Better Days

A full week has been lost to the power of weather and water, though at last I find myself on the cusp of better days!

I awakened this morning with a new fly design in my head, the full pattern crystalized in my sleep. I think the lack of fishing, of missing a week out of the prime of the season, must have spurred my resting mind to work it up. Some outlet is necessary for all of the stifled passion!

It is a Saturday, and the rivers remain unwadable, but relief is in sight. Morning sunshine is streaming in my window, and this seems the day we may finally expect it to last. I rushed to mow the lawn yesterday afternoon, finishing under the chill of light rainfall when a big, dark cloud settled right over Crooked Eddy, so today will be a day of ease and preparation.

I took straight to the vise this morning, eager to tie a few examples of that new March Brown. You may be puzzled at the name, though I have mentioned the changes observed in this large mayfly during three decades of Catskill angling. Though I have observed color variations in mayflies as long as I have carried a fly rod, the history of our March Browns intrigue me.

For twenty years, every March Brown mayfly I plucked from the waters of Catskill rivers was the classic caramel brown colored fly, with dark venations and blotches in wings shaded with a translucent brown. During the past decade, these flies have appeared pale yellow, with lighter wing markings within a pale translucent yellow background, with one remarkable exception.

It was late May, two thousand nineteen, and Mike Saylor plucked a remnant dun from the water as we waded out after fishing fruitlessly during a nice March Brown hatch on the Beaver Kill. The fly in hand was a bright canary yellow, an unnatural safety yellow, though clearly a March Brown dun upon examining the wing markings and verifying it’s twin tails. All of the rising trout had refused every pattern we could offer while feeding freely, even exuberantly on these wildly colored naturals. Being the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival that year, the name was a natural!

The garish yellow bodied parachute was tried a few days later when I found one substantial trout taking in that same pool, after he ignored all of the usual patterns. That 21-inch brown accepted the Woodstock Parachute as freely as he took the naturals. I have tied and carried them every year since.

I have a feeling this new Woodstock fly will bring me some luck when the river finally returns to a normal flow. I am hoping that a good hatch will appear this year. I have not enjoyed a good one since 2019, though I have seen a few flies. Warm water kept trout from feeding on them during the single season I did see fair numbers of flies, but this season looks to be cooler and wetter. I can almost hear the riffles playing counterpoint to a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo, the bass line provided by the plucking sound of big trout eating big mayflies!