Looking at the local forecasts for the week, I had pinpointed Wednesday and Friday as potential fishing days. It is winter in the Catskills and they need to be flexible with those predictions, because the weather, as always, will do what it wants to.
The sun was out this morning, and though it had been only 17 degrees at dawn, I checked those forecasts again and made a command decision. My heaviest alpaca socks and a fleece pullover were donned, and the Kiley bamboo, reel and tackle bag gathered and loaded into the car with an old pair of waders, my boots and camo puffer jacket. I was ready to make the most of that morning sunshine.
It didn’t last, the sun that is, though there was at least a glow showing through the cloud cover as I waded into the West Branch. It had been a month since I visited the river and swung the Dazed Dace pattern down through the run for a trial, losing the first sizeable trout that sampled it. I had been fooled by one too many rocks in the shallow winter flow that day, failing to recognize the bump of a trout when it came. This visit looked more promising, for the flow is substantially higher, more than twice what it was that day in January.
I started the routine: cast, loop the line and swing, then two steps down and repeat. Nothing disturbed the fly until I got close to the part of the run where I had lost that fish in January. Sure enough, I felt a bump and a wiggle, let the slack pull out through my fingers and then smoothly raised the rod. The swing stopped dead. I had found a new addition to the heart of this run, and several more casts with a new fly and tippet told me it had to be a tree, or at least a significant part of one. I continued down about twenty feet, casting, hanging and then swimming the fly free, hoping that a trout would grab that Dace when it worked` it’s way out of the unseen wood.
With the cloud cover increasing and the morning sunshine a memory, I decided to wade down river to prospect around some cover I could see. It helps to see a tree if you are going to try to fish it.
I got back into my rhythm, casting over toward the bank and letting the fly make a long swing through an area that I know will be full of feeding fish six months from now, knowing that I just needed to show that fly to one trout. I did, but I didn’t hook him. The bump and wiggle came as I hoped it would, I slipped the loop of slack line and raised the rod, perhaps just a touch too quickly for thirty-seven-and-a-half-degree water. Didn’t even prick him.
I cannot tell you honestly if the next bump and wiggle I felt amounted to a do over or if there was another trout out there searching for a meal. I can only tell you that I adjusted my strike response, lifting the rod tip slowly and smoothly after letting the fish pull that loop of slack out of my fingers. This time I had him!
This old warrior let his bulk be known right away, putting a big bend in my eight-foot 6/7-line rod. I kept the tip down somewhat, letting him work against the middle of the taper as I led him up stream. He pulled some line against the drag, a good fight in the winter river, but the hookup was solid. When I slid him into the net I thought that “old warrior” was a fitting moniker. A heron, eagle or perhaps a mink had taken a chunk out of his back, just behind his adipose fin, but he was still out brawling. He easily reached the twenty-inch mark, and I slipped the hook out of his lip quickly and got him back in his element. I hope the old brown heals up; some make it and some don’t when they are injured like that. He had enough gumption to win his freedom from whatever predator had tried to eat him. If the river gods are smiling, perhaps I’ll hook him again six months from now, when the little yellow mayflies are drifting by.
Bright Waters Catskill 