Dead Center

Seventy-two days behind, seventy-two ahead… I have reached dead center of the trials of winter. A long road remains.

The madness creeps in each year as the count of days mounts. Too long from the embrace of bright water, I get fidgety when I cannot get outside. The effort to beat down this bronchitis devoured my hunting season, and left me wary of chilled rivers during the milder days of December. This winter seems committed to fits and starts, numbing cold for one week, and then warmer days for a spell.

Sadly, this warmup has brought rain to melt the middling snow cover we had, all of it rushing straight to the rivers. Even if tomorrow could sprout sixty-degree sunshine, the rivers remain far too high to consider fishing. As it is, more rain and some snow are expected, with a return to highs in the thirties. As of yesterday, all three Delaware reservoirs sit at or above ninety-nine percent of capacity, with the next significant precipitation likely to add spill to their already high-water releases. Fishing is a dream far off; and retreating from view.

Sometimes a light comes from my desperation, though I will not learn whether this one amounts to brilliance or merely a feeble glow for at least the span of those seventy-two days.

Back in my limestone epoch, I fished throughout the year. Even then, the fly hatches that had spawned the creativity of the Cumberland Valley legends had diminished greatly, and the price of that season long fishing was condemnation to the tactics of the subsurface fly. Creativity was directed there of necessity, to those dark arts.

I adapted the lessons of Nature’s impressionistic coloration and specific techniques and materials to capture the essence of life for the Gammarus shrimp and the baetis and ephemerella nymphs of the limestone springs, publishing my findings in Fly Fisherman magazine in September 1997. The dubbing blends created still occupy a dispenser box that has collected dust for most of the past twenty-five years.

Some reaction to the winter madness caused me to think about those blends, conceived to foster movement and attraction, and the Struggle Dun was born. I was thinking about those long anticipated first days upon the rivers of my heart, when flies are scarce if not fully absent, but hope convinces me there are trout in a few of those ideal runs and pools, trout with watchful eyes and their own awakening hunger.

The body of the fly is tied with a dubbing loop technique, that loop closed upon sparse whisps of my nymph blends. Squirrel fur, Antron dubbing, and a touch of Lite Brite when looped and wrapped sparsely will move, quiver in the typically higher flows of early spring, and the nondescript form, highlighted by a gentle bit of flash, will appear to struggle.

I have tied three versions, 100-Year Duns winged with wood duck and Trigger Point Fibers, and CDC duns, and I have high expectations for them. I believe the attractive element could turn the tide and convince those early watchers to rise where other dry flies do not. Can the movement and attraction overcome the lethargy of cold water and the lack of insect activity? There are seventy-two days ahead to consider, theorize, and wait…