Frosted

I walked slowly through the high forest yesterday morning, as the first snowflakes of the year wafted between the trees. I found no birds, though I worked all the best covers.

Come early afternoon I took a drive along the river, from Roscoe down to East Branch. The miles of the Beaver Kill were empty, flowing strong as more of those little snow squalls punctuated the cold. November first, and the Catskills have become a different world than a short week ago.

Last Thursday I searched those river miles for rising trout on a seventy-five-degree afternoon, and now snow squalls. It is twenty-eight degrees this morning, here in Crooked Eddy.

There is truth in the statement that there are but two seasons in these mountains: dry fly season, and winter. Deep in my heart I know that dry fly season is always summer. Though I may find myself buried in layers of fleece and down on a windy April afternoon, the cane flyrod in my hand and the Quill Gordon it casts fly on a breath of summer breeze!

Talking in the rod shop with friend Dennis Menscer last weekend, he told me we are in for a long, very cold Catskill winter. He sees it in the sky, the birds and trees. I am not one to doubt his senses as a veteran of more than two decades residing there along the banks of the West Branch, though I secretly hope that Old Man Winter grants us respite. Sadly, I do recall the Weather Channel talking of El Nino and artic blasts for the entire Northeast.

I am looking forward to Saturday’s Catskill Roundtable. Today I will gather materials for my travel bag once deciding which flies I wish to tie. It will be good to join my friends in the Guild once more before the long months of solitude. We will not meet again until February’s end and Fly Fest ’24.

Ah, yes, Fly Fest seems so very far away right now. I will be well into my 100 day countdown until the dawning of a new dry fly season! All of the tyers gathered will be flush with the excitement of a new season on the doorstep. Last year we tied blissfully as the snow fell outside the Rockland House. That storm didn’t quell our enthusiasm for spring!