It is but the fifth of December, early in the Catskills’ natural onslaught of winter, and it is two degrees here in Crooked Eddy. It was just last week that I wandered the river as the temperature flirted with sixty degrees. Oh, what have we done to reap Nature’s disdain?
Perhaps today I will reorganize my tackle room, vacuum the dust from the heat registers and make room for the small bamboo bookcase said to be arriving next week. My angling library has grown, and though I make periodic donations to the Hancock library, I have been woefully short on shelf space for several years.
It is not new books that stack my shelves. No, my tastes run to tales of the Golden Age, stories of and by those who made much of the history of these Catskill Mountains, and these volumes deserve a place of reverence.
Such frigid cold makes this a good day to ponder, blend a bit of fur and wind the silk to fashion a new pattern, stimulate the hope that the early spring warmth of the New Year will see mayflies struggling in the film as the new sun warms their wing muscles. Hope is paramount when the morning flirts with zero!
I truly hope that Nature will work her magic, and our mayflies will once again appear in plenty on the rivers of my heart. I would miss the challenges of designing new imitations nearly as much as I would stalking a fine trout subtly rising to a drifting dun!
Bright Waters Catskill 