Winter Unmasked

The first winter snowstorm has come to the Catskill Mountains and, in it’s passing, it has taken my hope for further angling during this last month of the year.

My season of fly tying and reading has begun, and there are the enameled quill bodies for three Hendricksons hanging here on my drying rack. Ah those Hendricksons! I tie them each year, and likely during each month of winter, though if those stored in myriad fly and storage boxes should be counted, they likely outnumber all the days I shall be allotted to spend upon bright waters.

These three will receive their wood duck wing, a thorax of my A.I. Hendrickson dubbing blend, and a barred rusty dun hackle from one of Charlie Collins beautiful roosters. Before that though, three more quill bodies will join them in waiting, half a dozen being such a perfect number!

I’ve been blending dubbing lately, my traditional as well as A.I. Hendrickson supplies having been depleted during a season when the tying of those favored flies was far more therapeutic than practical.

When it comes to dry flies, I have last year’s entire store of Gordon Quills and Blue Quills, as well as most of the olives still safe and unruffled in their boxes, for I encountered no hatches of these early season stalwarts whatsoever. Nature may truly perform the miraculous, and I begin the passage of these long months of winter hoping for nothing less.

Might winter grant some brief reprieve along the way, a day or two of unseasonable warmth and sunshine when the spirit soars and stiff legs find their way to the snowy banks of the river? We shall see…