Rainfall and high water in August, fancy that, so my first August fishing had to wait a day. Solitude and a sense of wonder, as after each substantial rain event I perceive the rivers are renewed.
I chose a more standard morning start time, experience telling me a dawn patrol wasn’t needed for this new water. I carried an old Leonard 50 DF, one of the early Hunt versions, wearing a 3″ St. George and the experience of years. I never really know when I visit a rain-washed river, my hopes are high invariably, but experience tells me to expect nothing. Thus, verily, I found that same.
Four hours of stalking, working some good lies and straining my eyes to dissect every inch of that water, lifeless completely for the first couple of hours. Flows change, and trout with them, and the first evidence led me to suspect the few trout training on an eye with the surface were roaming everywhere, though finding little of interest.
Eventually, I had waded all the way and found myself near the scene of the crimes. I had found that fish in mid-July, felt powerful head shakes that have become his trademark, and bemoaned when he fought to get into the snags and straightened out a not too fine wire dry fly hook. Power, and nothing.
Five days after our rude introduction, I tossed him a Cross Special when I caught a sip to a pale little mayfly. Once more, he insisted to take me to his woodshed, and my leader knot broke when I did my best to stop him. Head Shaker two, beaten angler nothing.
I came knocking on other days, even catching a couple of fine other fish, but Head Shaker failed to show. Had he left the county? Changed his hideout? No answers as July passed on. No answers until the first sojourn of August. So, after half a day of fruitless stalking, I peek around his corner once more…
There seems a quiver of movement, and I freeze and let my tired eyes continue the search, but nothing certain is found. A few casts nearby draw no attention, so I stand and wait. Seventy feet away the surface opens up with a terrible detonation and my heart jumps up in my throat. Should I put my innocent little size 16 dry fly in that? So be it.
I let the long line unroll and set the 100-Year Dun at sixty, flipping the rod tip gently to shake out some slack to extend the drift. As that canted little wing slips into a deeper shadow I lose sight, and then divine intervention urges me to lift the rod and the explosion rocks me! Head Shaker!
He is not close enough to his woodshed this time, and I strip the line heading him in my direction. Miraculously, he keeps on coming until I have forty feet of fly line piled on the water, all the while shaking that big head left then right. He dashes from side to side in front of me, flipping and somersaulting to smash the leader with his tail. All I can do is to react, parry his thrusts, until I start to worry about all of that fly line splayed out on the water.
I cannot take my fingers away from the rod grip while he is thrashing, but my right hand begins to wind. The line is loose on the reel spool, and trouble is coming, but I have no choice. If the line tangles, it is over before it starts.
When he takes a breath between dashes and thrashes, I back up a step or two. Eventually, he tries to go around me when I am backing, but I lead him that way, out into shallower water, clean bottomed shallower water.
In mid-river now I watch him flashing in full sunlight, fighting him with the line controlled in my fingers. All of that slack has all but jammed the reel, so I pull a few turns off the spool in case he runs beyond my precarious tether. The fight will be won or lost hand to hand now.
The thrust with the net brings a deep exhale, as he threatens to leap right out of it! Rod tucked under my arm, I clutch the net with both hands, then pop the fly out. It comes free quite easily. Then the camera, aligning him over the graduated scale… all twenty-five inches of him! Lastly a solemn nod to a noble foe, then slip him back into the cold, clear water. We both feel that release.
Bright Waters Catskill 