I felt pretty good for a guy who has been awakening at four in the morning. I do my best to ignore the aches and pains, though there are more of them this year. I allowed myself the full two mugs of coffee. The damp air and cold water should wake an angler up too, but somehow I just wasn’t at my best.
My casting was right there, accurate at distance with good presentations, my Sweetgrass pent laying the fly out there in the fog on it’s first day of use since 2024. Summer is in full swing so I figured it was about time to get one of my main summer fly rods out on the water. Last summer, I found a pretty good nick in the tip section, some sort of hook dig I guess. I had fished it on through the summer, then sent it on a long distance trip to Butte, Montana, where Glenn Brackett made me a brand new tip. This day would be the shakedown cruise, and the rod cast like it had never left my hand.
I was working along, and the fly settled perfectly on an edge, drifted maybe a foot, and then was plucked from the surface very, very gently. Somewhere during the few seconds required for that sequence, my mind wandered elsewhere. I stared at the water where the fly had been for an extra second and when I raised the rod there was nothing there.
Missing a fish on a summer morning is never a good thing. Summer is when I expect to be at my peak, having shaken off the long winter both physically and mentally. Perhaps those recurring four AM wakeups is taking a toll on my concentration.
After berating myself, I continued fishing, certain that I had awakened my concentration. An hour may have passed, more or less, and I saw a little sip, placed the fly perfectly, and tried to rip that fish out of the river! No hookup, and no fly this time. I overreacted so badly that I didn’t even feel any resistance, though I still managed to break the fly off.
Trashing two opportunities is simply disastrous, for this isn’t the kind of fishing which lets you make up for those mistakes. Our hatches have been generally light this season, and at this early point of summer, I have passed more days without seeing any mayflies than I have witnessed even a ghost of a hatch. That realization shook out the rest of the cobwebs in my head, and I vowed to fish at my best level for the rest of the trip.
I backed off a bit, taking advantage of the Sweetgrass rod’s ability to present the fly from a distance. Jerry Kustich had designed this taper for me during the Covid summer of 2020, based upon email conversations about what I wanted in an ideal summer four weight. I asked for 5-strip construction, something Jerry started experimenting with back before the Booboys left Winston. A good pent has a little something, a crisp feel, and the rods I have fished are accurate. My Sweetgrass has proven to be everything I hoped for when we began our discussions.
Working from greater distance makes you pay better attention to your casting, the timing and finesse required to make a perfect presentation. That helped me to get locked in and stay that way.
I made one of those long pitches to a bank where I had been teased a time or two, most recently by watching a little snake vanish in one Hell of a boil! The take came, I paused half a breath, and then I set the hook solidly with complete control. That new rod tip arched heavily as the trout bore down into cover!
I gave that fish everything my tackle could dish out, and I turned his head just enough to lead him out toward relatively open water. He put the test to the drag of my VR reel, and it sang proudly again and again. Every time I started to bring that fish close and reached for my net, he was off again. Finally though, the good mojo of that Sweetgrass pent urged all twenty-five inches of that brown trout into the net.
Gotta love a good rod with mojo!
Bright Waters Catskill 