East Branch Delaware River

The East Branch is the Catskills' other tailwater — the one that lives in the West Branch's shadow, and is better for it. Below Pepacton Reservoir at Downsville, the reservoir's cold bottom releases hold water temperatures in the 50s well into a Catskill summer, so the upper river fishes for wild, stream-bred browns when the freestone Beaverkill and Willowemoc a valley over are pushing 70F and shutting down. The releases are smaller and less reliable than the Cannonsville flows that feed the West Branch, so the East Branch runs skinnier and clearer — a river of long flat pools, weedy spring-creek glides, and braided island channels where a wild sixteen-inch brown will refuse a size-18 sulphur that's dragging by an inch. It rewards a good drift and punishes a sloppy one.

The river splits at a personality line where the Beaverkill dumps in near the hamlet of East Branch. Above that, from Downsville down through Shinhopple, it's small, cold, and mostly wadeable — a technical dry-fly and light-nymph fishery for wild brown trout and the occasional brook trout out of the tributaries, best from Downsville down where the releases keep it honest. Below the Beaverkill the river roughly doubles in flow (Fishs Eddy runs 300-plus CFS in summer against about 150 up top), warms, and turns into big drift-boat water with more rainbow trout down to the West Branch junction at Hancock. That lower stretch is superb in spring and fall, but the last few miles can climb past 80F in a July heat wave, which pushes trout upstream toward the cold.

Access is a mix of DEC public fishing rights and pull-offs along Route 30 and Route 17/I-86, private frontage below the Beaverkill, and boat launches centered on Downsville and Hancock. Pressure exists but runs lighter than the West Branch and the famous Beaverkill/Willowemoc — the East Branch is where locals go when the marquee water is crowded. The one number to know before you drive is the Downsville release: when it climbs toward roughly 850 CFS, Pepacton is starting to spill and the upper river goes high and off-color. In a normal summer you're fishing 100-250 CFS up top.