in general the smallmouth ahve not turned on in great numbers on the Lehigh yet. We’ll have more exploration this week.

The Susquehanna was sad. I don’t know what else to say. The water is cooking and the bite is early morning and evening and it’s not good. Last year we saw some quality fishing which made us hopeful and we intend to test fish a little further north  but the Harrisburg area is not fishing well.

The Upper D was challenging as always. We were there bedore the short bubble of water was released and I’m pretty sure everybody landed fish. Brian Z. from Maryland had a hog on in the West Branch but it came unbuttoned. I(Tim S.) lost a nice brown aside of the boat. Hatches were BWOs(#14-22), Sulphurs(#14-20), Cahills(#12) and various caddis. Best hookups came from CDC and Unusual BWOs(#14-20), and E.Vitrea dun imitations(Large Amber Sulphur #14).

We’ll have more reports this week. The Tully and the West Branch of the Delaware are fishing well at this time. Not much is fishing consistently for smallmouth, a cool down would help.