It is Tuesday the 24th of October and thirty-five degrees here in Crooked Eddy. We are down to it now, the full realization and acceptance of the end of another dry fly season.
A week ago, I stopped to assess a pool I had never fished and found something much to my surprise. Wading in, I was greeted by the lone occupant, a friendly and courteous gentleman whose name was Angelo. Upon recognizing the cane fly rod and dry fly I carried, he unselfishly offered me his place in the middle of the run, telling me there were fish working out there in the current. I thanked him and told him I was inclined to fish downstream, and to please continue to enjoy his sport.
Wading down I looked to a seam where the bouncing current blended with a band of slower water approaching the far bank. I could see large rocks beneath the surface, good lies for hungry trout in such water, and here and there a little flash of bubbles as a trout rose to take a small blue-winged olive mayfly.
It was a dark day, heavy cloud cover providing the kind of light which, coupled with the fast water, makes small dry flies intriguingly difficult to find at the end of a longish cast. I knotted an autumn favorite, a size 20 olive comparadun winged with Trigger Point fibers. It is a bit of nothing that I can see, even in difficult conditions, and the trout have shown a preference for this simple little fly on many occasions.
I fished quite happily for perhaps an hour, hooking five trout and landing all but the first. Most were wild Delaware rainbows, not large but solid fish of a foot or more and full of vigor. On an afternoon when my hopes for finding any rising fish had sagged, they were a revelation.
Cold rain highlighted the weekend, and water temperatures have continued to fall. The tailwaters are stuck in the forties, and now the freestoners have reached that low ebb as well. I am not ready to concede the season, and look toward a weeklong warming trend that should have us enjoying seventy-degree sunshine one more time before winter’s iron hand takes control.
Hopefully some of those early spawners have returned to the pools and are eager to feed while a chance remains. Should there be a few more mayflies to tempt them to the surface, I may yet find a proper finale.
Bright Waters Catskill 