December

December, and it is twenty-four degrees here in Crooked Eddy. The first month of the Catskill angler’s winter lies behind, thus only four months remain. The early cold and snow makes it seem like mid-winter, as our highs will stay close to freezing all week.

My friend Mike just sent me a few photos from his Lake Erie cottage, his message entitled “No Steelhead Fishing This Week”. I don’t know if he is up there this morning, but if he is he will be staying a while.

In years past I learned something of that region’s lake effect snowstorms, largely that the greatest accumulations tend to pass over the lakeshore, settling a few miles inland. Of course, the highways and villages lie a few miles inland.

We often get tailing squalls from lake effect snows in these Western Catskills. You can be reading quietly on a moderately sunny day and look up from your book to see a furious swirl of wind driven snow. Two paragraphs later the sun has returned. I am pleased not to dwell in the land of those squalls, (they last for days there!) though I would enjoy a winter walk along any of the steelhead tributaries I have known.

I took a few dry fly hooks to task the other day, spinning out half a dozen of my 100-Year Dun versions of the Catskill Adams. I tinkered first though, blending a touch of hare’s ear gray Antron and Red Fox underfur to the clippings of my Fox Squirrel pelt. Both serve as binders for the wonderful, short guard hairs of the squirrel with a hint of sparkle to catch the eye. I must find just the right fly box for them so I can find them four months hence.

Winter fly tying has always been about exploring ideas for me. A day on the river may inspire a new pattern, with a handful of them tied next morning before dawn, but winter allows more time for thought, refinement and expansion of the idea. The best of these flies may never be modified, though borne of inspiration they are thoroughly, considered, once the all-consuming passion of the season has been subdued by winter’s forced time away from bright waters.

Just now a thought has crossed my mind, a concept for the perfection of a Translucence isonychia. There is a tiny bag of silk dubbing blended to the classic claret shade tucked into my cabinet, one that never quite clicked. It needs lightening, a blend of tannish, even olive hues to mimic Nature’s lively beauty.

Ah, I have something to work on today…