Hopeful

The Weather Channel’s TV maps were impressive, with large blocks of greens and clusters of yellow moving across the entire Catskill region. It looked hopeful, but I could not help but notice that my little section of Hancock didn’t look very wet at all early Sunday morning. It did rain, but there really wasn’t much of that beautiful airborne moisture falling. Checking river gages across the Catskills, I found them static, with even small streams registering little or nothing.

With some evidence of overnight rain and a passing shower here and there this morning I looked at a couple gages again with fitful hope. One river showed a rise of five one-hundredths of an inch. If you were wading that reach and that entire rise happened over a period of thirty seconds, you would never know the water level had changed. Fooled again!

I was planning to begin my grouse hunting season this morning, but those light showers proved to be just enough to dash those plans. If you hunt birds with your feet instead of a bird dog, your chances of flushing a bird or two in range are much better with dry crunchy leaves. You walk slowly through the cover, stopping every ten steps or so and standing still for half a minute. When you move, you take one step with your gun ready, making as much noise as you can. The Ruffed Grouse is a smart, cagey bird and will often sit tight and let a steadily moving gunner walk right on by, flushing behind him or not at all. The stop and hold tactic tends to make them nervous; supposedly they don’t know where you are if they can’t hear you and begin to question whether to fly or not.

I can’t say what the birds are thinking, but I know that the stop and hold style of hunting is the only way I get any flushes which occasionally offer the chance for a shot. Most of the grouse hunters who actually bag a few birds during the season hunt with a good grouse dog. The birds still have the advantage over these hunters, but a good dog at least gives the gunner half a chance. Dogless hunters like myself , more or less just like taking our favorite shotguns for a walk in the autumn woods.

With my grouse opener put off until tomorrow, I have taken that old T&T Hendrickson out of the rod rack. The CFO wearing the number five Bamboo Special fly line is sitting right here beside me, ready to take full advantage of that five one hundredths of an inch of new water flowing downstream.

I found a dead October Caddisfly on my porch the other day, guessing it had been attached to my waders which had hung to dry overhead. I tied a couple more of my CDX patterns yesterday just in case. Sadly, that is a fly I cannot tie the accurate matching pattern for due to the lack of the right feathers. To tie them right, I need large, darkish orange CDC puffs, something I simply can no longer find. One of yesterday’s flies has a flourescent orange puff tied over a pair of dark khaki puffs, my best hope to get a decent color effect with daylight shining through the composite wings. Perhaps I will tie one more of those. I have had success with multi-colored CDC wings on various mayfly patterns, Maybe tying another will boost my confidence when I cast that fly at a likely looking hide. The best fly is usually one you can fish with confidence!