Summer is flirting with the Catskills. It hasn’t quite arrived just yet, though it has passed through certain discrete locales for a brief visit. Summer always takes me back to The Source, the genesis of my own infatuation and eventual obsession with the magic of wild trout and the fly. All hail the difficult trout!
The hallowed waters of Carlisle, Pennsylvania’s Letort Spring Run were mecca for anglers who sought to walk the path. Ed Shenk was the Master of this fair limestone stream when I journeyed there, and the magician who crafted some of the most famous flies in the world, the manna that could tempt leviathan from the dark places hidden beneath the soft banks and whirling beds of elodea. I sat at the Master’s side and learned his methods and his reasoning, and I remain forever grateful for his gifts.
Summer was the prime season for the dry fly on all of the spring-fed creeks of the quaint Cumberland Valley. Mayfly populations were not high even then, more than three decades ago, and the bounty born of the meadows came in the form of terrestrial insects. Ants, both crawling and winged, various beetles, leafhoppers, crickets and the glorious grasshoppers soothed the hunger of the wild brown and rainbow trout. It was here that the second great revolution of the dry fly evolved.
My heart longs for the best of those days!
Thirty years have passed, and I have migrated to the Catskills. I still feel my heartbeat quicken when summer arrives, and the trout change their mood. It is time to hunt!
Bright Waters Catskill 