I had errands stretching out my morning, keeping me from the river. With those stops made, I turned East, the bright morning sun already high in the bluest of skies. One last stop, as the gas guage was calling me, nagging at my impatience. Standing there pumping gas, I watched the sky. A large bird appeared, flying from the north, and I thought it an eagle. Drawing near, his path right over me, I saw the conformation wasn’t that of our national symbol. This big fellow shone with his black feathers in the morning sun and uttered a distinct croaking call as he passed overhead… a raven!

I took the event as what it was, a spiritual encounter, one that gave me a moment of concern, but also a feeling of good fortune ahead. The Native Americans called him messenger and trickster, and I thought of the portent of his appearance, his call to me.

When I reached the riverside, I called Cathy to keep an eye on our little cat Raven, and asked to be certain that the door to my fly tying room was secure from his entry. Flies, hooks and feathers are not a good combination with a high-spirited little cat. Secure that everything was fine at home, I was confident that my visitor’s message was directed at me, and I knew exactly what to do.

I donned waders and boots, then joined the rod sections of the 66 ACM. The vintage Hardy LRH that belongs to this rod has seen as many years as that classic blond bamboo scepter. I ran the fly line through the guides and started for the path to the river. I knew exactly where to go.

I took in the scene: the flow receded after Friday’s rain, sparklingly clear, still perfect for fishing the tiny dry flies of the late season. I walked along the margins of the water and took a seat on a grassy clump along the shore and waited. I knew that first rise would come, the raven had spoken to me.

The tails of the morning passed quietly under that clear beautiful autumn sky, and sure as expected, that soft bright wink brought a smile to my face. Rising, I eased into the flow, placing each footfall gently and stealthily, lest a rock roll beneath me and break the spell.

The trout seemed to be searching for just the right line of drift. He came three times at intervals, each in a different position. I tried a cast at each, untaken. After a time, he began to sip confidently that he had chosen his feeding lie, and the golden shaft of bamboo arched once more, the tiny dry fly alighting exactly in line.

When he took the fly, I felt a calm, pausing just enough before raising the cane into a full, throbbing arch. He darted away from the bank, leaped into the sunlight, and fought the pull of the rod, the reel speaking unto the silence it’s protests. All of his tricks were thwarted, and I drew him to me and lifted him into the net: twenty inches of wild autumn brown trout!

I waded back to my seat on the riverbank then, took up my vigil with a smile growing upon my face. A perfect morning, foretold by an unexpected messenger. The river lay quiet before me after that, and on into the afternoon. I basked in the warmth of the sun, watched the golden light wash the scene before me, my face still framed by that smile. The dry fly season lives!

And so, the calendar’s pages have wandered into the last half of October…

It is twenty-eight degrees here in Crooked Eddy and the lawn bears the glistening white shine of the first frost of the season.

Our Catskill Fly Tyers Guild closed the season with our final live meeting of 2026 with a surprising number of members gathered on a damp, cold and windswept Saturday morning. I tied first a trio of size twenty TP Olives, the flies I tie my hopes to for the last moments of dry fly fishing. Next week looks pleasant, a run of sunny days in the fifties and sixties. Perhaps the tying of those symbols of hope there, amid my brethren, will lend a bit of luck to the week ahead.

Friday’s rain surprised me, as though it seemed Hancock saw little of it, the river gages offered a hopeful picture. The Beaver Kill is flowing near perfectly right now. This liquid gift will have to last the week, so while low water is expected, I actually am buoyed by the possibilities. As these flows recede, the sun will warm the river as the evening’s chill will cool it, faster every day. If the Red Gods grant us freedom from their blustery winds, a couple of these afternoons could be sublime.

The chatter about an El Nino winter is trending to a warmer than average winter here, though any winter storm that comes our way could be massive. Nature giveth, and she taketh away. I would welcome the warmer air, and regular gentle soaking rains to swell the aquifers that feed our Catskill bright waters. An occasional day to visit an ice-free river to swing a wet fly through a deep, rocky pool can be powerful, cleansing and recharging one’s soul to face the months deprived of the magic of the dry fly.

There is a small Hungarian partridge feather lying absently here on my bench. I wish to take it, wrap it with some winds of silk and a tuft of fur about a hook, to give it life that it might tempt life in turn. That is the quiet magic that a fly tyer does.

There, now that little feather has a purpose!

Funny that, once that first cold wind, that first frost greets the day, it becomes abundantly clear that winter could be upon us with a moment’s notice. All hopes for sunny days, rising trout, and another taste of the magic can vanish with a turn of the winds. Autumn is real now, not simply bright sun in blue skies, glowing afternoons decorated with reds, yellows and oranges all ignited with that comparable golden light. Autumn now has a threat about her, visible even behind her glamorous smile.

I will take the rod out from it’s case, check the ferrules once more, then dress the line and make necessary adjustments to the leader. Yesterday’s flies will be retrieved, nestled into my vest to make everything ready. Each day is precious, each hour along bright water, a dry fly rod at the ready, for any one might be the last!

I had prepared for the wind, expecting the worst I carried the reel with a seven-weight line for my Kiley bamboo. Dry fly fishing had been futile between wind driven whitecaps blown upstream. Clearly, it seemed the time to admit that my dry fly season had come to an early end.

The breeze began to stir as I waded into the low, clear water and knotted a Full Dress Copper Fox, fully prepared to surrender to autumn, to fall into winter. I made a few swings, hung up the fly on a rock somewhere down there and broke it off. Retrieving the line and inspecting the tippet, I heard a distinct plop to my left. The sound had been close, but as I scanned the smooth currents there was nary a ripple anywhere. Noticing that the breeze had settled, I began to extend and lighten the leader with a long 5X tippet, grabbed a pale isonychia from my vest patch and knotted it fast.

My eyes searched the water all along the rock strewn riverbank, and settled into a staring pattern. Something had risen, taken something on the surface, and I was determined to find it. My visual search failing, I made a few casts to settle that iso along the edge. No response to my random casting.

Finally, something moved. The barest little murmur of life showed itself, one bit of a ripple at odds with the flow. With hard study of that couple of square feet of current, at last I caught something on the surface that wasn’t debris or a bubble of foam, it was an insect!

Replacing the larger dry fly, I knotted one of those faithful TP Duns, size 20 in the olive persuasion, my autumn constant companion, and continued studying that small section along the riverbank. At last, a ring.

Close quarters, with delicacy demanded, and there I am with a seven-weight outfit. Thank God it was bamboo. I played the long game with that unseen fish, moving while holding my breath, one step at a time about that uneven slippery, rocky riverbed, and pitching gentle casts with that big gun.

I never checked my watch, but I will guarantee I spent more than an hour playing cat and mouse with that fish. Casting, examining the drift of my fly, adjusting half a step, modifying my casts, oh so cautiously following as he strayed along several feet of that rocky riverbank, never quite mastering the intricacies of those fitful currents. And then, after a quiet period when I believed he had finished sipping brunch, he decided to move upstream.

I turned, surveyed the currents between us, and made one cast. That tiny olive landed no more than a foot above his last little ring, drifted perfectly down, and vanished when his neb came up to meet it! It was difficult to say which of us was more surprised when my rod bowed heavily.

He darted downstream and leaped, a foot away from that rocky bank, a big, dark colored brown, most certainly longer than twenty inches. He made a quick run, down and into the deeper slot, but he hadn’t shaken the thing that was pulling on his mouth so he turned about. We were fighting in a half circle for a few moments, and I watched him straining against the rod within a short distance from my boots, a very fine big, old brownie. He headed toward the shallow side of the river, and I took a step that way, hoping to get out of the precarious footing I was in. He turned back toward me then, and the fly simply popped free. Done, lost, finished. The hook was just fine, unbent, still sharp. It just wasn’t in the right place in his mouth I guess, not for that particular angle of pull.

I just stood there in that jumble of rocks and large gravel, right in the middle of the run, or what is the run when there is a hell of a lot more flow in the river. I had creeped into his living room and almost plucked him right out of his kitchen, but not quite!

Eventually I worked my way out of that tricky section of river bottom, even spotted another sip further upstream along that riverbank. I gave it the best I could give, but that fish was in one of those special places, where you simply cannot drift a fly naturally to him if it is tied to a leader.

After I eventually saluted that fellow, I found one more, not far from where that big boy started all of this game. Was that same fish back in business? I will never know, as he wasn’t willing to sample my wares again.

So, I didn’t get a nice old brownie to log in my book. I did find out that my dry fly season has not ended after all. I enjoyed a very pleasant interlude on what turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous, breathless day. Unexpected, but very, very welcome.

I put that seven-weight away this morning, just about the time that the heavy rain began. The rivers will get refreshed, and next week looks to bring a number of beautiful, sunny days. Maybe those howling autumn winds will be hushed, at least for a few of those lovely October days, and I will go back to carrying a dry fly rod…

I am wondering, has the dry fly season come to it’s end? Nearing mid-October and the improvement in fishing that tends to bring has left me waiting and yes, this morning included the S word in the weekly forecast. Saturday lists a high of forty-two degrees and a low of thirty-one, it’s introduction is listed as “rain/snow”. Not winter… not yet!

This afternoon is lovely, sunny, colorful and nearing eighty, yet this lull will mark a fortnight tomorrow. I have wandered, searched and found wanting.

I am torn toward walking the mountains, now at their most beautiful, a scattergun taking the place of split and glued bamboo. The river was swelled by blessed rain, but how quickly it is dissipating. Might tomorrow be the best chance for that afternoon delight, rising trout to a final show of mayflies? My confidence shrinks at the thought, for the winds are expected to return. No trout will rise to tiny olive mayflies between whitecaps!

Each year, I cling to each possible moment of my angling season. Once the dry fly ceases to be the answer, much of the joy for fishing passes unto the cold, dark hours, a prisoner of another winter.

Nothing good shall come of this pondering aloud, so I shall seek a brief, fading moment outdoors. Sitting amid the sun’s fading warmth, I watch the clouds, as if they have the answers I do not.

It is still shy of dawn here, and I am hopefully listening to soft rainfall above my head. Our rivers are terribly low, the freestones crying for rain, and the usual refuge of the tailwaters suffering the city’s idea of management by dropping the releases on the first of the month.

A friend and I shared a beautifully calm day astream yesterday, hopeful that one of the spare soft rises we found might transform to a fine trout, but those hopes were unrequited. Dry fly fishing has been, missing since turning the page of my calendar.

Indeed, my thoughts inevitably turn to the possibility that this dry fly season has run it’s course, far too early for my own preferences. I cling to some thrilling memories from Octobers past.

Walking in, I had shared this summer’s sightings of at least two different black bears along that reach of river, one a cub, the other assumably it’s mother. I told of them laughing, with some surety that those neighbors had since moved on. Not long after we began fishing though, my friend quietly said “we’ve got a bear”. Turning, and expecting another river crossing well down river I came up blank and asked “where”. The reply brought a bit of a chill: “right behind me”.

Sure enough, in the tall grasses on the bank I made out the black curve of the head and two rounded, well separated ears, the rest obscured. Not a little fellow there, not at all.

There was little for us to do but quietly continue our fishing and keep an eye on it, who obligingly turned and moved up the bank, vanishing in the knotweed. Uncertain if I felt better not seeing it right there than knowing just where it was, we both relaxed a bit and continued our quest for trout.

We had no more of that bear but the memory, and that was preferred. It did continue to supply some conversation.

I was pleasant to wade the placid waters without a breath of wind. Most of my river days this month have been more than blustery, rendering dry fly fishing basically impossible in many places, and highly difficult in others. I enjoyed fishing the 803 Menscer again, ideally suited in the thinnest water of the year, and I had hoped to feel it alive with just one stocky brown trout or a surprise rainbow. Moreso, I had hoped such a trout would favor my friend, but the fates resigned to tease us with a couple of almosts. A classic beautiful October fishing day with a stern absence of the catching aspect.

I still cling to harboring my thoughts for a spell of fine dry fly fishing to close the season, an October to remember. If this gentle rain continues, perhaps…

I had read the forecast, fooling myself that an early start might grant me a couple of hours of at least looking for dry fly fishing. Perhaps I did not even trust my own judgement, bought with many hours of battling Nature’s changes amid these mountains, for I carried an old vintage graphite fly rod afield.

The riverscape was a swirling display of floating leaves, drifting upstream with the wind and downstream with the meager currents. No sipping rise could ever be found amid this colorful, whirling disarray had there been one, and recent proof told me that any would be likely given a soft mirror of a surface.

I walked, quite a way, swung a Partridge & Pheasant Tail through the pool and the runs, all of them shallow at this diminishing flow. No signs of life anywhere, no signs of rain throughout the week, and the winds rattled the trees along the mountainsides throughout the day while I withdrew.

They promise better things today, if bright sun and clear shallow water are your cup of tea, but dry fly fishing? Fat chance. Experience knows what “10 to 15 mph” really means along Catskill Rivers anyway. Still, I’ll be out there somewhere, for time is short and my soul craves bright water, even if it barely laps at the toes of my boots…

That old graphite is out there in the SUV, but I’ll pick a sweet bamboo wand to carry when I go. Wishing that gesture might appease the Red Gods, at least for a time, I know more likely they will view it a challenge.

Of course, there is always a touch of hope in my heart. One cast is all that one needs. A rise… not even that! Just a discrete shimmer, a subtle turn of a ripple in the water, and that one cast…

The reel I’ll need is right here to my left, the line cleaned and lubricated just yesterday. That old CFO reel has belonged to one rod, the rod inside that first tube which came to me more than a decade ago, labeled D.W. Menscer, Maker. That rod was born for this, for these Delaware rivers!

I need just that one cast…

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.