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.
Bright Waters Catskill 