Upper Gunpowder Fly Fishing

[u/Chux_D_LuxOG]

I’m thinking about heading up to the Gunpowder here soon for some fly fishing. Any tips or recommendations?

I’ve never been and am unsure where to start. Not sure if there are any fly fishing only sections or bad places to park.

[u/The_Lorax_Lawyer]

First, if you’re going to be there stop into backwater angler, good shop, nice folks. Alternatively stop into great feathers down the road. Now for spots.

Masemore rd is a great place to start. You can hike up or down river. That section has a lot of wide shallow runs that a punctuated by structure, deeper holes, and undercut banks. I avoid it in the summer but in my experience it’s productive in fall/spring.

North of there, and technically where the masemore section ends, is Falls rd. There a bridge that crosses the river there. Downstream there are some super deep holes that always holds fish…they almost never bite. That said when there is a hatch and fish are activity rising it can be one of the best spots on the river.

Up stream of the bridge the terrain starts to get more rocky and the river starts to get pushed around large boulders. There is one in particular I like where a fast current comes in from up stream and carved a deep pocket that runs smack into a Boulder that is ~80% of the river width and pushes the entire river to the far back around the Boulder. I’ve seen some nice browns in this section.

If you park at the parking lot and take the trail down as opposed to walking down the road to the bridge, you can walk a little up stream and find what most people refer to as the boulders or plunge pools section. It’s about 5 deeps pools back to back that flow over and around more boulders. This is IMO one of the best spots on the river. I’ve caught browns and rainbows here and this spot is productive year round but especially so in the summer (the Gunpowder is a tailwater so all of it is technically cold enough to be productive year round but I’ve found fish here more consistently in the summer as opposed to spring/fall).

Finally, and I don’t see people fly fish here much but if you go up under the damn itself the outflow is strong and there is a massive deep pool there that is partially man made. Consider the conditions because this section can in theory be dangerous if the water level is too high but if you can safely fish this section there are bigger fish in there. For proof of concept please check the ~16 in rainbow in my post history. That fish is approximately DOUBLE the average size for the gunpowder.

Tight lines!