There are days that are quite clearly about the fishing and not the fish. Oh, what a deliverance sunshine and bright water can provide after three months of forced imprisonment!
I trod rock and gravel once again under brilliant sunshine that pushed the temperature to a glorious fifty-eight degrees. Not bad for a February afternoon in the Catskills! The water temperature responded to that same inducement, cresting above forty degrees, and I thought that something might be afoot.
I was swinging a movement fly, searching for that one take from old leviathan. So storied a trout did not come calling, and my fly swung slowly without salutation, yet what I found surprised me in more ways than one. There were flies about, little black stoneflies in February! Had I somehow traveled back to the spring creeks of the Cumberland Valley? Best of all, I witnessed a few little swirls and dimples at the surface when the breeze calmed – the occasional trout taking a handful of those twittering stones.
Now I was unprepared to say the least, but that truly didn’t matter. The sight of active flies and gentle rises was pure magic to my winter mood. I actually found one little CDC stonefly tucked into the foam of my smallest chest pack, though a sparse size 18 dry fly is not well fished on an intermediate line and heavy leader. Can you tie an 18 fly onto a 2 or 3X tippet? It seems that you can.
I cannot say the equipment available allowed a telling presentation, not even with the grace of bamboo, though that honestly wasn’t the point. I cast a dry fly to a rise on the twenty-sixth of February, and that was enough!
I don’t honestly expect to use it, but my little box of early stoneflies and a spool of 5X tippet will be tucked into my chest pack this afternoon. I mean, one shouldn’t ignore little flashes of magic when one encounters them.
Bright Waters Catskill 