Mikey – Storm Comin’

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.