It has been a few years since I have gotten into one of those extended duels with a particular fish, the kind that refuses to be caught. Yes, there was one a couple of seasons ago that did some sort of whiplash move on my tight leader and broke the tip on a lovely old vintage Mills eight-footer, but I won the next time I put a fly in front of him. He was a big old boy, twenty-five inches long, and since he had escaped me just once, we didn’t have the chance to get into a rivalry.

I had a plan this morning, but the forecasts seemed grim: morning thunderstorms, some severe. I mean, we just rode out one last Saturday night that spawned a tornado that visited Hancock and Cadosia. Where I was going to fish takes a long walk in the water to get in and to get out, and I didn’t want to get caught out in the river when a storm whipped over the mountain and drew a bead on me.

I grabbed my little Orvis Superfine rod, a light stick of dynamite, and one my mentor, the great Ed Shenk, really prized among his array of little fly rods. I figured that funky weather could shut down the trout activity, so I picked a closer spot and got on the river a little after seven.

The river was calm, and there had been a little shower before I arrived. There were obvious makings for stormy conditions in the sky, and there was no sign of fish activity. I waded slowly into long casting range of a good spot and waited. Eventually, there was an abrupt explosion out there between some sunken logs. Just once, loud and fast, then nothing. I made a bunch of casts, changed the fly and made some more, all the while figuring that whatever that fish ate it was big and he didn’t need seconds. Seemed I got that right.

Looking down river, I saw some movement and some nervous water where I had an encounter last week. I was on full alert. I stalked that place like I wasn’t even there. No ripples, one achingly, planned step at a time, and I finally eased into the perfect casting position.

Now last week didn’t work out like I planned. I had worked a fish down there that was occasionally sipping whatever he found around some logs and brush piles on the bank. He was moving steadily. I timed my presentation until he took something a couple of feet out away from that bank, and he was all over my fly!

This guy was big, very strong, and determined to take my fly into the middle of any sticks, logs, anything he could wrap me up in. I wasn’t going to let him. I had to put heavy pressure on him, but he kept bulling toward one snag and the next. Finally, I turned him and started him coming my way. Big head shakes, throb, throb, throb… and he didn’t like it so he turned again and the line went slack. I thought I had protected the tippet, and I had. He opened up the hook, a strong Ahrex hook, and he was gone!

The next time I found him working, he vanished when my first cast landed above him. So, these events have created a thing, a rivalry.

Today, I knew the little Superfine could handle that kind of trout. Shenk landed monsters on the Letort and in the West, and Lee Wulff fished Labrador brookies weighing eight pounds on his Superfine rod. The equalizer is the 5X tippet when fishing the dry fly.

I had knotted a Cross Special before I started my stalk, for there were a couple of Cahills around. Late in my approach, I watched my foe happily take one.

By the time I slipped into position, the fish had stopped moving. When I saw some nervous water again, I tried a few casts. No take, and no more visible movement, so I froze and waited. At last, one little Cahill drifted down a thread of current and vanished in a tiny ring. My fly was in the air and perfectly placed on that same thread of current seconds later, then it vanished in another little ring!

No doubt I had the same big old warrior, punching left and right with those same big, heavy head shakes, but he was coming out toward me!

I needed working room, so I started easily backing out toward midriver. When he stopped coming, he started the head shakes again, and I backed some more and started trying to reel up the slack line onto my reel, keeping control with the line to the fish between my fingers. Like the title says: misdirected intentions. Trying to do three things simultaneously doesn’t work out that well.

That big old trout remembered how much he liked it in his wood piles, so he turned and started pulling away, and that natural reaction ruined my plan – I clenched my fingers just a bit too tight on that fly line slipping between them. He felt the pressure increase and pulled harder, so my hand clenched harder too… snap! The tippet didn’t break this time either, so I figured that small dry fly hook had failed just like the heavy hook had done. Wrong again. The knot I tied the tippet to the leader failed and broke.

How many times will I be checking my knots if we get to dance a third time?

Well into the third week of July, I have spent some time this weekend working on my production tying, keeping my boxes full and ready with my summer patterns. Hard to imagine that the first month of summer lies behind me, but there are many wonderful memories!

The season features everything from chunky grasshoppers to the tiniest winged ants, spinners, sulfurs and tricos, and good fishing can keep me busy restocking often fished patterns. I may tie some of these during the winter months, but I still like to ride the anticipation of the next day’s fishing when I grab half-a-dozen hooks, thread and some hackles and go.

With the flies finished, I’m thinking toward the tackle to light my fire tomorrow. Yesterday I was cleaning a DT3 fly line on my old CFO III, and grabbed the tube for Jimmy Downes’ Garrison 206 seven-and-a-half footer. I’ll likely reserve that duo for a few days, after I see what yesterday’s storms wrought. We had a tornado warning posted for Hancock and Deposit, and all along the Quickway corridor southeast. We had a few tense moments, but passed the storm just fine. I hope our neighboring villages can say the same this morning.

I was looking back at a blog post from four years ago, bringing fond thoughts of my four-weight Cumberland Queen. Perhaps tomorrow she will take a walk with me in the wee hours close to dawn…

I might just take her out this morning and cast her with a different line or two. I have that habit with regards to bamboo rods, for it can turn up some surprises, even with a rod that has been more than a decade in my hands. I believe that every fine bamboo fly rod has a perfect line to bring it’s performance to a peak. We just have to bring them together!

My Cumberland Queen very much liked the 406 double tapered number four fly line spooled on my 2-3/4-inch Adams reel. I think the three of us will be very happy tomorrow. Now I should get some of these freshly tied flies out of the fly cups and into the fly boxes in my summer vest…

I just had a nice talk with friend Kevan Best, another Catskill angler who sings the praises of split bamboo fly rods. He lit a few memories mentioning fishing tricos on summer mornings. It has been a number of years ago since I found some good trico fishing here. High water storms or snowmelt runoff can move a lot of the soft silt where our smallest mayflies live, so a reach of stream may have good numbers of flies and fishing one year, nothing on the next.

When it is right in a good reach of one of our tailwaters, it can be special! Thinking quality wild brown trout sipping those size 24’s, and playing trout up there in the teens on 7X tippets and a 3-weight bamboo rod!

This marks nearly eleven months since I completed my first bamboo fly rod, split and planed and finished on August 28th, 2025. Fishing was very, very slow late last summer, I never had the chance to take a log book trout with my creation. Today, amid a very productive summer season, the ARS came of age.

Indeed, this morning’s fishing made this drastically shortened season surpass my total of the log book boys from the entire season of 2025. Even missing my spring while nearly losing my life, this year has been better than last year! Taking three fine brownies this morning, each measuring twenty inches or better was the perfect way to close out a remarkable week.

The star of the day, outside the rod itself, was a heavy bodied, black spotted 23-inch brownie that gave my Lo o bamboo three-piece a true test.

Reflecting the eighty odd hours in the rod shop over eight months required to make this crisp casting 7’9″ hand planed bamboo rod feels well-spent, and taking a beautiful milestone fish sweetens the memory and the joy I felt last August when I first strung up a few different fly lines for my first test casts.

JA and I enjoyed a crisp fifty-four degree morning, a nice break from recent heat, and both found success with rods of our own make and memorable wild Catskill brown trout. It just isn’t better than that!

Once several decades of familiarity with rivers, an angler learns their heartbeats, their moods. A certain bond develops. I sensed there was a new player in one of my haunts, a new uncatchable trout has taken residence perhaps. But once pondering, it might just as easily that he has been there for some time, growing, biding his time to take mastery.

There are certain lies which linger in the memory, not for catches, but for the lack of them. Everything looks right, and yet, that lie fails to produce. Not just a season mind you, but over many. Thinking back recently, I do recall some evidence. A movement just as a fly has ended it’s drift and a gentle raising of the rod tip swims it away. Not a take, no, not even quite a follow, simply… movement.

There were bits of evidence over time, enough so that a suspicion had formed and then, last week, well, there were those damned fluttering moths. Idly watching one of those cavorting and bouncing down there, and just as I was looking away came the explosion. I’ve got you!

With the game afoot, and obviously I danced my own pattern over and past, twitched and manipulated right then and there, but for nothing. Fishing was good, and he could wait. You cannot put one over on a fish like that with a change of fly or three. No. Time, patience, approach and technique are necessary. He wasn’t going anywhere.

So, we started with the formal courting. A guided, careful approach at every opportunity, considering the conditions, and making a group of casts just so. Failure is very much a part of this game. Fish him too much, target him enough for him to recognize he has been targeted, and he will dissolve in the mists.

And so, when the day had come, I made that bad decision, worked it out in my mind and decided what was best, and it would cost me. Delicacy was needed you see, for the perfect cast, the presentation is paramount in these situations. I felt that a three weight was the answer. The Menscer Three would be sublime: distance, delicacy, accuracy, in straight forward terms, perfection! Ah, but what size of warrior was I up against! Dare I risk perfection? I took down the evil rolled and baked substitute, this manufactured soulless thing, graphite.

At the moment of the first meeting, bamboo bestows it’s grace, subtly, beautifully, and my hand has accustomed to it, to reply upon it seems. In short, that bad decision cost me two very large trout that day, broken at that first moment, our first meeting. But it was not, The One. Perhaps my hand was swiftly seasoned by those bad experiences, or greater distance between us simply allowed an ounce of stretch between us to protect that thin tippet.

I had come knocking, softly early. Careful not to wake the master of his abode, to disturb him with my presence should he not yet be ready to welcome callers. He wasn’t, and I withdrew as quietly.

Hours later in the morning I returned, though there was no visible activity still. Discreet distance, plenty of leader, and just the right fly at the ready, I knocked again…

The take was somewhat bold, not soft nor hard, but confident. Clearly, he what he wanted. The explosion came half a heartbeat later!

He clearly wanted to stay in his living room, I had a necessity to lead him out onto his lawn where we could dance, without the bother of his various implements, and dance we did! That light rod and the diminutive Hardy protested on my end, he cavorting with boils and somersaults, twists and turns and a good measure of brute force expended toward me on his.

In wild places, there are sometimes omens…

Another nice summer morning, early to the river, but not quite the dawn patrol. I heard the eagle’s cry as I began my stalk, and turning, saw his majesty winging upriver and bade him Good Morning. I heard a rise, but my eyes found nothing, so I slowed my hunter’s walk to scan carefully with hope to find another.

Watching the water, the deer’s reflection there drew my gaze upward. She walked the edge of land and water, slowly downstream as I walked up, aware of me, but not worried about my presence in the least.

One event should cause me to pause and consider, and two most certainly made it clear this would be a very special day, and yet while I appreciated the sights and sounds as simple pleasures, I missed the portent.

My eyes caught the second rise, though despite my cast arrived promptly, there was no response. I eased up another few steps and into mid-river and hadn’t needed to wait long. Rise number three required a smooth but swift turn, two back casts and a delivery, so perhaps the rhythm urged my strike to follow too quickly. Nevertheless, I felt him as I pulled the fly away, certain he would not return.

A second miss followed after a time, and now my realization is this could be an irritating day. Still, I remained completely unaware of the omens that welcomed my arrival, and I fished on for a couple of hours, cementing the thought that this may be a fishless day. The third miss certainly proved it.

Convincing myself I might still save the day, I checked my downstream advance near midmorning and worked my way back to the beginning. Remarkably, another hunter was still working the water where I embarrassed myself. The talisman proved it’s magic undiminished, when my small beetle was taken and the battle joined. The Hardy spoke, awakening anyone in earshot that the game was on.

Finally, I drew him into shallow water and finished the game with the net: two feet of brown trout willing to surrender my fly. The elation renewed my spirit, and I fished on with greater care and skill. Still, the morning passed on into afternoon. A few smaller rises were located and covered as the time passed, but no responses were displayed.

When trout rise and searching eyes cannot find the answer, enter the Baby Cricket! That was carved in stone three decades ago. A small rise drew my eye, for where it was, not for it’s own visible merit. I let the ACM have the stage, providing the light touch the rod demands, and the take left no doubt! To the races once more, gaining line then losing it again, the music of the vintage LRH played it’s solos for my ears alone.

Such a day, browns measured twenty-four and now twenty-three, but there was a heavy rise nearby even as I battled him. Once released, the task was to find number three…

Nearing two, I had about decided that his feeding spree had ended, but then a softer rise kept me working the area. Nothing more seen, I backed off as stealthily as I could and waited. I considered turning and heading out, but a murmur spurred me to loft the talisman once more toward a nervous spot of water near the bank… and number three was found!

Halfway through the fight I realized that I was concerned for the 5.5X tippet, the same piece of tippet and fly that battled my last foe; an unduly light tippet for such fish!

In the end, the ACM led him too into the mesh, a heavy brassy flanked, black spotted brownie with that same bedraggled Baby Cricket perfectly in the side of his jaw, another two-footer, a perfect bookend.

Finishing the steaks out on the grill, I felt that sun working it. I checked the thermometer: 99 degrees!

The afternoon to evening sun has a direct shot onto my porch, and that generally ramps up the porch sitting temperature another eight to ten degrees. Clear blue skies, not a breath of wind, and I could feel it getting into the century mark as I plated the last steak and retreated inside. I swear my initially ice-cold beer was warming noticeably while I was drinking it, despite the koozie!

The week looks a return to hot and dry, a good time to find deeper colder water to wade!

Yea, today’s task was to tie myself a supply of the new transitional dries for the summer sulfurs, boxing up a dozen and a half in sizes 16 and 18. I split my production between the CDC Duns and the Century Duns, so I can present the trout both looks. This design was a big part of my winter fly tying, so much so that I was truly excited to meet the spring hatches and give them a thorough trial. Obviously, that didn’t happen, so I hope some heavier sulfur hatches as the meager few I have seen this summer, will give me that chance.

The transitionals are intended to set down into the film, with just the thorax and wings forcing themselves into the air. Compromised hatching mayflies are vulnerable and should be very attractive to our wild, educated and wary browns and rainbows.

I wasn’t overjoyed to have to tie these on diminutive size 18 hooks, for they require more parts and manipulations than most of my usual dries, but they came out fine. The finned and spotted court of judges will of course have the final say.

Tuesday looks to be the hottest day of the week, with the high around 95 degrees. I have bountiful practical experience wading the deeper runs and pools of the 48-degree release water of the West Branch Delaware on such days. An ultralight sun hoody above and some insulation beneath fits the bill!

After a long winter and my stolen spring, the second week of July has been a very good week of fishing. I feel good, feel myself and with the endurance I expect. I finally have proven to myself that I am up to the challenge of a six or seven hour hot summer day wandering rivers.

When I retired early in 2018, I didn’t really know how many years I would have ahead of me. I have faced some unexpected challenges, but I have come through them, and I am enjoying my passions: wild trout, dry flies and classic tackle.

The fishing this past week was just what I enjoy the most: hunting bright waters for big, wild trout. There were a lot of hours put in on various pools and rivers, several miles of walking and a lot of casts. I caught five wild brownies measuring better than that coveted twenty-inch mark, one fully two feet and a couple others that missed that length just a little bit, all of them heavy, wise customers that took every bit of skill I had. Interestingly enough, the two largest took the smallest flies of the group, sizes 17 and 18. In my world, that’s a great week!

A good rain certainly didn’t hurt my luck, though it did give me a zero for the first day of the week. The cloudy, rainy conditions should have been good for fishing, but I found virtually no bugs on the water and no trout rising that day. Better flows followed though, once the rain passed on, refreshing the rivers.

I am hoping that rainy days won’t be too scarce as the summer winds along, and I hope that most of our weather falls in my favored Catskill Summer category.

I hope I see some hatches, and some good ones to match wits with educated, locked in, PhD feeding wild trout. I want to see some evidence that our mayfly and caddis hatches have rebounded after two difficult seasons. I can’t judge anything about that based upon spring, as I wasn’t to be able out there.

When late August and September come around, I want to find some big, beautiful claret bodied mayflies some call the White-Gloved Howdy, so I can walk the wide Delaware River after the rains and cooler weather offer a prelude to fall. That fall, come to think of it, will be welcome to show us just how beautiful and productive fly fishing can be that time of year.

Most of all, I simply wish to savor every moment I can find myself outdoors among the Catskill rivers and their trout, their wildlife, and their anglers for at least as many more years that I have been fortunate to live here. Wandering bright water has been my destiny… may it always flow cold, clean and ever downstream.

The humidity vanished and the day feels comfortable, a beautiful Catskill Summer day! Stalking early, but not quite at dawn today, there was no fog and I was searching for some movement. Very much a contrast to yesterday, when I could see little as I made my entry into the river.

Yesterday threw me a curve and I had to make do without the right fly. The river dealt an honest surprise: moths. These critters were vibrating while spread eagled onto the surface, making the damnedest fish call I have seen on a Catskill river. They appeared to be aquatic, emerging from below, but very few seemed capable of flight. I guessed that chilled fog was responsible. When a moth floated over a serious trout… kaboom!

I had nothing to match these things, not even close, so I dug out the few caddis flies I had in my vest. I took a small brownie, and missed a couple like sized fellows, but that was early before the show began. My Trout Bug took a nice fish early as well, but my best idea was to tie on a size 18 tan CDX caddis and twitch around one of the splash zones after a big boy ate his moth.

I twitched over a number of these guys, but that 18 wasn’t fooling fish busting moths with about a size 14 body and big, wide wings. I tried other flies, figuring excited fish would take a meaty terrestrial, but that wasn’t working either. It was the CDX or nothing.

Why a size 18 caddis? Well, this fly has taken many very large trout, and it doesn’t take a full blown caddis hatch. I am talking about trout well in excess of twenty inches. The fly is so good, I kept it a secret for more than fifteen years, sharing with just two friends who were sworn to secrecy.

So, with nothing to come anywhere near a match, I kept fishing that CDX. One big blast too many perhaps, but I stayed with the program… and it worked. The Leonard laid the little fly out fifty feet, just above the last blast blown in the quiet surface… twitch, twitch…kaboom!

That 55-year-old bamboo rod got a workout! The LRH screams, and then I crank, screams again, I crank again… and eventually twenty-four beautiful inches of wild Catskill brown trout resides in my net!

I spent a long day on the river trying to repeat that with my little caddis, but I guess lightning prefers singular strikes. When I got home, I set out to tie half a dozen flies to imitate those moths. I had no idea if that would be a one-time frenzy, or if I would walk out of the river this afternoon feeling like I was the greatest fly fisherman in the world. Those flies looked great, but Nature has her ways.

There were some moths around. Not as many, and the explosion rises did not come. Some trout ate moths, though usually with a normal riseform. I took a hard fighting 22-inch brownie on my moth pattern. My best brownie of the day was right between that one and yesterday’s, and he took a size 17 Grizzly Beetle after ignoring several casts with the moth. I do wonder if I had had those flies yesterday, when the trout were crazy for them. Maybe some other year in the future I will get to find out, at least if I remember to be certain a few are in one of my summer boxes.

This looks to be a good rainy day. Yesterday’s downpours hammered some of our rivers, while others showed little change. I happened to go out yesterday evening to fill up with gas when a terrific storm cell arrived in Hancock. Driving home I had to keep it at a crawl just to be able to see, but today looks like light rain, the kind that could create a truly nice fishing day.

I have my old friend, my ’77 vintage Thomas & Thomas Hendrickson, sitting against the armoire door ready and waiting. This is a particularly sweet taper, and this rod has their impregnated finish that protects the bamboo better than varnish. This old T&T is a perfect rainy-day wand, though it has been a rod I have turned to often, rain or shine.

I rebuilt the leader on an original Orvis CFO IV reel yesterday, so my tackle is ready to go. My rain jacket is right there in the car, and a long sleeve tee shirt will be just about right beneath it.

I will take some time this morning, its just past six, and tie a few olives to have them handy. I know I have hundreds of them in I don’t know how many fly boxes, but flies you tie the morning before fishing are always good luck!

There, half a dozen fresh from the vise: tiny size 20 T.P. Duns and size 18 100-Year Duns stored in a fly cup to stuff in my vest! Last evenings storms didn’t touch the West Branch, though this morning’s steady rain is adding a bit of additional flow. The expectation is the river will be imminently fishable, and trout, mayflies and old anglers will rejoice at the moisture and the welcome cool, cloudy conditions.

After last week’s threatening heat, a couple of cooler, rainy days will be more than welcome. It would be quite nice to have a couple of them every week or two. How nice the rivers would be!

There is still a little time this morning, a couple of hours to relax and daydream before gearing up and choosing the reach of river I will visit. I can lean back and consider twenty-five years of summers along the West Branch. I can picture when a bright day clouded up, and a misty drizzle appeared. It was my last day of the trip and I could have headed south, but I drove down river to a favorite bend in the river where I found myself alone. Olives were drifting and bobbing upon the currents, and soft rings replaced a number of them.

Size twenties were the dish du jour, at least early in the hatch, and I was catching some beauties. At one point though, my flies lost their favor. I stood and watched phalanxes of the naturals still coming. But hey, I thought, are they just a bit bigger now? Plucked one from the surface and sure enough the later flies were size eighteens! A fly swap put me back in heaven!

The three AM sojourns have taken a toll, and I am taking a forced withdrawal pause this morning. No, I found myself still awake at that hour, but the body needs a rest.

Still, I hate to miss the opportunity: the cool misty air at dawn, the unseen cues, the sounds of water out there cloaked in the cover of the mist. The rewards…

The heat has been oppressive here in the ordinarily pleasant Catskills. Two air conditioners, acquired the past few summers, are working overtime to keep the living room and bedroom tolerable. Barely so. While I hope this is a passing trend rather than a permanent change, our summers have been getting hotter.

There could be some blessed rain within the next few days, but all in the form of thunderstorms. Any rain is sorely needed, but hard, brief downpours produce mostly runoff which doesn’t do much for the vital groundwater which sources our river systems. We will have to wait and see.

I have some surgery to undertake on my promising new Trout Bug fly today. The wings which produce such wonderful visibility have been twisting my leader badly, even after downsizing the flies. I am rather surprised that it has taken so long to dawn upon me that I’m using too much material for those wings, but the three AM morning jump starts seem to have dulled some of my thinking. While I’m at it, I should take a quick inventory of my terrestrial hooks, just in case I should wander over to the fly shop or place an order. Today may be a rest day from fishing, but that makes it a work day for all of the other tasks that keep me out there.

There are always a couple of fly lines to clean, reels to lubricate, and leaders to inspect and return to full length and service. An angler’s work is never done!