Though I waded cool deep water yesterday morning, it soon became too hot to fish; even for me. Ninety-four degrees in Hancock around one in the afternoon is not the Catskill summer weather that brings so many wonderful memories.

We need rain terribly lest we repeat last summer’s drought, and worse. It felt like we would get some relief in early evening. The rain clouds massed and my porch thermometer dropped from 94 down to 86 with a beautiful wind to drive the cooling air. Sadly they moved on toward the southeast, where their gift was not so well received. New York City, Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania all but washed away in powerful storms. Would that some of that rain had fallen here rather than continue its travel, adding to the destruction further to the southeast.

Heat and warm rivers have chased me early in the day, and I have had to fill my afternoons with tackle tinkering; winter stuff.

Last year I tried one of Scientific Anglers’ new Amplitude fly lines, the smooth trout taper. I bought it for a graphite rod but, with the description touting the suppleness and compatibility with bamboo, I decided I should give it a whirl with some time on my hands. I spooled it on a Bougle` and, after fishing it two or three times, I can tell you it will never leave that reel; not until the core is showing and I am forced to buy a new one. This is a wonderful flyline for fishing bamboo on our Catskill rivers, or any waters that demand delicacy as well as distance and control.

I am still tinkering with terrestrials, though the trout are not yet responding to them as they did last summer. Checking the notes in my tying log I find that it was late July when the great terrestrial fishing began, so perhaps the extended high heat of late June and early July has me rushing things. I tied a foam bodied Carpenter ant, complete with wiggly legs, a fly I believe should catch it’s share of summer bruisers.

Wandering about the house in yesterday afternoon’s heat I thought it a perfect day to take a drive and go wandering about the fly shops, though I dare not venture anywhere that people have congregated. More reports have been released, with experts admitting that the Coronavirus is airborne, that it “floats around in the air” waiting for its next victim. You cannot fish when you’re dead, so I am left to my own devices.

Even in Pennsylvania’s limestone country, the worst heat waves kept me from the streams. The heat and a hot wind made perfect conditions for terrestrial fishing, but when that wind refused to blow the head high grasses of the water meadows roasted anglers like an oven. The West Branch was once a refuge on such days. Standing in waist deep 48 degree water takes the edge right off a ninety degree afternoon. The crowds were large at times in those years, at least in places, but now they are far heavier, and come with the addition of a sinister threat.

I keep thinking of the joys of the lightest tackle. There is a two weight rod and reel behind me, leaning against the armoire in a travel case, and my Dennis Menscer 3 weight bamboo is in reach of my right hand. My little Galvan 2.5 Standard reel is spooled with an unfished 3 weight line, ready to offer its smooth, matchless drag with the subtle strength of Tonkin cane against the charge of a wide bodied brown trout, deceived by some minute creation of feathers and fur.

I fished that 6’8″ gem on the West Branch once, and tied into eighteen inches of Delaware rainbow that objected to the size twenty hook he found in my sulfur. I had a CFO mounted that day, with its simple spring and pawl clicker, and that bow made joyous music as he cavorted on his way down to Hancock. I landed him, but not without some joyously tense moments!

Oh how I wish I had owned such a rod when the limestone fishing was grand! I still have the little graphites I used back then, six and a half footers for two, three and four weight lines. By the time I was able to acquire a proper seven foot four weight cane rod, the best of the Cumberland Valley’s spring creek fishing had succumbed to pressure and development.

I have always dreamed of fishing the western spring creeks, both the more intimate streams like Armstrong’s Nelson’s and DePuy’s, as well as the larger rivers like Idaho’s Silver Creek. I managed a couple of days on the Henry’s Fork’s Railroad Ranch water fourteen years ago, in a season the great Mike Lawson described as a “down year”. I have always wanted to return, to spend a month learning and savoring the fishing on those amazing waters.

While I’m daydreaming and wishing, I cannot help but wish to take a walk back through time to angle old Ed Hewitt’s water on the storied Neversink, and to drink a toast to the West Kill with Art Flick at it’s namesake tavern. What I wouldn’t give to share one more day with my departed friend Ed Shenk in the meadows of the fair LeTort!

Dreaming aside I must decide upon today’s course. Might I find a spot away from the crowds to stand in the frigid flows of the West Branch? Might today be the day to stalk forgotten waters? I will see, yes, I will see…

One of the truths of nature, of rivers, is that they are always in transition. My morning forays have been beautiful and productive, but they are changing. Rivers are warming again, and there seems little hope in sight for another lovely rainy day.

Thunderstorms are hit and miss; that is why we find them in our daily forecasts throughout the summer. Some are so brief that their moisture evaporates before it even enters the soil. I can tell by the brown grass in my yard after two or three of them. A big one will certainly wet the landscape, but in the mountain forests that envelop our rivers so much of that rainfall becomes runoff when the rainfall intensity is high and the slopes are steep.

I have enjoyed my walks with the eagles, my visits from the deer, and the electricity felt through the throbbing arch of bamboo when one of our trophy wild trout has sampled my fly to make it a truly special morning. Yet changes are inevitable.

The sparse hatches have dwindled of late, and there has been little surface food to interest the trout, even in the coolest flows of the day. I have taken trout on terrestrials, but they seem not yet to be looking for them.

My fishing had quieted enough that I threw caution to the wind and travelled to the West Branch to celebrate an old tradition: fishing the summer sulfur hatch on the first of July. Many summers found me at West Branch Angler, haunting the frigid flows of the upper river by midday. The fishing has paled in recent years, with more pressure and fewer rising trout to play the game. With the flows near 500 cfs one would think the drift boats would be parked as mine is, yet many still insist on adding to the disarray on a few short miles of a heavily crowded river.

When I waded in on Wednesday there were three anglers in sight, none of them within 100 yards. I was pleasantly surprised. My mood changed when a boat drifted down to anchor a cast’s length above me. A “guide” certainly, as I recognized the Baxter House decal on his bow. Gone are the days when the river guides were known for the utmost courtesy.

By the time the hatch had brought a few sporadic rises, the water around me began to fill with wading anglers too, each intruding into my shrinking casting range, oblivious to the continuing threat of the virus, and certainly oblivious to the concept of sportsmanship that once formed a code among fly fishers. One even asked if his intrusion was “too close”, then stepped away a full stride when I told him that yes it most certainly was.

I stayed, but I fished with too much intensity to reap the benefits of solace and peace I look for on the river. I caught a few trout, nature seeming to provide a bit of justice, as plenty of trout rose directly in front of me and not it seems in front of those who crowded me from both sides, or the enterprising fool who waded in directly behind me and began to cast toward my boots.

I knew better than to go, even during mid week, for the crowds are worse this year than ever before, but I felt nostalgic for an old tradition. It only took a couple of hours before the pressure of being surrounded by the possibly infected got to me. The chap behind me looked perturbed when I turned to exit.

Transitions. Folks seem to have adopted the attitude that, since they are tired of the virus and the various governments have “re-opened”, they will simply pretend like nothing is wrong and do what they will. Too much of society finds no use for things like common sense and concern for our fellow man, particularly when they don’t align with their wants and desires. I pray more will learn the folly of their thinking without even greater tragedy than we have already endured.

It was a lovely soft, rainy morning and my anticipation was high: this was the morning for a good olive hatch! All the signs were good, the mist on the river rising to meet the clouds that were nestled low against the mountain slopes, and olives had been around recently, even on some bright, warm mornings. Unfortunately for this angler, no one told the mayflies this was a perfect morning.

I had expected the tiny olives, and hoped for some cornutes to really finish off the hatch, but what I got was nothing. Each time some stray bit of food caused a small trout to make a single rise I readied myself anew, certain that the hatch was starting, but it was not to be. Such is fishing.

Before I surrendered to the obvious, and the looming storm clouds, I tied on a new beetle pattern and made some casts in flat water. Due to the rain, I carried an 8 foot Winston graphite, as opposed to my preferred bamboo, and the same four weight fly line I had fished a day ago on my Menscer cane rod seemed to land on the water like a brick. The rod companies have been touting “line speed” and “power” for so long they have forgotten all about presentation.

A well designed bamboo rod will make wonderfully long casts in the hands of a good fly caster, just as a well designed graphite rod will do, and it does it without that excess energy and all of that line speed. That energy has to be expended somewhere, and it gets expended upon the surface of the water. Fishing bamboo in this low water for weeks now, I had forgotten to adjust my casting.

I was thinking while I should have been sleeping, that it is time to get a two weight rod and line ready for the next rainy day. The trouble is, my long range two weight also generates “line speed”, though the excess is less with a two weight line and therefore easier to control. There is a solution available.

Friend and rodmaker Dennis Menscer debuted his 8 foot two weight bamboo masterpiece at the opening of the 2019 trout season. He had developed the taper after requests from loyal customers, and brought a rod along to the Catskill Cane Revival in Roscoe. I own one of Dennis’ three weight rods, a 6′ 8″ small stream delight, but I told him I had always considered a three weight to be the lightest practical bamboo trout rod.

When I cast the new two weight, I expected it to be too soft, even after Dennis laughed about the customer that ordered the first of these rods fishing for schoolie stripers with it, and catching a lot of them. For those unaware, schoolie striped bass are fish between 18″ and 24″ that fight with the typical strength of saltwater gamefish. On Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay I fished for schoolies with a stout 9′ 6 weight graphite fly rod, and they were all I could handle on that tackle.

Executed in an 8 foot, two piece format, Menscer’s two weight taper performs more like some four weights, thought it does it with the delicacy of a two weight line! I believe he has designed and crafted the ultimate light line Catskill flyrod for low water summer fishing.

For now I will leave that four weight graphite in it’s tube when stalking low water. It is still a time for searching. Though mayflies continue to be sparse, only some of the trout have been receptive to terrestrials. Others remain ambivalent. My experiments with fly patterns continues, and there have been some encouraging results. Two days ago I watched from close range after a short cast to a minor sip on the surface. A fine brown trout sampled the beetle softly with barely a disturbance on the flat water. The white wink of his opening mouth was clearly visible in the flat, crystalline water. I paused, set slowly, and battled a lovely 20 inch brown trout to the net on my 7’6″ Menscer.

Successes are welcome of course, though I still hope to devise a pattern that will tempt the Uncatchable Trout, strip away just enough of his caution to elicit a take as opposed to the usual follows until drag inevitably ensues. It is good to have a goal.