So, I rigged up the old Kiley rod, married it to a vintage Hardy Princess, and started my walk along the river’s edge. I believe they will be very happy together.
There was a little rain still lingering among the slopes of the Catskills, the soft, almost misty kind, but I didn’t see any signs of life on that wide expanse of the pool. I was headed to determine if the fast water, the heavier stuff, had enough depth to hide a trout. The rain was still around you see, but it failed to do much for our rivers throughout this long, nor-easter weekend.
Stopping to watch one of the better stretches, I looked back down over the pool once that misty rain had stopped, and there it was: a soft, twinkling rise!
I took my time of course, walking the stones along the edges, and slowing to a crawl once it was time to work into the pool proper. One doesn’t want to blow an opportunity one has waited for three years to meet. I watched that rise, stopping every slow, gliding step. I didn’t see anything where the trout met the air, though I had marked a handful of whitish mayflies – the summer Cahills, and a few discrete significantly smaller drab mayflies – the olives. The Cross Special has done some good work this season, and it had already been tied on, so…
The float appeared perfect, down gently with the leader and tippet to my side, plenty of distance between the fish’s bailiwick and the leader butt and that fly line. Two casts, three… nothing. So, stop and watch a moment. Still cannot see anything on that surface when he takes something; an emerger? The CDC cripple? No. The olive, it’s always the olives…
The tippet is checked, 5.5X in deference to the clarity of the water, and the little olive T.P. Dun is offered. Multiple drifts… nothing. He’s moving, and he’s not alone! Work on the one though… not having it.
A smaller, darker olive ignored. A winged ant, also ignored and he stops for a time, so I look at the insects showing. Eventually, a few larger mayflies are spotted and tagged as isonychia. A size 14 Pale Isonychia 100-Year Dun is offered to the next riser after he lunges half out of the water after something. That’s definitely a trout, 18, 20… silvery, a bow? Whatever it is they are taking, they are not my dry flies.
They are getting skittish from casting. That first one is down. What are they eating? It’s always the little olives this time of year, always…
Whatever they wanted seems to have stopped, so I withdraw, head back upriver. I find one rising at the head of the run, see a few more of the big mayflies and offer the isonychia, and he ceases rising and vanishes. I walk a long stretch beside the faster water and decide that it’s flow is too thin. All of the measurable rain has fallen east of the Catskills it seems.
Coming back downriver I see one ring when I get close, right there where that first fish rose earlier. I stalk in again and repeat. No sale. The others have not started up again (and they will not). I am smiling though, perhaps with a somewhat crooked little smile, but a smile indeed. They have arrived…
