Delaware River: May 2009

Date / Time: 5/9/09

Location: Mainstem delaware, float from junction to buckingham

The Characters: Kory Kapaloski, Dave Severson

Weather: Partly cloudy, thunderstorms, low 70s

Water Temp: low 60s

Water Level / Tide: Lower water about 1500 cfs or so

Water Clarity/Quality: Good, clear

Moon Phase: just pass full

Fishing: Bought our new RAV4 this morning in ledgewood, nj and drove up the mainstem from there. Dave put in that morning and i met up with him a little ways below stockport on river left. Tammy dropped me off and i asked permission from a guy who has a place right on the water. We found a few fish right out from the place, but the wind shut it off. We found another one below the riffle on river right, but he was erratic and there were limited bugs. Thunderstorm moved in and soaked us for about 30 minutes and then passed through. After that, didn’t see anything for about an hour and we decided to throw a streamer. As we got to the pockets on river left 1/4 mile above the takeout I saw a huge porpoise rise and told dave to put the streamer away and dropped anchor. We watched and sure enough he showed again and it was a pig, big head and you could tell he really wanted something since there was no rhythym just a rise once then again then nothing then a rise then nothing, very erratic. There turned out to be several others in that area as well up and down the seam, but this one looked to be the biggest. He was in an extremely difficult spot in a seam that was created by a rock that was between us and the fish. When you made the cast, your fly would land in the current and line would land in the slack water behind the rock so the drift was short. You had to pile the tippet to get any semblance of a drift.

I tried several flies as there wasn’t anything in particular standing out. Occasional march brown, occasional caddis, occasional olive couldn’t figure what he was eating. Eventually figured he would eat a big mayfly since we had seen a fish earlier eat a march brown, so put on a grey bodied size 12 sparkle dun (maybe 14?). Put several drifts over him and no eat, he kept showing his face though but was moving around so it was difficult to pin him down. Made a cast and was in the middle of the sentence “this isn’t the right fl…y” then he ate and i hooked him. We had no net and we were anchored in pretty good current so decided to take him to the opposite bank which was a back and forth proposition. Eventually landed him, a fat 21 incher.