Marching Toward Spring

The rain falls gently this morning as March continues it’s lamb role, uncharacteristically on it’s winter end. Milder temperatures continue, though the rains will raise the rivers once more, keeping this fidgety angler under roof. Should the day have dawned with sunlight rather than clouds, I would be out there right now.

I had a message from a friend this morning, and his words caught me envying his more southern exposure. He wrote that he had begun his dry fly season yesterday, finding early stoneflies and rising trout in a quiet wild trout stream hidden between clusters of civilization where one might least expect to find one. His photos remind me of Maryland’s Big Gunpowder Falls, the stream that brought my wild trout passion into focus.

I count thirty-four days until I may truly hope for my own dry fly commencement. The Wheatleys have been coaxed from storage that I might check the contents of each compartment, readying them for their place in my front vest pockets a month from now. Should this warm trend actually evolve into an early spring, I will be found searching the rivers before that month has passed.

I too witnessed early stones and a handful of soft rises last week. I was quite simply unprepared, for I have not seen a rising trout earlier than the last week of March these past five Catskill seasons. That exception was a loner, and a good deal of time passed before I found another ring upon the surface. Though it may seem foolish to carry dry flies and suitable tackle on a rare fishable day in February, I have already taken steps to meet the impossible.

Small waters are more conducive to such early opportunities, the larger rivers demanding stouter tackle and sinking leaders to swing a winter fly deep and slow. In my Falling Spring years, I carried the same seven-foot One Ounce Orvis rod in winter that I carried throughout spring and summer. A quick clip of the Shenk Sculpin and a tippet change had me ready to knot a little stonefly or midge pupa to drift in the film whenever a rise appeared. Today my winter rod is often eight or more feet of bamboo, my reel spooled with an intermediate line and a sinking leader. A spool change is required to command a dry fly, and that entails wading gently to the riverbank, restringing the rod, adjusting the tippet, all before even selecting a fly. In short, precious moments that those miraculous winter risers fail to provide.

I miss those winter days on Gunpowder Falls and Falling Spring. I have bargained the possibility of year-round dry fly fishing for the glory of the season’s full complement of hatches and large, difficult wild trout. It has been a good deal, one I do not regret, though my mind still wanders amid the long wait for spring.