High Summer

The first month of summer, and the first month and a half of summer fishing conditions lies behind us, and we shall soon embark upon that lovely turn of the season known as high summer! Cornfields tasseling in the sunshine, morning mist upon the rivers, and the gradual increase in that golden cast to evening light are the signs, and the drier air and cooler nights provide the feelings.

I have not written in a while. Summer fishing has reached a low ebb and other things have taken my attention, but I am looking forward to the grandeur of the Catskills in high summer and stalking wild trout in the quiet of the mornings.

Summerfest is just two weeks away, when angling souls will gather upon the Museum grounds to share tales of leviathans hooked and lost, favorite flies and fine old bamboo rods. Fairs and village festivals bring music, food and laughter throughout the mountain valleys. Fishing too will improve, for it is just the beginning of the second half of our dry fly season.

High summer is the time for tiny flies and light rods! The mayflies are there, though they are not the meaty specimens of springtime. Sulfurs and olives in the twenties, perhaps the miniscule tricorythodes, flying ants too small to see when they pepper the film on an August afternoon, these are the hatches of summer. It is time once more to open the chest of fly boxes and select those packed with these tiny high summer patterns.

I hope to haunt a few grassy banked runs before the season runs it’s course, so there will be one box with hoppers tucked inside: Shenk’s Letort, my own Baby Hopper and the limestone creation from decades ago that wooed them East and West!