Fishing is picking up, though the catching still lags, so I hedged my bet this morning. Getting ready for the day ahead, I took the Leonard 66 ACM from the rod rack. I untied the leather laces of the deerskin reel pouch that holds my vintage Hardy LRH, the reel that simply belongs to the ACM. I was certain that the line had been cleaned and slickened before I put it in that pouch, but I ran it through a pad of USL just to be sure, to be as ready as I could be. That rod has a spirit in it you see, at least one, perhaps more.
I do not know the history of the rod, but I know that it has a great and special power, mojo some of us call it. The rod came to me at Summerfest in 2025, through a gentleman dealer in classic tackle who I have known for a while. Paul is a friend of Wyatt Dietrich, the Chambersburg, Pennsylvania bamboo rodmaker who made my first custom rod. Paul was the source for the taper Wyatt followed for my rod, so he and I had a connection well before we ever met. I do not know whom he bought the rod from, nor anything about that person, though I know that this rod has powerful spirits of it’s past angler or anglers within. It is truly more than simply a bamboo fly rod; it is a magic talisman.
A split bamboo rod is a living thing, and it holds some essence of those who wield it.
The Leonard Model 66 ACM rod was not a catalogued rod, made only on special order for a specific customer. I wonder who that customer might have been some 55 years ago, for now we have a connection, though I will likely never know his name.
I felt the power of this 66 ACM rod on the first day I ventured on the water, the Beaver Kill River back in April. I had nearly lost my life in March, and by the third week of April I was not truly ready to take my place upon these bright waters for the beginning of the dry fly season.
My doctor told me that I should decide when I was ready, but warned me not to do any “work”. “Do nothing that would work up a sweat”, he said. A regular, full day upon these rivers is work in that sense of physical activity, so I had waited through the month of worry, and then the surgery, and on into the recovery. When I could no longer stand to be apart from these Catskill rivers, my Cathy drove me to the Beaver Kill, set up a lawn chair on the riverbank where she could watch my progress and run to my rescue if I faltered, and let me fish for a couple of hours.
In my weakened hand that day was the very same Leonard 66 ACM fly rod. I waded gingerly into the shallow edge of the fast water there and tied a Quill Gordon 100-Year Dun to my leader. There were flies on the water, and fish rising, but there was one single rise that caught my eye. I was certain that was a good trout, but he did not rise again.
Perhaps an hour later, once the rod returned some strength and control to me, I saw a swirl below a rock, right where I had seen that good trout. The ACM and I laid that Quill Gordon right on target and, when I saw the take and raised the rod, a big old trout went berserk. After two runs downriver, deep into my backing and with myriad tense moments, I was finally able to bring that trout to my net: twenty-one inches of broad-sided wild rainbow trout.
That moment, and that fish, was my salvation.
During one of my best Catskill summers, the ACM showed me it’s power again. During one pivotal day wielding that rod, I landed three exceptional wild brown trout, a pair each measured at twenty-four inches long, and a third barely an inch shorter. The magic, the strong spirit and power in that rod is very real.
My fishing had finally slowed down at the end of summer, and I had been searching for a sign that the good autumn days I used to enjoy on the Beaver Kill would return. We have enjoyed a summer with more normal rainfall after the prolonged droughts and heavy ice accumulation over the winters in 2024 and 2025, and it has been three years since I found wild trout returning to my home pools during autumn.
I found a few mayflies and a few rising trout this week, but I had not caught any of them, thus I called once again upon the mojo of the 66 ACM.
I walked into the river before Noon, finding the pool quiet. I set about tying a new tippet to my leader, and while I busied myself with that, I saw a rise just where I had fished to a riser for a barren hour on Monday. By the time I had the tippet and a size 20 olive tied on, the Red Gods bid me good day, raising the wind from nothing to ripple the entire surface of the pool, putting my old friend down.
I stalked further into the pool, getting in position should the winds lie down and that trout resume his rising, and waited.
The blow lessened after fifteen minutes and gradually the river’s surface began to calm. Sure enough, I saw a swirl and unhooked my fly from the frame of the stripping guide, stripping enough line from the reel. When the trout rose again, I made three or four casts, walking my fly across the current as the flirting breeze still obscured the exact bubble line he fed along. On my last cast, he came for my fly. The Leonard rose to meet him and the effect was a shot of lighting, a big silvery trout leaping into the air and charging away toward the boulder field nearby.
The spirits and I kept him on the reel, played him well, and kept the frail tippet away from all of those ragged edged boulders. At last, I led him into the net: a beautiful, broad-sided wild rainbow measuring twenty-one inches long.
My mind flashed back to April on another pool more than a mile and a half upriver. Could that possibly be the same trout that magic rod had delivered to my hands back then?
No other trout would rise throughout the day, and there would be no more little olive mayflies after our encounter. The river returned to the calm, serene, glassy vista as when I arrived. I cannot shake the belief that this fish was meant for me, the wielder of this living fly rod, this Leonard 66 ACM.
My spirit lives in that rod too now.
