Upper Delaware Fly Fishing Report

Last night some Rainfall moved into the region. So far the rain has been light and it is expected to end in an hour or so with very little change to the current river conditions.

Yesterday we had most of our guides out on the river floating several different section of the Upper Delaware River System. We all had some success which I will cover later in this report.

For all of you dry fly anglers. The last few days have had pretty decent insect activity. The waters remain too high for any real surface feeding but we are seeing the occasional splashy rise in areas with dead water. Currently there are Some Stoneflies, small Caddisflies and Blue Quills. At times yesterday there were enough Blue Quill on the water to spur surface activity if the river flow were low. I expect there to be plenty of insects emerging when the time arrives where the trout can surface feed efficiently.

For now however the Upper Delaware remains a streamer game. There is no location in the river system where the conditions are right for a really great streamer bite yet. For the persistent anglers there are some nice rewards to reap. Since we started putting guests on the water April first we had nothing but mature fish. Over the last few days all of the fish that have hit our nets were 17" to 22" and in great shape.

Below is a nice 20 incher from my trip yesterday

This week Guide Zach, Guide Chris, Guide Matt, Guide Stephan and myself have all had our drift boats in the water. Between us we have covered a lot of water.

Here are the observations.

Both Pepacton and Cannonsville Reservoirs are spilling over

Right now there are still alewife in the West. The water is cold and high. The West is as always attracting the majority of the fishing pressure. There has already been a day or two where there have been 10+ boats in the upper river. With that said there is a lot of water and even with the boat traffic only a small portion of the total water is being touched. Now is a great time to fish here especially if you have never seen an alewife spill. The West also has a lot of Big Browns and they are eating well if you can get you fly to them.

The Upper and Lower East are also high and cold. With the narrow confines of the Upper Section the water is very swift at the current stage and putting a fly into the correct zone for a strike is difficult. The Lower East is a much wider river and it handles big flows better. At the current flows it still retains the riffle, run pool makeup. There are plenty of spots here that are fishing fairly normal at this time.

The Main still remains too high and we have not yet put a boat on this river.

Slow and deep remains the best tactic for success. You can look back at yesterday's report for some advance tactics that I outlined for fishing high water. If you are a New Jersey resident and have an interest in fishing big streamers for trophy trout come out tonight!

I will be giving a talk at the East Jersey Trout Unlimited Meeting at 7:30 - Details are on their web site. My talk will cover hunting Trophy Brown Trout and clear up some of the confusion behing the current giant streamer craze.

Lastly check out below to see the results of yesterday's great trips!

Photos are by Baxter House Guide Staff and a special thanks to Jason Dubar for the photo of his Flies.