Production

Well into the third week of July, I have spent some time this weekend working on my production tying, keeping my boxes full and ready with my summer patterns. Hard to imagine that the first month of summer lies behind me, but there are many wonderful memories!

The season features everything from chunky grasshoppers to the tiniest winged ants, spinners, sulfurs and tricos, and good fishing can keep me busy restocking often fished patterns. I may tie some of these during the winter months, but I still like to ride the anticipation of the next day’s fishing when I grab half-a-dozen hooks, thread and some hackles and go.

With the flies finished, I’m thinking toward the tackle to light my fire tomorrow. Yesterday I was cleaning a DT3 fly line on my old CFO III, and grabbed the tube for Jimmy Downes’ Garrison 206 seven-and-a-half footer. I’ll likely reserve that duo for a few days, after I see what yesterday’s storms wrought. We had a tornado warning posted for Hancock and Deposit, and all along the Quickway corridor southeast. We had a few tense moments, but passed the storm just fine. I hope our neighboring villages can say the same this morning.

I was looking back at a blog post from four years ago, bringing fond thoughts of my four-weight Cumberland Queen. Perhaps tomorrow she will take a walk with me in the wee hours close to dawn…

I might just take her out this morning and cast her with a different line or two. I have that habit with regards to bamboo rods, for it can turn up some surprises, even with a rod that has been more than a decade in my hands. I believe that every fine bamboo fly rod has a perfect line to bring it’s performance to a peak. We just have to bring them together!

My Cumberland Queen very much liked the 406 double tapered number four fly line spooled on my 2-3/4-inch Adams reel. I think the three of us will be very happy tomorrow. Now I should get some of these freshly tied flies out of the fly cups and into the fly boxes in my summer vest…

I just had a nice talk with friend Kevan Best, another Catskill angler who sings the praises of split bamboo fly rods. He lit a few memories mentioning fishing tricos on summer mornings. It has been a number of years ago since I found some good trico fishing here. High water storms or snowmelt runoff can move a lot of the soft silt where our smallest mayflies live, so a reach of stream may have good numbers of flies and fishing one year, nothing on the next.

When it is right in a good reach of one of our tailwaters, it can be special! Thinking quality wild brown trout sipping those size 24’s, and playing trout up there in the teens on 7X tippets and a 3-weight bamboo rod!