Delaware River

The main stem of the Delaware — the "Big D" — begins at Junction Pool in Hancock, where the cold tailwater releases of the West Branch (out of Cannonsville Reservoir) and the East Branch (out of Pepacton) come together to form the largest wild-trout river in the East. There is no hatchery truck here: the rainbows and browns are all stream-bred, and the rainbows in particular are the draw — hard-fighting, river-born fish that fight more like steelhead than the stocked bows most Eastern anglers grew up on. Fish to 18 inches are common and a 20-plus is a realistic goal on a good evening rise. It's also the only major Catskill trout river that doubles as a shad river: American shad push up from the ocean in May and June and will eat a fly, which is a genuinely unusual thing to be able to say about a trout stream.

It fishes big and it fishes technical. The main stem is wide and powerful, full of long, deep, flat pools — some close to a half mile long — broken by riffles and rocky midstream flats. Whether you can wade depends entirely on what the dams are doing: at moderate West Branch releases the upper reaches near Hancock and the riffle edges are wadeable, but when both reservoirs are dumping the river gets too deep and pushy and it becomes a drift-boat game, which is how most serious main-stem anglers fish it. The flat-water pools give trout all day to inspect a fly, so plan on long leaders (down to 6X), precise drag-free drifts, and matching the hatch closely — the Delaware's Hendrickson, sulphur, March brown, and green drake emergences are legendary, and the midsummer Trico and evening sulphur spinner falls separate the hatch-matchers from everyone else.

The two catches are access and temperature. Public bank access on the main stem is limited — you're mostly relying on a handful of NY Route 97 pull-offs and the river itself, one more reason a boat matters. And the cold-water character fades as you go downstream. The river depends on West Branch releases to stay fishable, and by Callicoon (roughly 25 miles down) summer water temperatures can climb into the upper 70s °F on hot afternoons — the Callicoon gauge routinely reads several degrees warmer than Lordville. Here the limiting factor is heat, not low water: when the main stem climbs into the low 70s, the trout stack up near the cold junction and around tributary and spring seeps, so fish early, watch a thermometer, and stop when it hits the low-to-mid 70s. Below Callicoon the river transitions to a smallmouth and warmwater fishery — a good hot-afternoon fallback, but not trout water. This is a shared NY/PA border water: the far bank is Pennsylvania, and NY DEC and the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission manage it jointly under a Delaware tailwaters trout plan, with a reciprocal license that covers both sides.