One of the qualifiers to the marvelous spring fly fishing here in the Catskill Mountains region is the prevalence of strong winds on open waters. We have been having quite a run with them lately.
My favorite online weather forecast provides just a two-day window for it’s wind predictions. You get today, tonight and tomorrow and beyond that, well, you just have to wait and see. Our winds seem to outperform the forecast more than they don’t. Monday didn’t look too bad for example, with winds from 10 to 15 miles per hour expected. Growing up in the flat topography of Southern Maryland, I would see that and expect a nice day with a light breeze, and maybe an occasional little gust that flirted with fifteen miles an hour. Life in the mountains is different, and life on the rivers leads to a very different interpretation of that forecast. What I would expect, and incidentally what I got, was a fairly steady blow in the neighborhood of fifteen mph with higher gusts. There were a lot of gusts.
That is more than enough wind to defeat the dry fly angler, for what makes our fishing here so special is that we have sublimely educated wild trout. Our rivers produce a great deal of natural food and host a great many fly fishers, so our trout grow to impressive sizes and display a very high level of selectivity. Your dry fly has to be a good imitation of the insect the fish are feeding upon and it has to be presented perfectly. That means casting accuracy and delicacy is paramount, often at greater distances than most Eastern fishermen are accustomed to.
The absolute key to dry fly success is delivering your fly consistently with a natural, drag free float. Gentle, accurate and drag free are the requirements, and to all of these, wind is the enemy.
I spend a great deal of time and energy trying to plan my fishing to counteract the worst the winds have to offer. I know from long experience that, if I am in the wrong place for the winds, it really doesn’t matter much whether there is a good hatch or not. Those wind forecasts are vital to my planning, though it is a shame they aren’t more reliable.
Yesterday seemed to be an easy decision. I had business to take care of near the West Branch Delaware River, true, the winds were forecast at ten to twenty miles per hour but were supposed to be from the West. I planned to fish a reach of river with a high western bank, a reach where I expected some bugs and rising trout. The river flows north to south there and that high western bank will block a westerly wind very effectively. I should be golden!
The Red Gods were otherwise occupied when I first arrived, and I entered the river under quite calm conditions, even though the winds had risen a couple of hours earlier. Despite the fact that this was a Tuesday afternoon, the river was crowded with wading anglers and a steady procession of drift boats, but there was a clear path ahead.
I took my time crossing the river, rather suddenly at low flow, and scanning a wide swath of shallow water in front of me. I could see the bottom clearly, so I moved slowly and gently and, there it was, a very subtle little rise about sixty feet ahead. I had knotted an A.I. 100-Year Dun in expectation of a few Hendricksons, and I pulled enough line from the reel to make the cast. There was no sign of that riser, but I know that trout often move about in shallow water to intercept their choice morsels from the sparse numbers of bugs available. I extended my casts gradually and voila!
The take was subtle and the reaction bold, with a very nice brown jumping and streaking away from the pressure of the rod, my Hardy singing merrily! We had a wild time out there in the middle of the river, the brown rushing in and out and trying to thrash the tippet with his tail while I alternated reeling and giving line and doing my best to keep him off balance and away from the larger chunks of rock. He still had plenty of vigor when I scooped him in the net.
I was about to continue my mid-river search when the Red Gods noticed my presence, no doubt tipped off by the music of the little Hardy and the jumping trout, and turned on the fans to chase any other bug sipping brownies off those flats. Undaunted, I eased my way over to that protective western bank and waited.
Do west winds usually blow from due north, due south and east? It seems they do here. The expected calm would have made fishing that bank easy pickings, at least as easy as it ever gets for our PhD West Branch browns; the strong and ever changing winds did not.
I feel certain that the gusts topped twenty miles per hour several times, leaving me to do my best to adjust. After all, it isn’t like this kind of scenario doesn’t occur most days of the season. The trout I had to fish for seemed to be spread out in the slightly deeper band of water close to the bank, taking advantage of the rocks and logs that populate the bottom. I got no more interest from the Hendrickson, not even after a few naturals appeared around three o’clock. The occasional rises indicated moving trout and the only thing on the menu were tiny Shadfly caddis. I gave up on the mayfly and tied on a long 5X tippet and a size 20 CDX.
One of the other “advantages” of spring winds is the multitude of color they bring to the water, seed pods, bits of leaves and stalks from all of the freshly vegetated trees and bushes, all bearing very similar hues to the light tan wings of those caddisflies. Tracking a windblown size 20 dry fly takes on a whole new challenge amid hundreds of other things that look similar from fifty feet away.
I managed to intercept another moving target, a twin to the first brownie, while constantly checking my back cast to keep it free from the passing boats, and casting between the then downstream gusts. Those winds must have liked blowing straight down from the North, for they ceased their earlier changing of direction and put their best efforts into maintaining a steady blow, eventually ending the rises along my little reach of riverbank.
No complaints here, just a wry smile in appreciation of a typical afternoon on the river. I had a nice little mix of fishing and boat dodging and took a pair of very nice wild browns despite the Red Gods and their games. Let’s see, which direction is the wind supposed to blow from today?
Bright Waters Catskill 