The first time I fished for trout in the East Branch of the Delaware River was over Memorial Day weekend in 1959. It was shortly after New York City completed the construction of Pepacton Reservoir in 1954. That was the same year the United States Supreme Court issued its decree mandating that New York City release enough water from that reservoir to maintain a flow of 1,750 cubic feet per second (CFS) at Montague, NJ.

At the time, I was a member of the Birchbrook Rod and Gun Club, headquartered in a friend’s home in Ossining, NY. That trip to the East Branch in 1954 was our first annual outing. We had arranged to camp at the old Del Valley Campground, just downstream from the Corbett Bridge. 

After we arrived and set up our tents, it was off to the river that flowed nearby. At the time the flow was up, indicating that cold water was being released from the reservoir. There were flies on the water and trout rising. Then it was a scramble for waders, fly rods and fishing vest, and then back to the river. 

Although the memories of that trip are fairly clear, 1959 was a very long time ago. At the time, I had no clue that I would continue to be involved with the East Branch of the Delaware River, both as a fly fisherman and as a fisheries biologist, not so many years later. 

As many of you know that read my columns, several of us who worked for the DEC were intimately involved in the development and implementation of the water releases legislation in 1976. And I remain involved with issues associated with the East Branch all these years later. 

Historically, the East Branch has always flowed cold and clear, even after some very significant storms, including Hurricane Irene back in 2011. Despite a huge amount of runoff water and flows exceeding 10,000 CFS, the East Branch cleared rapidly and was fishable once the flow returned to normal. It appears that changed with the aftermath of hurricane Debby, which hit the Catskill mountains—including the area around Downsville—on August 9. 

On Thursday, August 22, I met several friends at our camp along the East Branch, just outside of Downsville. As always, we immediately walked over to the river to check the flow and see if there were any flies on the water and trout rising.

What we found instead was a milky off-colored river and huge deposits of dark brown, very fine silt up on the meadow, where the river had exceeded its banks. Of all the years that I’ve fished the East Branch, I’ve never seen conditions like those we observed on that late August afternoon. Thirteen days after the flooding on August 9, the river remains off-color, a thick layer of silt covering a large portion of the meadow. 

A check of the USGS gauge at Harvard revealed the flow on August 9 reached 9,000 CFS, a flow that has been exceeded many times without siltation becoming an issue. But somewhere along the river downstream of Downs Brook and our camp, the runoff associated with Debby appears to have breached a bank, causing the release of tons of very fine silt into the East Branch. Where that breach occurred remains unknown at this time. My concern is that unless the problem area is located and stabilized, siltation and dirty water may continue after every significant rain event. A very troubling problem for the aquatic insect community of the river and for fishing too. Anglers do not like to fish dirty rivers, much less wade along a silt-laden bottom.

In order to try to resolve this problem, contact has been made with the New York State DEC and Natural Resource Conservation Service. Hopefully, those agencies will assign staff to investigate the source of the siltation and work with us to pinpoint and stabilize the area, if that is necessary. Because right now, there are a number of unanswered questions.  

If any of you who read this column know the source of the siltation, please contact the River Reporter at copyeditor@riverreporter.com. Any feedback regarding this issue would be most appreciated.