I seem to have found the perfect fish! I love fly fishing for wild trout for the challenge and the beauty of the experience, and challenges have been the hallmark for this season. What could be better, given that rising trout have been terribly hard to come by, than a rising uncatchable trout, one to revisit again and again?
I stalked slowly into the wide flow of the river and began to work my way downstream. My eyes scanned the surface for signs of life: an insect, a rise, even a subsurface flash. Working down, I came to that same funny little crease in the current of the pool, the place where I had earned two refusals from a trout I believe is a worthy specimen. I watched for a while, seeing nothing. I took a step to continue my search and there he was.
Of course I don’t know this is the same trout, but I certainly believe it!
Working a small, patterned area from the flat above that damned squiggle in the flow, Mr. Bow had my rapt attention. Indeed, I feel I know him by now, he whose silver gill plate flashes at me when he takes a mayfly with enticing vigor. His routine was much the same as last week, sliding toward that wrinkle for one morsel and away for the next, never quite holding a taking position and thus building the level of difficulty, as if such a confounding ribbon of current needed the help!
There weren’t many flies available, one or two now and then, tiny fellows I took for blue-winged olives. A size 20 silk bodied T.P. Dun does great service for me this time of year, and the first cast with a freshly tied model should have been my only service of the game. The drift looked good, though obviously to me alone, and I paused as he slid up and intercepted it before raising my rod in victory.
Well, no, said Mr. Bow, there’s something squirrely about the drift of that fly!
I of course tried another cast, followed by several more, all to no avail. I tried every antic I can muster with a fly rod to impart just a bit more slack to defeat that current. He failed to surface again after that refusal, at least until something more was added to the menu.
I knotted a size 18 version of the fly with a sparse trailing shuck and, with the perseverance of numerous casts, enticed him to take a swipe at that for refusal number two. Oh, I neglected to mention the wind.
Now I felt that this fish and his inability to consider rising anywhere but close to that band of wrinkled current presented challenge enough, but the Red Gods decided to up the ante. Wind gusts materialized from nowhere and plagued me for the rest of the afternoon. The only time they seemed to calm for the first hour or so coincided with my wading back to shallow water to warm up a bit. The river gage recorded forty-nine degrees for the water temperature during our little war of wits.
Eventually I forced myself to remain in the frigid water, thus firing a few casts during the calmer moments of the afternoon. The fish was unimpressed.
As had been the case last week, there was a brief and sudden appearance of a few pale mayflies, and I countered with a size 16 XL Light Cahill 100-Year Dun. He came for it once, leaving me to celebrate a third refusal, and putting me in mind of the late, great Vincent C. Marinaro’s duet with his trout without a mouth on the hallowed waters of the Letort.
Once the Cahills vanished as quickly as they had appeared, it became clear the game had ended for the day. My perfect trout had tired of it and left me alone with my thoughts. I left too, grudgingly, and ran the heat in the car all the way home.
Bright Waters Catskill 