Home Sweet Home

Author: Shaq/Darthwader
Water Type: Coldwater
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Description: If there is one river, or river system that has shaped my fishing and tying it has been the Delaware Tailwater System. I had been a pack of Culprits, pack a Tru-turns kinda guy up until college, spending my summers in central NH on a lake that my parents owned a cottage on. In fact, my whole angling world basically revolved around the bass and pickerel in Wickwas Lake. Fast forward until my formadable college years, when I was introduced to trout and the world of fly fishing. Exactly how that happened is a long story in itself but I can tell you that it was a process that involved spinners, worms, ultralight rods, a guy killing them on flies and a revalation. Any knowledge hungry fisherman who lives in upstate, NY has heard of the Delaware these days and it was no different back then. My then roommate and I would play around with our new found talents with the local trout in the area then make a trip to the Delaware. I now know that we had no business being there. In fact we shouldn’t have even been allowed to look at the system with our lack of skills, but ignorance is bliss right?


One good thing about the experiences and perverbial beatings we took down there over these first few years was that we learned alot, and just assumed that flyfishing for trout, everywhere, was hard. What we did not know at the time, was the fact that if you can catch fish on the D, you can catch fish anywhere. It’s an “A” game fishery, as in, you better have, and bring an “A”game.


Fast forward to yesterday, well, let’s start the night before. I can never sleep the night before the first annual trip to the Delaware. My dreams, when I do nod off, replay every bad trip to the system that I have ever had. The days of refusals, the broken tippets, even that day that I had tied some flies on hooks that kept breaking…right at the bend…what a nightmare. So I rose early, fresh feelings of doom lingering during the ride. I spun The Dead in the player and stepped on the gas. 2 and a half hours later, I was streamside. The familiar rounded hills of the western catskills slope down to clear braided runs and glassy pools of the river. As I suited up, a bird glided across the water’s surface, hesitated mid air to grab an unseen bug and continued on it’s way. A stiff breeze came from downstream and blew my rod off the side of the truck signalling that it would, as alway, be a factor today. Ah, it’s good to be home.