Taking Stock

Roughly two weeks remain in this year, and I have settled into my winter routine. It is expected at this time to take a look back at the year completed, something I believe most of us do. For anglers, particularly those of us of a certain age, we become more acutely aware there are fewer of those golden days upon bright water ahead of us than behind.

In two thousand twenty-three I was blessed to spend one hundred thirteen days upon the rivers of my heart. Yes, there are more days on the calendar between April and October, but there are days when the weather is simply unsuitable for fly fishing. In my travelling days, my standards were more liberal, due to the overall shortage of days on Catskill rivers I was able to manage. I have fished in forty mile-per-hour winds, with gusts to fifty, though common sense now governs such decisions.

Still throughout this past season, I have seen most of our hatches declining. I maintain hope that I am witnessing just the cyclic patterns of Nature, and not a lasting absence of some of our most treasured mayflies. The fishing itself, and in saying that I mean dry fly fishing, continues nonetheless. With diligent hunting, I share the magic and energy of a good number of large wild trout each season. For the most part, there is considerable effort involved, and it is the day-to-day rhythm of these efforts that I cherish. Time on the water reveals so much, intrigues the mind and nourishes the soul.

I was reading Dana Lamb’s first book this morning and was touched by his remembrances of decades of Catskill fishing. He sang a song of subtle regret for the loss of the wild trout that once thrilled anglers on the miles of the Beaver Kill, though he closed with a fresh memory of an enchanted evening where he found a good measure of that which he had lamented to be lost. Lamb lived from “the fourth day of 1900 until the sixth day of 1986” as penned by his children in the foreword to that book, so he truly lived and fished throughout the Golden Age. I believe that is one of the reasons I read his nine volumes each winter, to share in his love of bright water and truly appreciate his profound perspective.

When “On Trout Streams and Salmon Rivers” was published in 1963, Lamb wrote of the early days as well as the years after World War II, when growth and development greatly changed the rivers. He found hordes of fishermen “looking more for fish than fishing” during those years, and his perspective, sunlit by the treasured angling experienced during the Golden Age, lamented the loss of those halcyon days of sport.

I still find thousands of anglers on our Catskill rivers today, some travelling from throughout the world to angle here at mecca. While there are stretches of water well populated by the pale little trout from the hatcheries that Lamb feared had forever replaced the beautiful wild creatures he once angled for, we are blessed to have good populations of strong, colorful wild trout in these hallowed rivers. We have learned to be better stewards of Nature’s gifts and, though there is still great progress needed toward that goal, the rivers where American dry fly fishing was born still flourish.

Those of us who take the time to know these rivers understand that the gifts the rivers bestow are not all about quantity, but truly about quality in ways both tangible and intangible. I am thankful for all of those one hundred thirteen days, for whether fine trout were fished to and landed, or my casts fell upon silent currents, each day upon bright water offers a draught of the sublime.