The weather forecast tried it’s best to discourage my plans for fishing this morning. I had mostly decided to take care of an errand, yet I tossed an old pair of waders and my boots in the Jeep as a just in case afterthought.

After a long talk, trading stories with my friend Ben at West Branch Angler, the rain so certain earlier hadn’t appeared after all, so I decided to drive down the river and see if I could find a quiet spot. Wading in, familiar waters welcomed me. By the time I had knotted a fresh tippet and a dry fly, the first few rises appeared.

Age and familiarity change our approach to most things in life, and so it goes with fishing. Seeing nothing apparent floating out there in front of me, I assumed whatever the trout were daintily sipping were small, terribly small. The experience of thirty odd years on this river told me that, but age led me to knot a size 16 Cross Special to that fresh tippet.

There was a time I happily carried several miniscule specks of thread, feathers and fur intended to match those nearly invisible olives, but today’s eyes no longer see them so clearly as they once did. The Cross brought no response from those sippers, even though I had seen one similar sized pale mayfly flying past. Familiarity had me expecting that result, so I produced a size 20 olive, knowing beforehand it was still much larger than the sippers were drawn to. Experience made that result clear as well.

An Adams poster, a size larger, but buggier and indistinct, tried to convince me while I tried to convince those trout. At some point, I stooped low to the surface to satisfy my expectations had been met. Indeed, a miniscule set of wings answered any remaining question: a dark olive, size 24 perhaps, or 26, and far too small for me to carry them in my vest anymore. I simply cannot see them clearly enough to tie them on.

So, I continued happily casting something I could tie on and see to those sipping trout, while they continually sipped “nothing” and ignored my flies. I spent the hour and a half the stalled rain allotted me, standing all alone in that wide reach of river, casting well and fully assured that any chance of catching a trout was as minute as the midget mayflies they were actually eating.

As the first trace of rain began the flies and sippers ceased seemingly in unison. I thought, as I turned to wade back to the bank, and marveled at just how many hundreds of days I had stood in that river; and in every vision in memory there was one thing which was always the same, just as it was today. I was smiling…

Yes, September is waiting.

The final weeks of summer lie ahead, and an angler’s hopes look toward cooling rivers and an increase in mayfly activity. I always search for the big claret hued fellows which have been scarce these past seasons, the isonychia. The old timers may speak of the White Gloved Howdy, and the Pennsylvania boys will be asking of their Slate Drakes, but they are most welcome when any dry fly angler finds them regardless the name they’re called.

Isonychia are typically a sporadic hatch, they come in small flotillas during afternoons when they come. While the September brood brings 12 or even 14 size specimens, not the big number tens of spring, they are a robust mayfly that catches the interest of opportunistic trout. The Delaware River rainbows seem to have a particular fondness for them, and I have brought some wide shouldered, high-flying bows from the big river’s faster stretches with some of my favorite dun imitations.

The attraction of one of these iso duns dancing atop the surface has salvaged any number of quiet, hatchless afternoons during Delaware summer wanderings. I’ve taken many fine brown trout on these flies too of course, but isonychia seem to have a magic to pull a big rainbow to the top out of seemingly lifeless water.

In more than thirty years on Catskill rivers, I have seen just one heavy, sustained hatch of these flies, and it was epic! That has been so many years ago that I no longer hope to encounter it’s likeness, but dreams are still for the dreaming.

I’ve been watching rainfall and water temperatures along the Mainstem, hoping to draw me to those long, wandering afternoons with one of my best distance rods and a box of those claret beauties. Rains can bring cool, clear heightened flows from the East Branch and mix with the seasonal muddied flow from the West Branch, keeping the Delaware dry fly friendly. Those are the conditions I desire.

The Red Gods don’t cooperate thus every season, but I long for the rarer seasons when they do. A lower, clear, cold and wadable Delaware is a wonderful September gift!

Well sir, another tornado warning right here in Hancock, New York has just passed. I didn’t hear too much wind while the weather man on the television was talking about measured velocities at 3,500 feet of altitude, but we certainly had some beat down rain! The rivers are already rising, just a few minutes after the storm passed.

This is our third tornado warning right here in the southwestern edge of the Catskills, three in eight years, and the second one not long ago produced an F-1 tornado touching down just along the east end of our village, snapping and tossing a forest of mature pines along the East Branch of the Delaware. There seems little doubt that our climate is changing. Things have gradually become more extreme. Summers are hotter and drier, but the winters have been longer and colder too. The droughts have been worse and the storms too.

Anglers are more comfortable with fairly frequent gentle rains, moderate balmy summers and mild, wet winters. All of those things are good for the rivers we cherish and the trout and insect life which provide the magic in flyfishing. I think most of the people in this region would like those weather patterns too. Most, either directly or indirectly benefit from the rivers and the fly fishing they provide.

Our rivers will probably have some color tomorrow but will clear up and be fishable for the weekend. The tailwater rivers might just get a boost in the contents of their reservoirs too, depending how far north this storm front travels. Most importantly, we managed to get through this one without the mayhem of another tornado!

I prefer to do my worrying about my dwindling supply of wood duck flank feathers, rather than destruction and floods. Being retired means I should be entertained by smaller matters: which fly line really casts best with my Leonard rods and should I buy more of the leaders I have been using this year before the maker changes them, so they don’t work for me. Of course, how in the world am I going to find enough wood duck has serious implications, though it isn’t going to knock down any trees.

I’m trying to catch my breath…

It seems the past two months have spun past like a whirlwind. It has been a great summer, allowing me to more than make up for the spring fishing that was lost. Things have slowed down, finally, and I am feeling a sense of relief. I would not begrudge the weather keeping me off the rivers today.

The energy of great fishing had me cruising through long days one after another. Now, with the slower pace of late summer, there is more work, more water to cover to find just one good trout to ply my trade, spin the magic of the dry fly.

Yesterday I covered a lot of water carefully, taking my time to dissect every possible lie my eyes could see. Casting from distance, there is no chance to observe just what makes a trout to rush into a spontaneous rise. I could see the odd trico spinner pass by in the film through the late hours of morning, but such fare does not bring an apparently idle trout to swirl hard and shower his placid abode with spray.

Granted, the larger terrestrials would seem to be the answer, but there was no proof. Cast after cast was ignored, even where there was some secondary movement to prove the fish I targeted was still in the area where he rose. When the evidence confuses, I often think that movement is the culprit.

By late August, these wild trout have been assaulted by an army of visiting anglers, throwing everything but the kitchen sink. They have been harangued and spooked. Some have been caught early on and more have been fooled by those of us who hunt stealthily and aware. By this time, they are as schooled as well as the best of us, likely more. There is always an equalizer in Nature, the attraction of an alive, wiggling, bite size something which finds itself on the water. The lack of frequency screams the laws of chance are at work!

Throughout my thirty-five years of designing and tying trout flies, the guiding principle has been to project the image of life. That is paramount – and exceedingly difficult. When the predator trout has been conditioned by a full season of heavy angling pressure, when the largesse of the spring hatches are but a memory, that image of life often comes down to movement. Ninety-nine percent of the time brother, twitchin’ ain’t gonna cut it!

A twitched fly is of course attached to a leader, and any movement imparted to a fly is accompanied with a great deal more movement, movement of unnatural things: the leader, the line, and all of the water disturbed by them. Yes, one can get away with a very subtle upstream twitch in fast water, but not in the flat sheen of summer.

A handful of early afternoon Cahills allowed me to present a Cross Special to a trout who was looking for one, and how surprised was he when that tasty looking mayfly fought back! He was a nice fish, but not a big one, but he more than it made up with surprised energy.

For a moment, it seemed there might be enough of those little pale mayflies to start something, but no. A rise here or there… and then silence.

I checked the time, after two, and so having determined those mayflies were not going to be the start of something, I changed flies and tactics.

The last cast of the day…

His movements betrayed him. He wasn’t rising, wasn’t finding the food he sought, but he clearly wanted some. I stalked him as slowly and gently as my tired bones were capable.

The most difficult decisions in that kind of game are choosing to end one drift, withdraw the fly, watch and determine the next cast. Care and a bit of divine charity let me to make those decisions correctly. I had worked all of the corridor of water he had been moving through, leaving me the only place he must have been holding, returning to when his little sorties returned no engagements. Thus, that last cast…

The drift was slow, as was the slightest little soft ring. No nose, just that soft ring…

He gave a wonderful account of himself, a pair of leaps, hard, quick runs against that deadly silent modern drag, all ignored by the sole other angler in the river not far away. Had it been a typical day, armed with a light cane rod and a classic, musical Hardy, he and I would have not kept our secret. Geared for bombing casts across two thirds of the river had me unpack the old T&T Paradigm number four; silence is deadly.

Twenty inches, right on the button, how perfect might be that last cast at the end of a long day!

I enjoy the sound of rain on my metal roof, sitting here predawn, and silently thanking God and Nature for these gifts…

It has been a good summer so far with about a week remaining in August. The tailwaters, which are the lifeblood of my summer fishing, have remained steady though at lower flows at times. July’s rainfall was a full three inches above the statistical average, and this rain could bring August’s to a happy plus inch. The result is that the Delaware reservoirs have been refilled somewhat rather than depleted day after day, and that is a very good thing.

The rains have added to the tailwater flows too of course, making things better for the fishing at the expense of somewhat higher water temperatures. Higher flows increase aeration and thus oxygenation in these rivers, so I think it evens out to a more comfortable situation for our precious wild trout.

As of Friday, Cannonsville Reservoir was 79.0 percent of capacity, well above than the levels we tend to see after three weeks of August. Frequent anglers have gotten used to muddied water in the West Branch and down into the Upper Delaware at this time of year, and dry fly fishermen aren’t joyful when we find it. I am hoping the rivers remain clear as September comes in and, such I am hoping here, it comes with nice cool nights and moderate afternoons and continued regular rainfall. I confess, I like to wade and fish the Mainstem in September.

I like to stock my vest with Isonychia, Light Cahills, Hebes and small olives and wander along the wide river with the gentle wading levels common to September. The mountainsides turn to the colors of autumn slowly under blue, clear skies, and the wild rainbows will come and sip one of those dry flies if you can put your fly in front of them quickly. I learned long ago that Delaware rainbows are movers, and if you dawdle when you need to cast quickly and accurately you may miss the opportunity. I like the challenge of that game.

When it isn’t one of those hot, dry years we have seen too frequently, September is truly sublime. After spending a lot of my summer days on the rivers, I feel like myself again. My legs are stronger, and I feel the itch to get out and wander along the big river. I began this abbreviated fishing season with a trophy wild rainbow, and I want to renew the acquaintance.

Long comfortable afternoons on that river seem to be the perfect way to wind up the dry fly season. True, I will continue my dry fly season on through October if the weather allows, but the later part of that season is and should be a celebration, and nobody says a celebration has to be a short-term occasion.

With it’s uncanny ability to reach across wide rivers with deft control and delicacy, it was a given that The Friendship Rod would journey to Sanctuary, and thus it has been done.

The river has lost that something extra that rain had offered, and so it flows as a thin, glowing pane of glass as it reflects the gorgeous clear blue skies of an incomparable summer day. August could do no finer.

Twenty-five years of memories flooded my thoughts as I waded, searched, and cast. Terrestrials fit the bill, and I hoped a reaction to the swift appearance of a substantial meal would lead to my reward. The beauty of the day could not be surpassed, but the trout had all but vacated the water after a week.

Today the fishing was superb, but the catching, well it seems the Red Gods had decreed that would not occur, not once, not in the least. Tom’s wondrous taper, so beautifully executed in John’s hands, laid flies both small and large as gently as the air itself, but if there was a trout hunkered there in that glorious reach of river, I cannot bear any witness to it.

At last, after working every lane of current, and every enticing nook behind some bit of cover, I surrendered to the beauty of the day, I clipped my fly on the frame of the stripping guide and enjoyed an hour to take a slow walk upriver, counting all of those memories made there. I watched the small pale mayflies drifting on that glassy surface, finding never a dimple or interruption to their passage. Indeed, it was a perfect day!

I just tied a new tippet to the leader on my Bougle`, readying it for the day ahead. The Friendship Rod is in the cue, and the weekend’s meanderings with tying some tiny flies sit here nearly invisible in the bottom of the pill bottle.

The air is punctuated by a gentle rain, a cooler weekend lingering just a few more hours. Sitting on the porch last evening, I watched the mist wraiths waft along the top of Point Mountain and smiled, thinking it is just fine for an August evening to feel cool and damp to the touch.

Those flies were more to satisfy a whim than really formulate a plan for the day ahead. Eleven flies, and the lot of them less than the mass of one standard size 14 Catskill dry fly. I wasn’t certain if I could still tie the tiny tricos, particularly after I rather botched a pair of the doubled patterns, but those size 24’s turned out just fine. They are joined with a trio of little rusty spinners, a couple of winged ants. A friend has been searching for tricos, and if he finds a fishable concentration I just might tag along, just to see if I can still catch a trout on nearly nothing.

Trico’s were a ritual on summer mornings in the Cumberland Valley. I opened my fly shop promptly at ten, but the spinners would generally fall by eight. The air temperature had to reach 69 degrees for the aerial mating to begin, and the fall would follow without delay. I recall the simple joys of those mornings, the soft beauty of the limestone meadows in summer…

It sounds like the rain is finishing up, I can hear birds fluttering outside the window. So, rod, reel, it’s line freshly cleaned and ready, and the flies I can’t see. Time to wash up and pick a destination and get to it!

I had not returned for some time, a place where I was often sheltered there… sanctuary.

August has never been the perfect time to venture there, and yet my destination seemed so clear. A summer where rains came when promised, cool nights still enveloped the mountains, and I had tried hard to make up for what I had lost… nearly everything; yes, it was time to go!

I walked slowly amid the shadows, waiting for the river to awaken. Signs of life caught my notice, tiny wings above the film. Here and there a small trout rose taking, whatever, for there seemed none of them in reach.

It was a welcome, the river saying hello, old friend, greeting my return with it’s smile.

There has always been magic here, contact, a connection between my very soul and the bright waters. I would arrive and a hatch would begin… we have been waiting for you, friend…

A late morning breeze came from the stillness, and at the end of my gaze I watched the swirls begin. There is something in the trees! A lighter tippet hastily tied, a small beetle, and the long, graceful casts to lie it gently above the fray. A swirl there, and raising the rod a trout cavorts as I lead him away from the pack.

Each little ruffling of the breeze the swirls would follow, and they were not just small swirls! The cast, targeted quickly where the great fish would show, and this time no ten-inch trout came skipping along the surface. The rod bends double as I work to lead him away from the others, the woodwinds background to the soprano notes of the old CFO!

The old excitement seems to have infected me, for when I first see these fish in the water, I swear they are all three feet long! Clutching life with both hands, lest it be taken away.

The net tells the truth, twenty-two, a fine wild brownie! I am thankful, for here again I find the old magic remains. What’s that, another gust of breeze? The swirls, the swirls… cast!

Yes, that fish made my day, unquestionably. The bear cub racing me along the road shoulder during my drive to the river got the day off to a great start anyway, and fooling this trophy brown just made it just about perfect. Fishing, of course, isn’t all about the trophies, the perfect days and the victories though. Sometimes, things get real.

When the sun got high enough and the air warm enough, I changed my leader and tippet and went to work on the hard stuff: the trials and hard-core technical field research needed to develop a deadly fly pattern for grasshopper fishing in the Catskills. Like I said on my last post, it is August, and its go time!

Designing and developing dry flies is hard work, and hopper fishing is no picnic. A lot of water has to be covered with strategic, long distance, pinpoint casting. As I said, there are no wide, windswept grassy fields flanking these mountain rivers. You will grow old and gray sitting on one of these riverbanks waiting for a “grasshopper wind” in anticipation of the aquatic explosions to begin, borrowing a picturesque phrase from the esteemed master angler and wordsmith Mr. Ernest Schwiebert.

It truly was a lovely day, but I guess all of that work had been wearing on me a bit, as my attention to detail slipped just a touch – all that the Red Gods needed to bring on the corollary, indeed the thrill of victory tempered with the agony of defeat!

George Maurer’s “Queen of the Waters” sent that experimental hopper perfectly. The fly alit gently, not half an inch from the shielding cover. With plenty of controlled slack in the tippet, it floated perhaps a foot until the explosion sent a burst of spray skyward. I allowed the precise half a second of pause required, raised the cane, and hooked fishzilla solidly. That finned demon kicked into overdrive and headed to the other side of the river. Perfect, yes? Well, no.

I had not tended my slack fly line studiously, some coils of it were still in my hand. When I struck, my fingers dropped those coils where the Red Gods deposited them on the handles of my forceps residing in a loop on the front of my vest. As those loose coils of line became line moving away with a high rate of speed, the forceps retarded the departure of one fishzilla trout… SNAP! I don’t think that one has happened to me for the past twenty years but, those Red Gods are patient, and punctual.

These events, I must confess, had a decided effect upon my nerves, frazzled seems to be the accurate terminology. I inspected the tippet and tied on a new hopper, cursed and moaned for an appropriate interval, and finally continued with the arduous task of fly development field research.

Feeling that the Red Gods had struck such a blow, I figured they were satisfied and were off to harass some other innocent angler. Little did I realize, they were still very much interested in yours truly, hushed and waiting, all the while planning on tickling said frazzled nerves at the perfect future moment. That moment dawned when I bravely sent my hopper deep into a tight, impenetrable ring of cover, and a big, slow, ominous wake approached it.

In retrospect, I do have to offer my applause for their execution. They tripped the trigger such that I, forewarned a thousand times of their devilment, fell fully into their trap. They let that fish break the surface so that all I could see was his mouth, enveloping my innocent fly and that tripped the trigger instantly!

I swear I felt that fly scraping on his teeth when I launched it in my direction with a triumphant sweep of the rod.

The research log indicates that the third hopper test model had a positive introductory field result.

At times I mourn the lack of some wide fields of switchgrass or grain winding along the hills beside some of our Catskill rivers. I always looked forward to August in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley for the hopper fishing!

Winter does things to an angler’s mind, particularly the dry fly angler, but sometimes a spark twinkles through the bleak white world and something good is spawned: an idea. A few seasons back, I awakened to the thought to search for information, the answer for a question that had dug out of my snowblind brain: are there any woodland grasshopper species? There are it seems, and one in the classic form and native to this southern tier and Catskill region of New York State.

Now that adult grows to be a biggun, a couple of inches long, bet they aren’t born that way. From my vise came the Baby Woodland Hopper. Now this idea, this fly, is still in it’s infancy, but it works. Hopper fishing like the good old days on the Letort and Falling Spring. I have not tied one on at sunup and cast until my arm fell numb, but I have tried them in certain situations. The big unanswered question is how many of these critters live along any number of our Catskill rivers, which rivers, and how often do they get on the water where the trout can get at them? It will take time and a concerted effort to find out.

That first summer of ’24 opened me fully to the possibilities. A two-foot brown in late July, another barely an inch shorter later in August, and a few others. The new pattern hasn’t been used a great deal. Grasshoppers are creatures of the afternoon, and I fish mornings during the high heat weather at that time of year. But I intend to explore the phenomenon at greater length.

How aggressive might be a big, wise old brownie when encountering these new hoppers? One of the early customers exploded on the fly and exploded on the leader when I set the hook, exploding the tip of my beautiful 1940’s four-weight cane rod! The rod has been repaired, thanks to the artistry of Dennis Menscer. That rod will fish some more baby hoppers.

The initial baby fly has a new companion, my Woodland Hopper. A different shade, and a bit larger, but still intended to imitate the juvenile, half-grown grasshoppers – the kids dumb enough to ignore their upbringing and play around the riverbanks. These have not been fished just yet, but it is August, and it is absolutely time for them.

The nice thing with these guys is that they are a perfect size to be fished with a light rod, a four-weight, or the D.W. Menscer 803! The choice will come down to water levels on a given day. Catskill summer fishing is still low water fishing after all.

No pictures yet here, no recipies. I’ll share it once I have proven it, sometime… after I have a little fun with them; you know, when the definitive research has been completed.