November first, and the winds have been howling today! It’s not cold, in the seventy-degree range and sunny, but with winds that could knock you down if you aren’t prepared for them. I think of these as winter winds, for in my Catskill Mountain world there are but two seasons: dry fly season and winter.
I conceded to the end of dry fly season yesterday when an eight-inch brownie grabbed my dry fly as I stripped it in for another cast. The sun was brilliant with record temperatures flirting with eighty degrees, and that drove the water temperatures up close to fifty with the thinning flows. Nothing rose, though I did see a couple of long distance splashes indicative of something sizeable chasing minnows.
Even without those winds, this first Friday of November was earmarked for chores. The wear and tear on my old porch needed some paint and wood filler, and the warm conditions are perfect for that. In between I took the cans and bottles to recycling and removed the tackle bag from the SUV. The reel with the floating fly was put up too, replaced with the holy one spun with the clear intermediate line I use for occasional winter fishing. Holy isn’t ecclesiastical in nature by the way, it’s just how I think of that machined fly reel that seems to have more holes than aluminum, the better to shake off water and dry the line before it can freeze.
I am clear to get back to the mountains now and try to find a grouse or two in the dry forest. That can be tough, but I hope a few places along some small streams will prove productive.
In a couple of weeks it will be deer season, another forest pursuit that will help take my mind away from fishing while I give the rivers and the spawning trout the rest they so richly deserve. A number of deer hunters would be clearing out their freezers about this time of year too, but I have no illusions about my luck. Any venison that finds it’s way in there comes as a gift from friends. I do still enjoy walking in the mountains and looking for a buck though.
Once the spawn is over and we hopefully get some rain to bring river flows back to normal, I usually take a day here and there when some warmer southern winds push the thermometer upwards from the winter norm. Walk a riverbank and swing a fly through likely feeding areas, easy fishing, without expectations.
There is a winter project that I am looking forward to: the chance to turn a piece of Lo o bamboo into a 7’9″ five weight fly rod. I plan to start by flaming that internode section of a culm, something I will undoubtedly look to my friend Dennis Menscer to supervise. I like the warm brown color of flamed bamboo, and flaming will also accomplish the heat treating necessary. After that, the real work begins.
I am leaning toward one of my friend Tom Whittle’s tapers. He makes a sweet, powerful 7’9″ 3-piece five weight rod that I got a chance to cast at the Catskill Gathering in 2022. I like the idea of making a rod from a taper I have cast or fished with before. The Vietnamese bamboo will make my rod a little lighter, and it will be nodeless! Bamboo nodes add a lot of work to making a fly rod, as they must be pressed, sanded, filed and straightened, as well as staggered when the strips are laid out for the blank. If everything goes well, I will have a new rod to fish when spring awakens the trout and the mayflies: the first and only Angler’s Rest Special.
Have Quill Gordon, will travel.
Bright Waters Catskill 