Well I decided to spend my last morning of vacation fishing the Indian River. I had a number of hits from Rainbows but was only able to pull in the two pictured below. I caught one on a stimulator and the other on a beadhead nymph. They were nice little fish and fought hard. I would like to spend more time on this river because I know there are some larger fish and some brookies here.
Once again my father-in-law and I made our way up to the Adirondacks for our family Summer vacation and once again we called on Rich Garfield from Fly Fish the Adirondacksto guide us. This year he took us to the Salmon River. Most of you probably know the Salmon River as the river that is just north of Syracuse by Pulaski NY. The Salmon River we fished is near Malone NY, is close to the Canadian boarder and is a tributary of the St. Lawrence River. Although we did not land any wild browns we caught quite a few in the morning. They seemed to be most interested in stimulators and a large stone fly pattern. As always we had a ton of fun with Rich and look forward to guiding with him again real soon.
Good news everyone. I just came from the West Branch of the Delaware and actually caught a fish. In fact I caught two nice fish and had three others on the line that got off. I cannot stress how important it is to check your knots and play the fish to the slower water as quickly as you can. These are all wild fish and they are all escape artists.
The conditions were much improved from my last post. The state was releasing water from the dam which cleared out some of the algae and on some stretches of the river the bug activity was quit strong. Where I was, we were seeing cornudas coming off in the late morning with sulphurs in the evening. The sulphurs would create such a feeding frenzy you could throw a grenade in the water and they would not move from their spot. I tried a number of sulphur patterns and these fish would only take a number 16 CDC sulphur pattern. Of course I ran out of this fly the last night and was relagated to watching 20″ browns feed in front of me. Very frustrating!
See this guppy? He is the only fish that allowed me to catch him in 2 and a half days of fishing on the West Branch of the Delaware River this past weekend.
Thinking about going? Bring lots of alcohol and a book or two to break the boredom. The water was low, bugs were not consistently hatching, tons of algae (they call it spinach) rolling down river from the dam, and plenty of wind. Probably the worst conditions I have ever seen on the West Branch in the 6 years I have been going. On top of that in the time I was there I did not see a single angler pull a fish out of the river. My friend Craig did catch 2 average size Browns but he is a very skilled fly fisherman.
Believe it or not, I am going back on June 13th for the weekend. I am not sure why but I will fill you in on the carnage when I get back.
One of our most famous streams in the Rochester NY area is Oatka creek. It is a beautiful stretch of water that runs for 58 miles through Western NY into the Genesee River. There is a combination of stocked and wild browns and rainbows that will test your fishing skills even on the best days.
I decided to take yesterday off and take my father-in-law to Mumford NY to fish in a One-Fly Competition that was being sponsored by the Genesee Country Museum. They have about 2 miles of private water that is easy to access and loaded with fish. Oatka is a Seneca American Indian word meaning - leaving the highlands or approaching an opening. To me that translates into not knowing if you are coming or going. That is what happened to us yesterday. It did not matter what we presented the fish they would not strike.
At days end we ended up with no fish and out of about 20 fishermen there was 16 fish caught with 5 coming from one person. Not a very good afternoon. We saw some sporadic hendrickson hatches but nothing consistent. My guess would be this was due to cool temperatures that hit us that afternoon. By the end of the day we ended up in the mid to high 40 degrees with overcast skies and light rain. Really not the formula for a sustained hatch. The warmer temps is usually the thing that gets things going on the Oatka.
I think I will wait a couple weeks and see if I can catch an evening sulfer hatch.
It was only a couple days ago and Irondequoit Creek was blown out. See my picture in the previous post. Yesterday afternoon I went out and fished at normal water levels with the water almost crystal clear. It was a nice sunny day with a light wind with temperatures about 60 degrees. A nice black stonefly hatch came on around 3pm and lasted for about 1/2 hour. After lighting up a nice Montesino, I caught one 12 inch brown and a rainbow on a size 16 pheasant tail nymph. If it were not for the shadows I was casting, I think I would have caught a few more. Spring is here. Get out and fish!!
Since most of the rivers in NY State are overflowing with runoff from rain and melting snow (see picture of Irondequoit Creek below), there is only one thing left to do…Smoke cigars and drink Single Malt Scotch. Check out my review of Rocky Patel’s Decade Cigar and Balvenie Scotch on Rocky’s Cigars Blog.
Well, I was able to get away for a few hours on Saturday to do some fishing. I went to Irondequoit Creek and was pleasantly surprised to find my friend Wil there fishing too. It was overcast and about 40 degrees. The water was a light chocolat milk color and very cold so we tied on some highly visible beadhead pheasant tail nymphs and tried our luck. It took a while put I was able to pull in this frozen Brown. He seemed a bit pale. I would guess that is because he has not had much to eat lately plus the cold temperatures. I also used my new Lamson Velocity Reel that I got for 
Christmas. I love it. Real high performance at a great price. Visit Cabelas to pick up your own or go to Madison River Fishing Company and pick up a Hybrid version for only $139. Just click on the link below and put IJ-319668 in the “search products” box.
I know it has been a while since my last post but I have been busy getting ready for the birth of my second child. She came the day after Thanksgiving and my wife, daughter, and I are thrilled that she is finally with us. Of course I am hoping she will become interested in Fly Fishing.
Before she was born I had an opportunity to spend a couple hours fishing with by friends on Irondequoit Creek in my home town. Irondequoit Creek is a tributary of Lake Ontario and is stocked with Brown Trout and gets a regular run of Salmon and Steelhead every fall. My friend Wil and I started fishing with some small beadhead nymphs and we able to pick up a couple Browns right away. As we were fishing we heard a of splashing down stream. It wasn’t long before a nice sized salmon was swimming right past us on his journey upstream. We eventually caught up with him in a hole further up stream but he was in no mood to take our flies. My friend Wil and Craig caught a few more small browns and we called it the day. It was a great way to spend a couple hours on a beautiful Western NY fall afternoon.
A week later I was on my way to visit an old friend in Wilkes Barre Pennsylvania. We fished some private water on a creek called the Tobyhanna. It was a cold Friday afternoon and the wind was moving over the Poconos at a good clip. We started fishing with a stimulator and a beadhead nymph. The stimulator got almost immediate attention for me but I was unable to hook up. I was eventually able to hook a nice 14″ rainbow on a pheasant tail nymph but was unable to keep him on the line. My friend was able to catch several nice fish and even caught one a few feet up stream of me. The Tobyhanna is a beautiful creek and reminds me of an Adirondack creek named West Canada Creek. It is full of nice fish and I probably would have caught plenty of trout if I had paid attention to the size of my tippet. Unfortunately I discovered that I was using 3x tippet and that really discouraged the fish from taking my assortment of stimulators. Even so I really enjoyed my time on the Tobyhanna. Thanks to my friend Andrew for spending a Friday afternoon to take me out on this beautiful Pennsylvania creek.
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