All My Life's A Circle - - -

Sitting in the recliner after several hours of work tearing down our 40 year old shed and transferring it's contents to the new one. Thought a review of the season, as well of a preview of what may lie ahead might make interesting reading.

For this review consider the WB, UEB, and the BR down to Stockport as tailwaters, and the BK, Willow, and the BR below Stockport as the freestones.

The water levels for most of the season were good for both wading and floating. As a wade fisherman I could almost always find water both low enough and clear enough to fish. In October there have been times when the water was too low to float. 

The bugs - The "Big Bug Season" is the roughly the six week period that features an orderly progression of mayflies starting with Quill Gordons and progresses through Hendricksons, March Browns, Gray Foxes, Invaria,  Green Drakes, Brown Drakes and Isonychia. The big bugs are usually over by the 10th of June with the Invaria sometimes lasting into July above Deposit. There are also prolific hatches of several species of cadis during the same period.

While the sequence of bugs doesn't change, the intensity of the hatch of individual mayfly species can, and often does, vary greatly from year to year. This spring I was unable to find good Hendrickson hatches on the freestone streams. Thankfully the Hendrickson hatch on the tailwaters was very good. The increased amounts of cold water being released from the reservoirs under the FFMP has increased the trout carrying capacity of the river system, but has reduced the variety of bugs hatching in the tailwaters, (each mayfly species has a specific number of degree days it requires to mature and hatch, the increased flows of cold water have resulted in reduced numbers of some mayflies in the tailwaters). Of concern to me was the very low numbers of both Hendrickson and Isonychia I saw on the freestones. All other hatches seemed adequate.

In mid to late June the Invaris, (spring sulfurs), are key to decent dry fly fishing and this year the hatch was a good one. Sometime around the first of July, the Dorotheas make their appearance and if the hatch is a good, (it was this year), it provides dry fly action in the "Sulfur Zone" until mid to late August. As the sulfurs wain, the action is dependant on various species of olives. This year the olives failed to do their part.

The fishing - Many of the fishermen that come to the Delaware do so with the hope or expectation  of   being able to catch big wild browns and rainbows. If that was your goal, you should have had a very good year. Don't believe I have ever landed a higher percentage of fish over 15 inches in my daily catches. Usually the big browns are most frequently caught during the "Big Bug Season" after which the browns spend most of their time eating small fish and become a much smaller percentage of most dry fly fisherman's catch. This year was an exception to the rule as the prolific sulfur hatch kept the big browns feeding on top through the middle of August. In mid August the sulfur hatch ran out of gas, the olives didn't get going in numbers sufficient to interest the big fish and the fishing came to a screeching halt. 

The rest of the story -  Usually the summer sulfur fishing is mostly for younger fish with the number of browns over 17 inches making up a smaller percentage of my daily catch as the season enters July and August. Why was this year so different? You can say it was because the Dorothea hatch was so prolific that the big browns just kept feeding on top, OR, you can take a realistic look at the current makeup of the fish population, (at least in the WB). The population of brown trout is currently comprised  mostly of fish at least 4.5 years old, (14/15 inches) and up, with many of the biggest fish having been born in 2018 and 2019. The population is in the form of an inverted pyramid with the bottom three, (it will be four next year), year classes at historically low levels. Where have the small trout gone? The usual suspects, eagles, osprey, otters, and striped bass, have all taken there share to be sure, but by far the predators taking the lion's share are the big browns who have no compunction about eating their great, great, grandchildren. It's my belief that the browns ate sulfurs all summer because they had already cleaned out virtually all of the yearling trout.

The outlook for 2027 - The big trout appear to be healthy and in their prime. Certainly some will fall prey to the larger predators, some will be caught and kept, others will succumb to the rigors of spawning, rest assured there will still be plenty of big fish around to keep most anglers happy. BUT, Angler 119 won't be catching 10 fish a day, (this years catch total was one half of the 2024 total),  and when there aren't enough flies to get the big fish up, there won't be any two or three year old fish up feeding to keep anglers entertained. Took the trouble to watch the PA shocking crew on two nights at Shehawken just to lend credence to my beliefs and their results were almost an exact match of my catch log. Lots of big fish, but almost no one, two, or three year olds.

 Patience May Need To Be A Virtue - When I first fished the Owyhee River out in Oregon many years ago, it was no kill for browns, the fish were huge but old, (big heads with long skinny bodies), I would fish each day until I caught 30 fish and wouldn't have a fish under 17 inches. Went for several years and the part of the river with a good population of trout grew smaller each year but there were still no small trout. Kept in touch with the stream biologist who said the fish that were left had developed a fungus on their skin and were dying. Three years later he said the stream was full of trout but nothing over 16 inches. It took a long time to turn things around.