Typical July in New Jersey......Sort Of

Yellow Sally Brown - J.B. McCollum photo

Just about every July we experience warm water temperatures in our rivers and streams, and most years we also have low water conditions. The bottom line being, we don't do much fishing for trout in July in the Garden State. This year, the situation seems to be unusually severe, mostly due to the lack of rain.  Needless to day, I haven't fished much the last few weeks in my neck the woods.
  

Fortunately, there are the Lehigh Valley limestone creeks, the upper Delaware River tailwaters in upstate New York, and the Farmington River, another tailwater in Connecticut.  I plan on being on the Farmington fairly regularly in the coming weeks/months to get my fix.  In fact, I just started a 12 month project about 30 minutes away, so naturally I'll have to fish it as much as possible after work during the week.  What else can one do when a great tailwater is nearby and you're away from home? 

The warm temps have not stopped the bugs from hatching though.  In the mornings there have been good hatches of Tricos, as reported last week.  As the weeks pass, the Tricos generally get smaller - they are down to sizes #24-26, and the wild trout in the creek down the street have been on them.  In the evenings, the porch lights have been attracting good numbers of little amber and olive Stoneflies, Little Yellow Quills #20-22, Isonychias #10-12,  small Rusty Spinners #18-22, Spotted Caddis (Hydropsyche sp.), micro caddis, and a cream drake or two some nights.  I also saw one of the huge Litobrancha's the other evening, about a #6-8 mayfly, that is truly a wonder of nature.  At least we know the fish have plenty of food available.

That's it for now.  I'm on the Acela heading  home and figured I'd post something since it's been a few days.  Mr. Brook Trout (Small Stream Reflections), I see you have been fishing the Farmington lately, we may have to meet up there in the next few weeks so we can do corresponding posts on our blogs.