Bitcoin Core question.

[cyptomania]

I'm not a newby but not an expert either LOL so sorry for the question.

I've been posting lately about old wallets I have found in my files,most are all at 0 and figured out,I have found a wallet with BTC in it but I only have the wallet address and the bitcoin core passphrase,the wallet.dat is long gone,it's from 2013.

Do I need to download bitcoin core ? This takes a longtime and wondering if there is another way,if it even can be done without the wallet.dat.

[hosseinimr93]

You need wallet.dat + passphrase or the private key associated with your bitcoin address.  
If I understand you correctly, you have lost the wallet.dat file. If that's the case, you cannot recover your coins.
The passphrase is used to encrypt wallet.dat. Since that file does not exist, the passphrase cannot help you.

If I understand you incorrectly and you have wallet.dat, you need to download Bitcoin Core, but you don't have to download the blockchain.
First use the command below to get your private key.

Code:

dumpprivkey "your bitcoin address"

Then download Electrum, create a new wallet, select "Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys" and then enter your private key.

Note: Download Electrum only from the official website

[pawanjain]

You will surely need the wallet.dat to restore your wallet after which you will be able to access your coins.
But if you don't have the wallet.dat file then consider your bitcoins as lost.

So you will have to find a way to recover the wallet.dat file from wherever you had stored it.

[HCP]

... I have found a wallet with BTC in it but I only have the wallet address and the bitcoin core passphrase,the wallet.dat is long gone

If the wallet.dat is long gone... then so are your coins

You need one of the following:
- Wallet.dat (+ wallet password if any)
- Private key for the address(es) that has bitcoin.

If you don't have those, you don't have any control over the bitcoins and they're now effectively "lost".

[morantis2015]

Don't feel bad.  My browser keeps login data and sometimes I look through it for fun and to prune some old stuff.  I found a Bitcoin address that had been used to login into some wallet site or something last year and actually had several of my old addresses stored in there.  Halfway through I hit one with a balance of 139 BTC.  This had to be back in 2012 or maybe earlier and came from mining, back then it was not worth much.  But, when I found it, the BTC price was sitting around $2000, I tried for a day to go to every site I could think of and login and never got anywhere.  The site where I got the address may even be closed now, or maybe it was even Cryptsy, lol.  At this moment, that would be worth $1,343,000.  You figure, dumping the balance would maybe net $500,000, because it would be a harsh dump and the price would drop almost immediately, but I won't sell like that anyway.  But, that is definitely enough for a very nice BTC house and car, lol. Without your wallet.dat, you can't get in, just like I will likely never find the site or wallet I had, as well as many others that I used for a minutes and dropped when the price was very small.  As many people say with collision mining, the odds of hitting a working private key are so low that you might as well mine BTC.

But, one thing to think about, if you have the computer where the wallet.dat was stored and you have not completely reset your OS, there is software, and some free, that can recover lost or deleted files, and with decent luck if not much time has passed.  I deleted a file that had my corporate credit card info in it, and got the files back in less than an hour, including the time to Google the software, install it and run it.