Nick Of Time

One week into the usual unpredictable season of Catskill hatches and I have been working on getting my instincts back into shape. I wrote early yesterday about my plan for the first truly warm morning. I realized that, with the stormy forecast and the heavy overcast at daybreak, my plan wasn’t going to happen. I tied a few flies and put them in a new caddis box; and then the sun broke through.

I figured it was just another tease as I made breakfast, but that sunshine hung around and I got myself into gear. Maybe I could make something of the morning after all.

It was ten o’clock when I stepped into the river in my shirtsleeves, already seventy degrees, and yes, there were a few caddis flitting about. Oh yes, there was also a splashy little rise out there near mid-river. I love it when a plan comes together.

With nervous energy hampering my efforts, it took me a few moments to knot the size 18 CDX to the 5X tippet. Every time I missed the hook eye with the breeze vibrating the end of that tippet, I expected the flies to vanish and that rise to cease. That is after all the kind of thing that happens out here on the rivers.

Once I was ready, and waded into a casting position, that trout made another splashy little rise to a caddisfly, so I offered him mine, a pattern I kept very confidential for more than fifteen years, the one I call simply CDX.

Little splashy rises tell a lot of anglers they are watching a small trout, sometimes they don’t even cast to them. I consider everything that’s involved, and I felt pretty confident that I was casting to a quality trout. My confidence was rewarded with a solid take and a hard run. The lithe arch of the honey toned bamboo was quite beautiful in the morning sunshine as the little Adams reel sang it’s salutation to the day.

A nineteen-inch wild brown trout puts a great perspective on an angler’s day, there is simply no denying that. There is the simple electric pleasure of fighting that fish and sharing his energy, made more poignant by the anxiety of fumbling with a vibrating tippet and a tiny hook eye while expecting the magic of the moment to vanish before your eyes.

My day was made, my instincts concerning that first warm spring morning were proven correct, and I had managed to arrive just in the nick of time. I could have happily walked out and found myself an extra cup of coffee, but then I saw a soft rise across the river.

Ah, the wonder of the soft, subtle little rise! Such moments make the spine tingle and the hairs stand up on the back of your neck if you’ve been doing this for awhile, though the initiates often think small fish that aren’t worth the trouble of working into position to explore the possibilities.

I was working into said position, carefully navigating deep, fast water while the Red Gods awakened and quickened the winds. There was another soft rise, but this time the tip of a nose was betrayed, and the electricity just made me stop and shiver!

I tried a cast or two and the wind blew harder, so I worked my feet slowly upstream until I could see a shallower patch of even stones on the bottom. I settled my boots into that spot and made sure they had good traction on the bottom. That little adjustment got me about two yards closer and gave me enough of an angle that would let me put a touch more power into my cast to overcome the crosswind.

The cane flexes smoothly, the loop unrolls, and the fly alights on that narrow band of slow, smooth water across the rush of current, and drifts…

A soft ring marks the spot where the fly was drifting, half a breath is inhaled and that quick, controlled lift connects. You feel that surge, and you know this fish is special. The trout fires away from the bank and his power joins the power of the current, and then it is all about line control and getting him on the reel. The concerto begins as the soprano notes of the click pawl drag rises above the thundering orchestra of the rushing river!

I managed each run just well enough. When I had some semblance of control, I began the careful trip back to the shallow side of the river. Control is, well, a relative word I guess, when you are connected to more than two feet of wild energy by a 5X tippet and a lithe, tapering shaft of grass bucking wildly in a menacing arch. Finally, the deed was done, the net dipped and I lifted his weight from the water, twisted the little hook free from his hard lip.

I dipped the net there in the shallows and worked his bulk into alignment with the graduations along the centerline of the net bag, reading twenty-five inches before I slipped him back to the cold crystalline world he came from.

My thoughts returned to last April, just more than a year ago, when I stood in these shallow margins of the river and snapped a quick photo of another leviathan. Friends?