It was cold on Saturday morning, and I had the collar of my warmest down jacket zipped up high as I crossed the Rockland House parking lot. A group of fellow celebrants had just arrived, and we were about to begin setting up for Flyfest 2024. The event marked a goodbye to winter, at least in spirit, and the fine group of anglers and fly tyers who gathered again this year quickly warmed the interior of the dining room with their smiles.
There are twenty-three days remaining in the astrological winter, with the spring equinox arriving early, on March 19th. The ten-day weather forecast for the greater Hancock area reveals the typical ups and downs in temperatures, but seven of those ten days are expected to warm into the fifties. Of course, dry fly anglers like myself aren’t expecting to find rising trout as the equinox arrives, but our expectations and enthusiasm are rising with those temperatures, a fact that was very evident on Saturday.
I have even begun the task of sorting through the flies tied these past few months, guiding them into the fly boxes that will fill my vest quite soon. The new Atherton Inspired patterns have their own box this morning, and the Wheatley’s that house the Quill Gordons, Hendricksons and Blue Quills that begin the wonder of the dry fly season are next on my list. It can be nervous work, for simply handling those boxes, the repositories of the essence of my hopes and dreams for deliverance from winter’s grasp, heightens my anticipation.
I can see my own mileposts in the distance now, lined up along the curve of the river: forty days, thirty, twenty…zero. There’s a new pair of fishing sunglasses on order, a new old St. George reel lined and ready to greet the soft curl of bright water as I stalk the first rise of a new season, and of course some new fly patterns ready to tempt the untemptable trout.
We have had good flows this winter, milder weather overall, and that bodes well for the nymphs wriggling in the silt and gravel, as well as the trout fry that herald our future. Reservoirs have a good head of water, though we don’t have the snowpack in the high country to complete the scene. Someone told me last year of a conversation with someone within the NYC Bureau of Water Supply. He was told their models expected a few years with warm, dry springs and wet summers. That came to pass in 2023. An early strong week of sunshine warmed the rivers quickly, though I remember wandering, puzzled in search of hatches that did not burst from the waters under those eighty-degree April skies. Predictions, calculations, suppositions – they make for good conversations, though they fail to reveal the timetable for Nature’s magical transformation of spring.
Bright Waters Catskill 