We’ve had a few boats on the river since Mother’s Day weekend and covered a solid 20 river miles. First we welcomed Jeff, Mike, Joe and Rick. These men all worked hard over two days landing several trout and smallmouth bass. A mixture of nymph rigs, streamer and a specialty fly appropriately called, “The Aggravator” were successful. However, with flows over 1000cfs out of FEW all weekend, coupled with a few storm fronts, fishing was a challenge at times. Credit these four anglers for their perseverance.

Then we had two boats on the Lehigh on a spectacular Tuesday in early May. Release out of FEW was just under 1000cfs for the first time in over a week, but conditions on the river are stabilizing and the fishing is improving. From morning till about 2pm, trout were feeding well on black buggers and prince nymphs. I had the pleasure of guiding Kevin and he managed to boat 12 trout, including the royal flush - a brook, rainbow, brown and tiger. Kevin kept his flies mostly off the edges, down deep and twitching them at the end of a long swing. Still no surface activity, but with water levels hopefully coming down and air temps rising, we have good reason to believe that will be changing. If there’s any indication of the fish seeming to turn on to bugs, it’s that over half of Kevin’s trout ate the trailing prince nymph.

JW

After checking and double checking the forecasted releases from FEW and Beltzville for the weekend, I decided to float from Walnutport to Northampton with my brother Dave and Nathan K.   Swallows were everywhere and sporadic Hendricksons were on the water in the riffles.   The USACE must have changed their mind at the last minute as the 400 CFS release that the posted on thursday for the weekend was changed to 900 CFS.   Water level was above average (4000 CFS at Walnutport) but much lower than the 10,000 CFS earlier in the week.   Water clarity was good but fishing was terrible.  One 11″ brown trout was lost and no other fish were seen.   Hopefully inflow to FEW and Beltzville will decrease this week and allow for some better fishing opportunities.   Reports from the Upper Gorge were terrible also;  this information proves our point that you can’t drop the water from 6,000 CFS to 3,000 CFS and then to 400 CFS and expect good fishing.   Both of the “special” angler friendly releases from FEW (the first 2 weekends of trout season) have been a bust.   With all of the “bonus” whitewater days so far this year, perhaps the rain gods will make up for it with some ”bonus” fishing days in June.  We can only hope.  For now it seems that most of the fish have been traumatized by the 6,000 CFS releases resulting in 10,000 CFS on the lower river.   LRSA postponed stocking of the Glen Onoko to Palmerton section of the river due to the high water; stocking has been rescheduled for Sunday May 1st.   Angling opportunities will be limited (drift boat only) again this week as the release at FEW was increased to 1,400 CFS earlier this morning (April 25th).  When conditions improve, anglers should expect the blue quills, quill gordans and hendrickson hatches to be well under way.  PK. 

Two thirds of the ski patrol went to school with the Upper Delaware Streamer King (Charlie) on friday from Balls Eddy to Buckingham.   Winter clothing and white streamers were necessary to survive the conditions and land some trophy trout.   Four browns in the 18-23″ range came to the net with several other near misses (See attached pics).   Late in the afternoon, blue quills and the occasional quill gordon brought 7-10 targets to the surface.  Several of these targets eagerly ate a well placed imitation but unfortunately none were brought to the net.   While water levels were above normal, the west and main stem were in prime shape for drift boat fishing.  Anglers should expect this fishery to really turn on in the next week or so as the water and air temps increase.   Conditions for the up coming “One Bug” should be perfect unless too much rainfall (in the form of forecasted thunderstorms) hits the area this week.  PK.

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.

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.