Posted on April 15 2025
Today the weatherman did me no favors. Intended to do the spraying for brown rot on the fruit trees this morning before the wind picked up, but the radar showed a line of rain scheduled to sweep through the area between 10:00 and 11:00. The clouds arrived about 11:00 and the sun reappeared at 12:15 without a drop of rain falling. I finished up the spraying at 2:00 and headed for Deposit knowing that I was over an hour late.
The number of fishermen was only half of Sunday's total, but they pretty much had all the spots where there were rising fish yesterday covered. Saw a lone riser in the pool above the Men's Club and passed, stopped at the Troutfitter and chatted with Dave for a few minutes, walked out on the town bridge and saw "Mike the Cop" cast to a riser. Decided I'd suit up and go down and say hello to a fellow octogenarian, (would love to know how many of us are still out there fishing the Delaware).
The fishing - Waded in above Mike and was greeted by four splashy rises. Cast to where I thought each fish rose and got one refusal. While I was changing flies two fish rose and my first cast at one of them produced a take. While fighting the fish a drift boat came down river and passed behind me, (they said there were risers upstream). The fish, when finally landed, turned out to be a 16 inch rainbow that showed no evidence of having recently spawned. The next hour produced two more hookups, the largest of which was a 17 inch, beautifully colored, holdover hatchery brown.
The outlook - The water temps say it's way too soon to expect meaningful hatches. The weather forecast says that, except for Wednesday, only good things are going to happen, (there are a lot of sun's poking their nose's out from behind partly cloudy sky's in the ten day forecast). I've been around the sun more times than most, and I believe that seldom, if ever, in nature, are things determined by a single event. Deer start growing their winter coat by the first of September and the bucks start looking for does the last week of October no matter how hot it's been. Length of daylight probably has as much to do with when bugs hatch as water and air temperatures. All that said, I predict that there will be meaningful hatches by April 22nd, (unless the bond market falters, in which case I might pause my prediction).
Interested in if you could tell what they were rising to? BWOs?
As a “ fellow octogenarian” who is still wading to Delaware I’ll have to get Dave to introduce me. I’ll get back to Deposit after Easter, hope to meet you then.
Angler119 and Dennis. Congratulations to both of you for landing really nice fish. A good start to the season.Another folk song reference Angler119’. Very cool. Ed
I did fish yesterday and for me a pretty good day. 1brown trout 18 in. 2 refusals and 1lost hook up. There were not a lot of fish rising but the risers seemed interested in eating. I started at the red barn and worked down stream. Red barn area was slow. Hope to be down later in the week and I will report.