As fully expected, my friend’s visit brought stormy skies and wet fishing, muddied rivers and, sadly, produced very few trout. Oh, we spent some lovely hours on the Catskill rivers, misty rain drenched days when every mayfly in the drainage could have been expected to hatch. They didn’t. Though cooler and wetter than the past two weeks, these three days offered no more insect activity than the hot, bright, low water conditions that preceded them.

Hatches have always varied from year to year, but I cannot convince myself that there has not been a significant decline in all species dear to the angler’s heart. A handful of Green Drakes sputtered off over the period, and I know it was not simply the slow beginning of the hatch, for my grille was plastered with Coffin Flies Monday night as they tried their fate at reproduction on a wet roadway rather than their natal waters close by.

We talked of the hatches we had seen twenty years ago, with plenty of duns emerging during the afternoons to bring leviathan and his brethren to the surface. A wet, cool, misty day like yesterday would have produced a heavy hatch back then; today only a few ghosts of what had been, with a handful of trout cruising, still chasing the odd rising nymph.

It is not only the Green Drakes we missed, witnessing but token appearances of March Browns and sulfurs. Still. I try to convince myself this is another of Nature’s cycles, and not the finality of an environment too long neglected and abused.

We took what was best about this span of days, two old friends sharing the water, joking about the lack of fishing opportunities, and each other’s foibles. We thought of others we have known, friends not present, for they fish now somewhere off around the bend. Time stalks each of us, and we know not when the showdown will transpire. May there be many more seasons, visits like these, and may at least a few of them mirror the best of long ago.

The Catskill rivers really need some rain. There won’t be the great fishing we all associate with Bug Week unless we get some, for NYC simply isn’t going to give us any water. I’ve been really worried about this, and I finally had to take action. I mean there are dozens of drift boats out there sitting upon dry gravel, filled with wide-eyed staring fishermen. Mikey is coming up for a visit!

The forecasts changed as soon as he picked an arrival date: three days fishing in the Catskills, three days of thunderstorms.

Now Mike and I go way back, thirty years, and he has always had this magic power to bring bad weather to any planned fishing trip. I recall one season many years ago. I had arrived early to get in as much fishing as possible before Mike sidled into New York and brough the flood. I had started taking a two-week vacation, generally centered around the last week of May and the first week of June each year, and I guess I was about three days into the first week. I was on the river and catching brownies on Green Drakes when Mike showed up. The black clouds followed within the hour and the wrath of the Red Gods descended on the Delaware River system. That storm blew out all of the rivers for three or four days!

I cannot count the early springs when I sat at home checking the fishing reports and watching river gages and weather forecasts before launching my first trip to intercept the Hendrickson hatch. All it took was for Mike to announce that he “might be able to get away for the weekend” for the rain and the deep freeze to come whistling out of the north. The man has a strange mystical power, and you simply have to respect it!

I am hoping that my plan will work out this time, and we will get enough rain to give our rivers the big drink they desperately need. I know, it’s a risky plan, but I am hoping that the rivers will clear after he slips back to Maryland and give us at least a few days when the water is high enough and cold enough to keep the backs of the mayflies wet.

I am going out fishing this morning with an old friend. Actually, I never met Tom Maxwell, though I am intimately familiar with his work. My Thomas & Thomas bamboo fly rods are favorites which see a lot of time on my Catskill rivers each season.

A couple of years after his departure from the company he helped found, Maxwell was hired to lead the rod making operations at the storied H. L. Leonard Rod Company. Many anglers will tell you a tale about some memorable moments astream with their Leonard rod, particularly the iconic 50DF model. Many fans and collectors of the marque hold special praise for the rods made late in the company’s history, the rods of the Maxwell Era. It is said that the most beautiful rods in their storied history bear the hand of Thomas Maxwell. That notation in a classic tackle dealer’s listing commands a premium, for the prices asked and gladly paid for Maxwell Leonards are among the highest for the fly rods which bear old Hiram Leonard’s name.

I was interested in a Leonard 50DF, and I had perused various listings of rods offered by dealers of my acquaintance. I had no designs on a Maxwell, for there was no question they were out of my price range. Once in a very long while though, even I can get lucky. I visited the website of South Creek, Ltd. as I had purchased a lovely seven-foot Granger from proprietor and rodmaker Michael Clark several years ago. There among his listings was a nearly new Leonard 50DF-6 made in 1980, the fabled Maxwell era, inked in his hand. I won’t divulge the price, but I will say I was astonished at how very affordable this rod was, even for an old, retired working man like me. A milestone was approaching, and I took the availability of this coveted rod as a sign. Arrangements were quickly made for the rod to travel from Colorado to the Catskills.

I have cast the 50 with several lines, both five and six weights, and it is amazing, much faster in action than my fifties vintage Model 66. I doubt the rod was ever fished, lawn cast, but likely never taken to the water. It is for all intents and purposes a brand new forty-four-year-old fly rod. Today it shall become a much-appreciated used bamboo rod.

We entered the river just after six o’clock, parting the morning mist. I chose the early morning shift as the afternoons had proved difficult to say the least. It seems a bit early for the kind of morning activity I hoped for. It has felt like summer this past week, but it is still spring, despite the low water and hot sunshine.

I knotted a rusty spinner to my tippet and set about prospecting the tailing currents of a gentle riffle. I had not made a lot of casts when a rise met my spinner and the Leonard came up deftly. The trout leaped when his breakfast bit back, then set about testing the arch of this fine shaft of split cane. Yes, I had visions of christening this special rod with a twenty-inch brown, but that gloriously dark colored foot long fellow was well received on this day.

The big fish proved they were not yet interested in an early breakfast. Perhaps when summer does arrive their patterns will change. Our rivers need rain, and there are promises in that regard for next week. Whether they are fulfilled lies in other hands than mine.

Tom’s Leonard performed beautifully, and now that I’ve had it on the water, I will continue my search for the perfect line. Every bamboo rod has one.

It is the prime of May and our rivers seem to be haunted by the doldrums. Next week is Bug Week, so perhaps the bugs are simply biding their time until the celebration. The weather is hot, and the rivers are low, so it’s not surprising that fishing days haven’t been interrupted by too many epic battles.

The fly shops have been doing the “it’s best in the evenings” chant for a while now, though I have talked to several anglers that advised the sundown fishing has still been slow. It is the Catskills, so one can be sure that there are trout rising somewhere, though that doesn’t guarantee they will be taking our flies.

It is six AM here at Crooked Eddy, and I am feeling a bit reflective. Another milestone approaches and, though I have not found that perfect time and place for angling nirvana for the past couple of weeks, I rejoice at the opportunity to keep looking for it!

I am nine years down the road from the events that might have ended my life before I really got to taste the best of it and have spent six of those years truly enjoying the flavor of it all. I spend my days wading bright water, thinking about bright water, and angling for some of the most beautiful wild trout in the world. Yes, fishing has been a little slow, but man there’s still nothing I’d rather be doing!

I have spent the past couple of days wading a low, clear pool while good trout cruised all around busting the occasional something. I believe they have been hunting down March Brown nymphs as they hang just under the surface, taking them hard when they find one. I have seen flashes of movement a few times, when one of those fish darted a couple of feet to nail his emerging dinner.

I have seen this behavior before, particularly when the water gets very low and the bugs are sparse and sporadic. I encountered this a decade or so ago and came up with a fly to deal with the uncatchable trout. I had some success with it, so yesterday I was well stocked and ready for them. The brownies that fell for my imitation all those years ago must have passed on the information to their offspring, as none of yesterday’s cruisers took a second look at my fly. It’s a great imitation, but it ain’t alive!

That is indeed the crux of the magical pursuit of wild trout with the fly: trout eat living insects, insects that swim and wiggle, and struggle. These characteristics are never more evident than during bright sunny days in low, clear, slow-moving water. The trout themselves, particularly the larger, wiser members of the tribe, are at their wariest, but they seem comfortable in their instincts and abilities. They can hunt the food Nature offers at the moment while minimizing the danger, and they get better at it every generation.

My focus as a fly tyer has always been a quest to enhance the image of life presented by my flies. I design as much movement as I can get into patterns for the most difficult situation, but the trout still manage to come away unscathed at times. Honestly, if it weren’t for times like these, I wouldn’t have the same passion for fly fishing.

There is some rain in today’s forecast, though not enough to change river conditions. There is supposed to be more of it next week. I will have to wait and see if we get enough of it to improve the flows and invigorate the fishing. While writing this, I had a thought of how to improve the movement of that hanging emerger, so I am going to take another shot at tying a fly that will break the code of the cruisers. I can’t change the weather; all I can do is work the problem.

It is a state of mind as much as an actual place, a reach of bright water where fantasy dwells with silence and the soft murmur of sun warmed air and trickling water.

Memory lives there, decades of it, though it lives in the present in the ultimate challenges I face there. Flies were born there, theories formed, revised and proven. It is everything that is angling to one who lives for angling itself.

It is a place for sitting in the warm sunshine, contemplating the likelihood of the hatch long anticipated and the run of years that has brought me to bright water for sustenance of the soul. There are echoes there, voices laughing, the symphony of an old Hardy singing in high notes of leviathan unleashed! Images of things that may never be again…

I walk there with a favorite old rod in hand, this one passed on from a friend in the Cumberland Valley. He fished it hard for a good span of years, and now as his time on the water has passed, I carry it on these Catskill rivers to make my own memories. Bamboo has a soul, something of the maker who crafted it from the culm, something of the anglers who have wielded it remain.

I marvel at the magic in this place. How many times have I entered here to find the water quiet, waded in, and had trout begin rising in greeting? That happens not on other reaches of bright water. This young season the greetings have been brief, a cast, a drift, and they recede. The magic remains, but so does the incredible challenge.

No season has truly begun until I wade these waters, assess the changes wrought by winter’s ice and snowmelt’s floods. Last year I found a fine bed of new shallow gravel in a place I used to wade the high flows, before a few spring floods deepened it well beyond wading. Nature giveth and she taketh away. Her gift may be quite perfect one day hence.

If I have my way, I will trust my ashes to the sparkling currents of sanctuary, return something of my essence to the river that schooled me, delighted me, delivered me. The ashes of some fine shaft of cane shall join me there. Take what you need with you.

Rainy day fly fishing is much vaunted in our literature, but I feel there are limits. Yes, damp cloudy days can bring sustained hatches of blue winged olives and other mayflies, but I have found trout reluctant to rise whenever the surface is significantly agitated, whether by rain or wind. I have always assumed that these conditions hamper the trout’s vision and their ability to discern the insects they seek from the floating chaff.

I can count endless days on the water when accelerated downpours have shut down rather heavy feeding sessions. The bugs remain, but the rises cease, at least until the rain slacks up considerably. Stormy days are largely the worst as the winds often charge in anew whenever the rain lessens. Nature being whom she is though, I have witnessed sudden eruptions of rises as a thunderstorm bared down upon me. The reaction is always to look over one’s shoulder at the threatening weather and cast furiously. Don’t fall for it… get off the water! Distant lightning can kill you.

I put in my time on a fine-looking, brooding sort of day last week, but I wasn’t rewarded with a significant hatch. I didn’t get wet, though the chill of the water got through more than on a sunny day.

The best thing about rainy days is the freshening they can impart to our rivers. I have enjoyed improved fishing on many occasions after a good rain has raised the flow during low water conditions. I’d love to see that happen this time, for there are a number of pools that could use a boost. I might even put on the old raingear and head out this afternoon. The Hendrickson is waiting…

I had one of those tough days late last week, the kind where the opportunities you hoped for just refused to materialize. The trout were spread out and there were very few flies on the water even as prime time rolled around, so I wasn’t doing much fishing as I was fruitlessly waiting. I found myself with a brief and difficult window, eventually.

The water I was trying to fish was low as were most of our rivers, and that restricted my movement significantly. Wandering around in low water just alerts all of those trout you don’t see rising, with the result that they don’t rise when the day’s sparse allotment of mayflies finally gets going.

I waded very slowly and set myself up to be able to reach a long line of drift where the main current carries most of the stuff on the surface, bubbles, miscellaneous vegetative matter and bugs over some of the best bottom habitat in the area. That is usually the right plan under tough conditions like these, but it wasn’t on that day.

There is a secondary current that spreads down along the near bank of that pool. It is very subtle, unnoticeable in low flows, unless there happen to be flies on the water. As I was standing stone still and carefully watching the prime lies across the river, I heard a little plop or two that sounded like it could have been behind me. Thinking a fish might have risen quietly well downstream, I didn’t trust the directionality of my ears, and kept concentrating on that main line of drift. There was simply nothing doing out there.

Eventually, a few mayflies started to show, and I truly expected my patience to pay off. It didn’t, but I did hear another plop or two and turned around to watch that secondary current. Sure enough, there were a few flies coming down through the back door hallway, and a trout was taking advantage of them.

As the number of flies increased, I found four or five trout spread out over an area some thirty feet wide and one hundred feet long, all of them fairly close to the shallow bank. They were not holding position, but each trout was cruising around a small area. Once they got going though, I was pretty well trapped. These were good fish, I know because I encountered this same situation a few seasons ago in this area, during another early spring low water scenario. There was no way these fish were going to allow me to move into a favorable casting position to fish them, leaving me with trying to take advantage of what would be the afternoon’s only opportunity via long casts nearly straight downstream.

It was a flat light kind of day, so I was looking straight into widespread glare as I tried to watch my fly, casting and mending to feed it to one of these moving targets. When I can’t see my fly at the take, I tend to get antsy sometimes, and this was one of those times. On a downstream presentation like this, you have to wait a little longer before you raise your rod to strike a taking fish. I know that very well, but losing sight of my fly and that antsy feeling undoes things.

I was a bit too early when I thought the nearest fish took my fly, and I pulled it right out of his mouth. Of course, that raised my frustration level and made me do the same thing again. Self-defeating prophecy – same result for number three, though he actually started to pull, hard, before he opened his mouth and let go of my fly. I don’t believe he was even hooked. I think he clamped down on the fly and then decided to let go when it pulled back. That is all the time Nature allowed, for the flies stopped coming within moments. That is definitely fishing.

I have found feeding fish in secondary current situations before, though it usually happens in areas where the trout are rarely disturbed and not on our hard fished Catskill rivers. I recognized the possibility before anything happened, but I remained intent upon the more likely water near the other side of the river. The result was really just the luck of the draw; it wasn’t going to be my day.

If I had it to do over again, I would have moved into a position earlier, setting up for the rare chance of the action happening on the thread of that secondary current. If it hadn’t, and that was really the most likely outcome, I would have been easily able to move into position to work the main run without spooking trout beginning to feed in that wider, deeper section of water. Might have turned out to be my day after all.

Another gorgeous May day, though the winds were epic yesterday! At one point there were so many seed pods and assorted tree litter blown onto the surface the downstream view resembled a field as much as it did a river. In between those catastrophic blows, lay periods of calm when, if you could spot them amongst all of that floating vegetation, were a few soft riseforms. It was a tumultuous though beautiful afternoon to stray along bright water.

I had a good laugh to complement the passion and solitude of the scene. Yes, that first rise, a soft little sip alongside a brushy hide, while straining to follow my fly amid the seed pod flotilla I managed a take! My hookset had him vaulting from the water and my mirth overcame me. Still hooked after the launch, I pulled him close, all five inches of him! Well, perhaps only four and a half, but I’ll call him five.

After a long blow I spied another little something and tossed my 100-Year Dun out there. Lost the fly in the vegetation for a split second and tightened out of reflex into a good pull. Wild and leaping, flashing in the sun, I could have sworn I had a rainbow. He put up quite a show, a silvery sided brown trout a bit more than sixteen inches, masquerading as a bow.

The flies were sparse, or at least the ones I could pick out of the blizzard hatch of seed pods were. Late, the pool showed little, but I heard a splash or two upstream and found a couple taking duns sporadically in the top of the little run. No takers though, at least not until the main event.

Every once in awhile you find one of those guys, the big trout with a hair trigger, lying in shallow fast water and sucking down a snack. I cast, saw the funny little disturbance by the submerged rock and raised the rod. That big boy took off like a bullet, nearly pulling the loosely held rod grip right out of my hand. It’s all reflex then, no time for thinking: the clutch! Tighten that grip to save the rod and…snap! I’ve still got the rod but no big, burly trout to admire, and he’s gotten away with my fly!

Lightning from a cobalt blue sky? Yes, when the magic of bright water and the spirits found in vintage fly tackle are stirred in the same pot!

It is raining now in Crooked Eddy, the downpour gaining strength as I write. Perhaps the thunderstorms predicted for this May morning have spun from that same brew.

I was on my feet early yesterday, shaved and showered and off to the doctor for my regular checkup. Still old, still breathing, and thank God still fishing. Since it was a gloriously bright morning, I decided to wander over to the Beaver Kill early. I was thinking caddis once again, having tied another half-dozen to add to the box. I found the river ultimately quiet, even it’s heavy runs looked more the gentle glide. I didn’t see a bug. I did walk several hundred yards of riffled water, sure I would find some little enclave of active insects and the vision of a riser, but it was not to be.

I wandered a bit, settling on another river and readying the Leonard and my Hardy St. George for the hoped-for goal of a rising trout or two. There is something I like about fishing tackle with a history, even though I am not privy to the details. My Leonard is a Model 66H, pre-fire to those interested, a rod that dates from the same span of the fifties as I. The St. George is a decade older; the stern hand of experience to keep the youngsters settled down when the games afoot.

I found a very small number of the little shad caddis though it took a while for any corresponding sign of life from the underside of the film. Wild trout are not showy in low water under bright skies. The little trout will make a quick pop and take a caddisfly that is dancing right above his living room, but the older, wiser gentlemen and ladies of the pool remain subdued. Patience, as always, became the order of the day.

I was hoping for some sort of a hatch, spinner fall, anything to change the game as I wiled away the long hours of midday. I had gambled that a few straggling mayflies might appear and give me one chance, and thus that magical repetitive nature of lightning came into play.

My prayers were answered then by the Lady herself, and I found something far more interesting than the once or twice risers scattered about the pool. One very good fish cruising his sanctuary, a lair apart where the mystical currents helped him detect any fraud, established himself in my consciousness and I set about the game in earnest.

My foe was the epitome of the selective trout, and with live and spent caddis and a few small mayflies thrown in, he chose carefully. The challenge with a cruiser is doubled, no, perhaps I should say the challenge is squared in the mathematical sense. He sips an unseen morsel, and the angler casts. When he sips again, he is invariably in a different location, and the cast must be adjusted for new tricks of the currents, always with the knowledge that he likely moved as soon as he took that last insect, and he might have come closer. Line him, even most gently with a bit of leader, and he is gone forever!

So, this is the game we played. Once I saw enough of the somber-toned Lady H mayflies, my choice of fly was set, and I knotted a fresh 5X tippet and size 16 100-Year Dun.

We had played the game for an hour or thereabouts, the trout casually filling his belly, and I seemingly casting delicately with the old Leonard to somewhere he wasn’t. The tension increases with each cast, each fruitless drift, for the risk of ruination mounts. My thanks to the smoothness of that classic old rod, for it allowed me to put nothing but fly and leader near him as softly as air, so the game could continue.

Patience, and the grace of the Lady, finally turned the game in my favor. Though the hatch wasn’t heavy, there was that little pulse of flies Nature often provides; enough duns to quicken the pace of the feeding fish and cause him to choose a preferred spot to take best advantage. Moving still, but restricted now to a much narrower lane, my cast places my Lady before him once, twice, and a third time…

The lightning struck me as I raised that ancient fly rod and felt the power of my foe, stripping line as fast as possible while he compounded his error by coming out and away from the cover that would have defeated me. Turning, he darted away and coaxed a lovely tune from that long silent 1940’s Hardy.

Wading deep, surrounded by boulders, and tied to a bolt of lightning by a spiderweb, those sensations are the reasons we become anglers for life! I rejoiced with each musical run, turned each rush for cover, and thought I had him once. As I raised the net, he used my own momentum to launch himself back out of the bag and start away anew! He bored hard for the snag that would smash my leader and win his freedom, and I brought every bit of power that rod possessed into one menacing arch. He boiled inches short of freedom and turned.

When I drew him close that second time, I made sure he was ready, and netted him securely. The bag sagged with his weight, keeping his flank in the water as I twisted the little fly free. Twenty-five inches lined up along the measuring scale of the net, heavy bodied and gloriously colored, I estimated him to weigh in the six-pound range. I thought of the camera, but the fight had been hard, and low flows in wide pools don’t have the highest oxygen levels even when the water is perfectly cold. I turned him back instead, and he set himself behind a rock there at my feet.

Watching my steps, I backed away in that hip deep water and took out my camera. Submerging it, I chanced my guessed alignment would capture him as he finned slowly there, recovering. I can’t see anything through the little viewfinder when the camera is under water, so I changed my alignment and took a second shot.

After watching him for a few moments, I touched him lightly with my staff, smiling as he darted off toward his sanctuary. I thought then about doing the same.

It seems the wonder and the magic of the Hendricksons has passed for another year. They visited very little with me. Yes, there may be encounters, brief appearances on the Upper West Branch, but the true glory of it all is done.

In an odd spring such as this one, I am often left wondering what became of them. Certainly, they did not issue from the waters I called home, not in the staggering numbers sweet memory cherishes. I suspect the overall mild nature of winter coupled with the warmth of March chided them from their sleep to trickle off during the high water, leaving only a remnant guard to greet faithful wading anglers such as I. I pray only that they found success in seeding their next generation.

And so on to May, and the flies whose colors mimic the emerging vegetation: the bright green of the Shadfly, the varied yellows of the sulfur clan and the pale ghosts we still call March Browns!

It is raining now in Crooked Eddy, on a cold May morning in these Catskill Mountains. The rivers will be grateful for the rain, both freestone and tailwater alike. New York City you see has begun their game anew, hording water until the first of June until they can flush it down the Delaware en masse if they choose to finally make their aqueduct repairs this season. If not, well, they’re only fish and fishermen.

Tailwater flows have been dropped suddenly to summer low flows, so our difficult trout will become more difficult, scurrying from the assault of anglers the prime days of May inevitably bring. There are those who shall insist upon boating the scant depths of these rivers, adding to the fray, shouting “walk and wade trips, no way!” He who finds an unmolested trout first may catch it, while he who wanders second, or one hundredth, shall not. Pray for rain I say!

Last evening I settled in and enjoyed a wee dram in homage to the new season. It has begun with challenges galore, though the first entry in the log was a serious contender. Wild trout more than two feet long are not to be taken lightly! Today I will see to the fly boxes once more: Shadflies, sulfurs, March Browns and the big bright olives. There is always one Hendrickson box that remains in my vest far beyond it’s expiration date. Call it sentimentality or homage, the manifestation of my annual reluctance to accept the passing of a friend.