Caught In Time

It is the twenty-second of January, and eight degrees here in Crooked Eddy. Sixty-seven days have passed since I last waded bright water and bid farewell to another season, so in truth, I am not yet halfway through winter’s journey. My thoughts once more run to summer…

I was sitting, huddled in a blanket this morning reading Rhoderick Haig-Brown. As he recounted the various streamer flies employed for the native cutthroats, salmon and steelhead of his Campbell River, my mind wandered to Ernie Schwiebert’s Letort Beetle. It has been many years since I tied and fished that groundbreaking classic.

Ernie recounted the fly’s birth in his “Legend and the Letort” from “Remembrances of Rivers Past” (Copyright 1972 Ernest Schwiebert): “Ross Trimmer and I were sitting in the Turnaround Meadow one August afternoon. I was tying flies and noticed some pheasant skin pieces in a hackle cannister. There were a few dark greenish throat-feathers on one fragment. We tried them instead of Jungle Cock, soaking several feathers together with lacquer to get toughness and opacity.” He trimmed these to an oval shape and tied them in flat over trimmed hackles, adding “Success was remarkable and immediate.” Schwiebert recognized the perfection of Vincent Marinaro’s concept of silhouette being the trigger for the Letort’s summer sipping trout and modified the Jassid style to mimic the larger and more robust beetles so prolific in the water meadows. Anglers have been grateful for his chance inspection of that hackle cannister for decades!

While there are days upon our summer rivers that I do best with a beetle that plops when it lands upon the surface, there are times during the lowest flows when such patterns are ignored. The trout lurking in the hides of the still pools are wary, and my summer fly box needs a row of Schwiebert’s genius!

Just over the mountain, beside the gliding waters of the West Branch Delaware, Dennis Menscer applies the final coats of varnish to my ultimate foil for days such as those, a flamed eight-foot wand to make magic with a number three line! If I close my eyes I can feel it now, laying out a feather beetle like a whisper of soft summer air…

I am caught in time, dreaming of summer delight amid the unforgiving chill of winter.

Indeed, a good half-dozen of those beetles must be tied, and I know just the feathers to employ. I have a black phase cock pheasant skin that should enhance that critical opacity.

Soon, I must begin the task of sorting fly boxes, noting any patterns and sizes that need replenishing. Reels and lines were put away cleaned and ready for use, but they will get a look, just in case. Still so many days without chance for fishing. The rivers are high and icy, reservoirs spilling into their tailwaters, and rain and a warmup headed in this week. The snow will be melted rapidly once more, and the rivers rise.

What I need is moderate flow, that joyful fifty-degree warm spell, and sunshine! Those are the days when a swung fly might tempt leviathan.

There is a taste of sunshine this morning, though it is not expected to last. The air will not warm for hours, and then not much above freezing. The paradox of timing looms as I ponder a riverwalk, the sun lights the old road and the mountainside until mid-morning, when the air still lies cold. The sun warms the body and brings cheer, yet I fear the frigid air will torture my beleaguered lungs.

Tomorrow will bring snow and ice, and as the week warms the rain will fall, erasing the winter clarity of the big river.