I can't tell you how thankful I am fall is upon us! It's been an incredibly rough summer and my fly fishing pride has taken a beating. The local streams were too warm, or at least, that's what I'm telling myself, and I just didn't have the skills to have much success on the lower East and West Branches of the Delaware. I guess I'll chalk the summer up to a nice learning experience and a great time out on beautiful water.
Now that the evenings are cool and the water levels are back near ideal, I spent a couple of hours on the upper West Branch near Hamden, NY. Talk about a beautiful fall day. I had no idea what the fishing would be like, but it didn't matter. Being outside on a day like this in central NY is why I moved here. As an added bonus, I had one of my most successful days yet fly fishing and actually managed to get some of the techniques I've read about to work on the water. It's nice to get some positive feedback after a dismal couple of months!
I arrived and the stream just before noon with blue skies and full sun. I didn't notice any surface activity at all so, figuring dry flies were out, I went straight to an olive wooly bugger. I found a fishy looking spot where a fast riffle entered a deep run with large rocks on the far bank for cover. The run continually deepened until it emptied into a large pool beneath a bridge. Earlier in my career, I would have fished the calm waters beneath the bridge, but I keep reading how aggressively feeding trout will be in moving water since it's generally colder, more oxygenated, and that's where the food supply tends to be.
With that in mind, I fished my wooly bugger starting at the beginning of the run and working the length of it. I basically used the wet-fly swing technique casting it straight across or slightly downstream and letting it swing in the strong current. I varied it up by switching the rod tip or sometimes stripping in some line. I tried to work it so that the fly would be in the seam between the fast run and the slower water on the side of the stream when it finished its swing. Within 5 casts, I hooked my first and nicest brown of the day. Delighted with myself, I fished the wooly bugger for another hour without any more success. Looking back, I don't think I was getting it deep enough. Even as a weighted fly, it was riding high in the fast current and the run was extremely deep towards the tail end. I just don't think I had it where the fish were feeding.
At any rate, I decided to switch to a wet fly. I had been reading scouting reports saying that leadwing coachmen could be deadly in riffles and runs, but to date I'd had no success. At this point, I should mention that I noticed some mayfly activity. What to me seemed like small blue-wing olives were appearing on the water, but I still didn't see a single rise. Based on all that winter reading, I guessed there must be nymphs emerging and that the trout must be keying in on those subsurface. Hence, wet fly time. And this time, I added some split shot to get my fly down in the water current.
Swinging a wet fly is about the easiest thing you can do. Just cast it across or slightly downstream and let it swing. Again, I held my rod so that the swing ended in the seem. The strikes came like I've never seen. Most of the trout were little guys (8-10"), but after the summer doldrums, I didn't mind in the least. I did notice that I seemed to catch a lot of fish after the fly had swung downstream and I had left it in the water while moving my position. That made me realize that it pays to let your fly drift in the downstream position for longer than I would've thought useful. Reading a bit, it seems that allows the fly to rise up towards the surface making it really look like an emerger. Whatever the case, it caught a lot of fish. Over the course of 4 hours I caught close to a dozen fish, which, for a beginner like me, made me feel pretty damn good about myself.
