Marking Time

My tying kit is ready for tomorrow’s Fly Tyer’s Rendezvous, and the boat net and dry bag are packed into the car for the week ahead. The weather doesn’t look very springlike but, if the wind doesn’t get too far out of hand, I am finally going to do some floating next week. There have been reports of “great fishing” though looking at the water temperatures, winds and rainfall doesn’t quite seem to jibe with that line. Advertising. Hey, it’s always great to go fishing, right?

The third week of April comes to an end, and I have spent zero hours on rivers for it’s duration. Looking ahead at the forecast, a winter coat seems in order for next week’s angling, but I have freshened the leader on my number one boat rod and reel in anticipation anyway.

I tied a few boat flies the other day, some with heavier CDC wings and some of the Trigger Point wing variety I call Century Duns. Both of these styles are more suitable for the long, downstream casting ritual common to float fishing. The tying gave me something positive to occupy my mind for a couple of hours. Keeping my sanity is kind of tough when winters hang on into the weeks we consider to be part of spring.

Traditionally, Hendricksons starting to hatch during the third week of April is what I consider a normal spring. There really isn’t any normal here in the Catskills, but it’s good to have some sort of benchmark for talking’s sake. Second week early, third week normal and fourth week late – those are the guides I use to judge the timing of the best mayfly hatch of the season, which is the real arrival of spring to a dedicated angler.

Of course those reports I mentioned have included the H-word, but I won’t believe it until I see them, along with a number of healthy rings in the surface telling me the trout are really feeding on them. To be fair, some of those reports casually mentioned that the Hendricksons and Blue Quills they were advertising were seen down river on the Mainstem. They usually start first on the lower reaches of the big river, but there is a lot of flow out there, and it hasn’t cracked that magic 50-degree water temperature for a week, so I wonder.

I will be looking for a scene like this one, hopefully including rises, when I drift down the river next week. I wish I could say that I had a lot of confidence in finding a nice hatch, but that water is still cold, and cold water doesn’t flow through my version of Valhalla. The deal is, I could find a few flies here and there, and a good brownie or two sipping in some little out of the way pocket along a random stretch of riverbank, and I am very cool with that. Kind of thing that can make your day!