Cool and Breezy

There is no doubt, I can feel it in the air…

Funny how weather works. The Southwest is assaulted by record heat, while here in the Catskills today will struggle to peak near 65 degrees, as if they took our warmth to add to their heat wave. The change is pleasant here. I grabbed a fleece jacket this morning before sitting down at my desk, the windows remaining open overnight. Summer still, and the low tomorrow morning could reach the forties.

It brings me back more than forty years, to family vacations in Massachusetts’ Berkshires. We felt the crispness of August there with sunrise temperatures in the thirties. My aunt and uncle had found a little cabin on a mountainside, and a climb down the steep bank brought me face to face with a beautiful stream. Nature had provided a bountiful supply of wild brook trout in those crystalline waters, and I enjoyed two for breakfast as a special treat that next morning. Two fish was my vacation limit, and the following summers proved the worth of my stewardship. Taking a pair of seven-to-nine-inch brookies, once a year, guaranteed there would be more of like size next year.

I bought my first fly rod on that trip, though it was suited to Maryland’s warmwater ponds, not to that lovely trout brook. It started me haltingly on a path I had sought since boyhood. Ah, the memories a chill summer morning can stir! I have hope it will stir our Catskill trout as it rouses my instincts, spur them back to feeding with the flood flows now vanished from these mountains.

I am checking the wind forecast and pondering my tackle choices. My friend Dennis Menscer’s 8-foot hollowbuilt rod seems destined to accompany me today. I need my bamboo fix after wandering fruitlessly yesterday with a soulless graphite rod. The Menscer is known to bring good luck!