Catskill Summer

August has arrived with that lovely morning chill and sunny, warm afternoons! Summerfest has come to the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum this very weekend, and I wandered the tents and tables with glee for yesterday’s opening. I even tied a fly at the Guild’s table! Casters were working their best for the Hardy Cup and vendors offered much in the way of classic cane, vintage reels and memorabilia. Master hackle grower Charlie Collins brought down a beautiful assortment of capes for the fly tyers to covet. Of course, I bought a couple myself!

July bowed out last week and blessed us with a day of rain which cooled off our boiling atmosphere, leaving August’s dawn delightful. I wandered the rivers, shivered just a little in the early morning breeze, and found an unexpected hatch.

A few tiny sulfurs drifted where a riffle tailed out, and here and there a larger mayfly could be seen. I fished with the more plentiful small sulfur, but the better rises seemed rather strong for these mayflies. No trout touched mine, so eventually I got the message. Though barely a handful of larger sulfurs emerged, those were what the best fish wanted!

A size 14 100-Year Dun, a pattern put away since May, replaced the 16, and a strong rise began a long engagement with a beautiful 20-inch brownie! I slipped him back after retrieving my fly and he shot away back to his lie. Looking for another? Such gifts are usually brief, but to be there for the right half hour can be sublime!

I tied a couple more of those canted wing fourteens early yesterday morning, after donning an insulated shirt to ward off the 50-degree chill here at my bench. Taking it easy on this Sunday morning I added another to re-stock my summer boxes, along with a CDC dun variation and a trio of my Pale Isonychias.

My tyers log stands at sixty dozen, just a month past the halfway mark for 2025.

Sitting hear and dreaming, I can still feel the last of the morning chill, though we are headed past eighty today.

It is more or less the mid-point of our dry fly season, and I hope that this second half will be fruitful. Driving along Route 17 in yesterday’s morning mist I asked that September be a little cool and wet as opposed to the hot, dry, low-flow riverscapes of recent years. Good, cold river flows might just stimulate some more surprise hatches like those sulfurs! Sometimes I wonder if Nature holds a few in dormancy when unfavorable conditions predominate. There is still much we do not know about her magical control of our ecosystem.

Between enjoying the prime days of midsummer, there is much left to do at the rod shop, for the Catskill Gathering is barely a month away!