Wednesday, April 10th: A chilly rain is falling, and the mist wraiths surround me on this quiet little pool. The past two warm, lovely, sunlit days left me waiting and wanting for some actual fishing, and it was hard to come out today and muster hope for something more. I find I have less of my old willingness to suffer the weather in pursuit of trout.
We have all read those epic tales, blizzard hatches in snowstorms, trout feeding madly in pouring rain and sleet, but have we lived them? There are too many uncomfortable days spent upon rivers to count in my memory, yet I find it a truly difficult task to recall the few that offered even mediocre fishing. Perhaps all of those scribes had suffered alone and wished for companionship in the afterlife; or they simply felt that all of their readers should suffer the defeats of cold, wind and rain to better appreciate the sunny days.
I was warm enough when I settled into my seat on the riverbank, my old rain jacket zipped up to my neck. My arrival was punctuated by a burst of heavier rainfall, a gift of the Red Gods deigned to shake what little resolve I had. There was no appreciable wind, and for that I was thankful.
I had dented the soft soil and brown grass for more than an hour when I saw the rise, rising myself to work down to what I prayed would be a casting position. I had knotted the new A.I. Quill Gordon, thinking the buggy, disheveled dubbed body appropriate for a mayfly struggling to emerge in unfriendly spring conditions.
Once in reasonable range I settled my feet and resumed a patient vigil. The rain moderated, then intensified and moderated again, and at last the rise was repeated. It seems the season’s first fish was moving, for I saw some motion in the current as my fly floated beyond the target, a look as drag ensued. Watching, he slid about the fast current of the flat, rising twice more in different locations, then the rain increased once more. Chess, in a chilly spring rain!
When the droplets paused again, I was ready. He rose, I cast and he took the fly, leaving me wondering in which pocket I had stashed my sense of timing. Dulled by five and a half months of winter, I had missed him cleanly.
It would be half an hour before I caught a disturbance in the surface again. Sure enough, my missed fish had discovered another mayfly. This time I was sure I had him, but just as the electricity started up the line and into the rod it was gone. Timing too late perhaps? I know only that the hook pulled free.
The flies were sparse, as they had been on those preceding gorgeous days, coming for less than an hour. It was nearly done, though each time I thought to depart a straggler would appear, and I waited there as the cold worked it’s way into me. I saw one dance down toward an obstruction and vanish in the gentlest sipping rise, sent my fly to follow it’s path to no avail.
My traveler was finished then, and no more would he crease the flow and entice me. When the rain picked up once more, I turned. Though thoroughly chilled now, I felt that faint tingle of excitement, a hint of the old magic winking at me through the rain. Well, the season has begun…
Bright Waters Catskill 