Upper Delaware River System

The most famous dry-fly water east of the Mississippi.

The Upper Delaware system straddles the Pennsylvania–New York line. Its West Branch and East Branch are tailwaters fed by cold, bottom-draw releases from two New York City water-supply reservoirs — Cannonsville (West Branch) and Pepacton (East Branch) — which meet at Hancock, NY to form the Main Stem. Those releases created — almost as an accident — one of the great wild-trout fisheries in the country.

The West Branch holds large wild brown trout in cold, clear, technical water. The Main Stem (formed at Hancock, where the two branches meet) holds wild rainbows in numbers and sizes that have nothing else like them in the East. The fishery is born of and dependent on the release regime negotiated through the Delaware River Basin Commission and the Flexible Flow Management Program.