After a long winter and my stolen spring, the second week of July has been a very good week of fishing. I feel good, feel myself and with the endurance I expect. I finally have proven to myself that I am up to the challenge of a six or seven hour hot summer day wandering rivers.
When I retired early in 2018, I didn’t really know how many years I would have ahead of me. I have faced some unexpected challenges, but I have come through them, and I am enjoying my passions: wild trout, dry flies and classic tackle.
The fishing this past week was just what I enjoy the most: hunting bright waters for big, wild trout. There were a lot of hours put in on various pools and rivers, several miles of walking and a lot of casts. I caught five wild brownies measuring better than that coveted twenty-inch mark, one fully two feet and a couple others that missed that length just a little bit, all of them heavy, wise customers that took every bit of skill I had. Interestingly enough, the two largest took the smallest flies of the group, sizes 17 and 18. In my world, that’s a great week!
A good rain certainly didn’t hurt my luck, though it did give me a zero for the first day of the week. The cloudy, rainy conditions should have been good for fishing, but I found virtually no bugs on the water and no trout rising that day. Better flows followed though, once the rain passed on, refreshing the rivers.
I am hoping that rainy days won’t be too scarce as the summer winds along, and I hope that most of our weather falls in my favored Catskill Summer category.
I hope I see some hatches, and some good ones to match wits with educated, locked in, PhD feeding wild trout. I want to see some evidence that our mayfly and caddis hatches have rebounded after two difficult seasons. I can’t judge anything about that based upon spring, as I wasn’t to be able out there.
When late August and September come around, I want to find some big, beautiful claret bodied mayflies some call the White-Gloved Howdy, so I can walk the wide Delaware River after the rains and cooler weather offer a prelude to fall. That fall, come to think of it, will be welcome to show us just how beautiful and productive fly fishing can be that time of year.
Most of all, I simply wish to savor every moment I can find myself outdoors among the Catskill rivers and their trout, their wildlife, and their anglers for at least as many more years that I have been fortunate to live here. Wandering bright water has been my destiny… may it always flow cold, clean and ever downstream.
Bright Waters Catskill 