December Dreamin’

So here we are in December already, month number two of the Catskill Winter of 2025. The first snowstorm of the season is stalking us from the west, and I am here dreaming of fishing…

The little streamer fly pictured above is an old pattern of mine, one I have not tied for a good many seasons. Chances are I still have an old one or two, stashed somewhere in one of a hundred fly boxes, where it would take longer for me to find them than it did to tie a few new ones. I don’t fish streamers much anymore, the dry fly having fully captured my heart and mind, except as an unusual respite from winter.

JA was talking about a new pattern he had devised, one a West Point cadet had used last month to catch a bunch of hungry rainbows. I laughed when he told me of that young man’s banner day, repeating the truth here in the Delaware system that “rainbows don’t hit streamers”. He told me he thought his fly would be a fine choice for my winter swinging, though he has conveniently forgotten to send me a photo or a recipe for it’s construction. Pondering the chances that the weather will cooperate any time this month got me daydreaming about the old Pearl & Squirrel.

Ah, the Falling Spring and her bridges! None of them were large, and that last stone arch was smallest of all! The size of the cover does not command the size of the trout though.

I had crafted that simple little streamer for her shallow waters and the dace minnows who swam there. A tuft of grizzly marabou, braided pearlescent Poly Flash for the body, crowned with a long wing of gray squirrel tail and bearded with a touch of red marabou, the fly was simple and effective. It was vital that the squirrel tail came from my own hunting! For that imbued the flies with a certain mystical power. The spring creek trout respected that power, and they attacked my little dace minnow when swum nearby.

It was an evening long ago when I was abroad on the stream hoping for some sign of the sulfur hatch that once enthralled all who angled the limestone country. After ’94 the flies were scarce, and none appeared that evening, so I had cut back my tippet and knotted a size 10 Pearl & Squirrel for my last moments on the stream. Near the edge of dusk, I cast my fly across the inlet to the arch and let it swing downstream into darkness… twitch… twitch… twitch…

The short rod shuddered, the water thrashed wildly in the bole of the channel, and I found myself engaged in a vicious fight! Whatever leviathan had engulfed my Pearl & Squirrel didn’t wish to give it back, nor did he wish to come out from under that arch! Nearly the entire exchange evolved amid those close quarters. A few times he would streak downstream and I would check him, knowing that all manner of rocks, logs and roots waited there to grant him freedom. Thrice I turned him just abreast of the outlet, where he boiled and thrashed again beneath the darkness of the bridge.

I know that the magic of my patient .22 harvest of that gray squirrel granted me victory that evening, leading the great trout upstream into the open stream channel at dusk, and into my net. The brown was nearly two feet long, wide flanked and heavy, and my hand trembled as I twisted the small fly free of his jaw.

If I close my eyes, I can still feel the rush of that moment, feel my hands shaking in the cold spring water and the chill of evening.