Trout fishing Roscoe, New York and Livingston Manor, New York in summer / hot weather

Yesterday I decided to take a drive with one of my good friends up to Roscoe, NY aka Trout Town USA. A small but beautiful town in settled inside of the Catskill park. Most of the fishing in this area is on a tributary of the Beaverkill River called Willowemoc Creek. The creek offers great fishing opportunities with many public access points located all along the stretch of Old Rt. 17 from Livingston Manor to Roscoe.

The first spot we stopped at was the Hazel Bridge access point in Roscoe. Located near a bridge with a large parking lot from public access. We pulled in right at first light and quickly got on the fish. Our first trout of the day was surprisingly caught on a 1-1/2″ floating minnow hard bait. We decided to try these first after stepping into the water and seeing thousands of minnows spawning in the water all around our feet. It paid off with a beautiful brown at first light.

August fishing on the Beaverkill and Willowemoc can be difficult in the warm summer months. The goes for trout fishing pretty much anywhere that has outside temperatures over 70 degrees. Fish tend to bite in the early morning and then move off to deeper pools and become sluggish as the afternoon heat rolls in. We certainly found this to be the case as the bite died down after our catches in the first hour after first light.

Another access point we tried was the Livingston Manor covered bridge. The water here was very shallow and had limited access to deeper pools. We decided to break out the fly rods for this spot as the water was shallow and the deep pools were small. We walked down the river for probably close to a mile and a half until we reached some deeper pools with white water and tried fishing it a bit. I had one hit on a trout in the corner of the deeper pool but no action after that.

In conclusion, if you are going to fish the Beaverkill or Willowemoc Creek in the warm summer months, make sure you fish at first light or at dusk when the outside temp is cooler. Aim for deeper pools and match the hatch, even if that means casting a minnow.