The lake effect squalls are visiting once more, and the swirling flakes mirror the chaos in my mind. Mid-winter, a stalemate season between those last gloriously fishless moments of autumn and a spring that seems still so very far away.

It is well past the time to get down to serious fly design, exploring new concepts and tinkering with past successes. In truth this becomes ever more difficult, for the breadth of my experimentation has created many possibilities, some which have yet to find their way to the water.

It is the nature of a tactical angler to strive toward the best choice of fly for each situation, and I work to that same formula when ensconced in the flow of bright water with sweet opportunity on the fin. So many fly boxes, with so very many patterns tied in a moment of inspiration, waiting for their own chance to meet the challenge of the trout.

It has become necessary these past few seasons to assign some priority to a new idea, a fresh design. Too many times have I turned to a proven favorite when the solution designed for this specific moment lies hidden from view in one of too many fly boxes. Decades of experience has taught many lessons, and one that is paramount is the fleeting nature of true opportunity. A stocked trout may rise happily for the duration of a hatch, but the champions of the evolved wild races of our Catskill browns and rainbows are oft as ephemeral as the mayflies themselves. A subtle bulge, a slight swirl in the edge of a current can be easy to miss when the main run before us displays half a dozen riseforms. Chances are we will get just one look, one moment to notice the signs of a trophy fish, scrutinize the currents at play, and make the cast.

There are exceptions to every rule, and once in a while we encounter a prime specimen quietly feeding off by itself. If we angle flawlessly, and the availability of the food form remains constant, we may fish to that rare specimen for a significant time. These are the rare chances to try new flies and fresh ideas, but with the full knowledge that the game may cease at any moment. That ticking clock plays upon our thoughts and inhibits our choices.

The sages of our sport have taught us the rule: that trout will select the most abundant, easily available bite of food to the exclusion of all others in the drift. That seems logical at first, at least until years of experience begin to erode one’s confidence in simple answers. There are thousands of anglers fishing our best rivers and streams, and the wild trout have developed genetically to this grand assault. Many individuals, often the longest lived and largest specimens, waive the rules of the sages, following their own very specialized instincts. These are precisely the fish that will best test our new ideas, but they rarely offer themselves for inspection for any significant amount of time, or in the readily apparent times and places.

I have taken to improving my organization, arming my Wheatleys with my prime patterns for solving the spring hatches, then keeping another simple compartment box in my vest for the experimental flies. Still, some new perchance even revolutionary ideas have remained untried. My hunter’s instinct gets in the way despite the wisdom of preparation.

Since retirement, I have enjoyed the luxury of angling one hundred days or more each season. It is not enough. Dangerously high flows, winds of thirty miles per hour or more, and violent spring cold fronts all rob me of precious days afield while the desire burns bright! These are all part of the grand challenge of angling. It is truly the difficulties that make the brighter moments all the more precious in our memories.

Mid-season is a joyful time, when July brings long summer days of hunting trout, midday sulfurs, and the blessing of solitude on many reaches of Catskill bright water. There is of course a counterpoint, the middle of the angler’s winter.

I count that off-season from my last day of fishing these Catskill rivers to that hoped for new beginning in early April. This year it is a span of one hundred thirty-eight days. Midnight shall mark the middle of my angler’s winter, and tomorrow the days of that second half shall begin to tick away.

I can feel it each year, as my concentration lapses, and I find it ever more difficult to fill the lingering hours of each day. Reading or tying a handful of flies sometimes soothes my frazzled nerves, but the rod work I hoped to usher me through the long months has stalled. I have busied myself with the business of the Fly Tyers Guild as best I could, looking forward to our little gatherings as beacons of hope. Spring will come; I have only to survive the days between the seasons of light.

There was sunlight on the north mountains this morning, a softly ruddy glow as the early rays filtered through the clouds to welcome another winter day. Alas, that sun brings no promise of warmth, for the Catskills remain in a cycle of deep freezes. It has been a winter without hope of fishing and continues in kind.

Demonstrating a classic Hendrickson last evening for assembled members of the Guild, it was easy to let my concentration wander. A question or two concerning the color of hackle required devolved quickly into a flood of opinions about colors and statements about each tyer’s own choices for their Hendricksons. Of course, I reminded that the exercise requested of me was the classic or one of the original Hendrickson dry flies, in this case, the style tied by the Dettes. We continued into joking and good-natured teasing, which actually awakened me from my winter fog.

Too much time indoors will do that to me, fogging my mind and increasing the aches and pains in my body, and here’s a note from my computer telling me temperatures to plummet next Tuesday. How might they plummet from the morning low of zero forecast for tomorrow?

Though trophy trout had become increasingly rare in my Cumberland Valley waters, there was some tradeoff presented with the mildness of the winters and the steady temperatures of the valley’s limestone springs. There would of course be periods when snow and ice prevailed upon the landscape, but they were quickly followed by milder breezes and sunlight. Four-wheel drive allowed entry to unplowed stream access areas, and the trout fed throughout the winter.

Yes, it was subsurface fishing, drifting shrimp and cressbugs, twitching a Shenk Minnow or sculpin through the deeper pockets where some watercress held out through the colder months. The trout were still difficult, and the right fly and presentation required to tempt them. All of this began to change in March!

Those last few winters I stalked Big Spring with tiny olives whenever the sun warmed the surface slightly. On the clear, springfed currents that meant 6x tippet and a dram of hope, for the big, wild rainbows that populated the stream after the dismantling of the State hatchery above the spring source were thrilling opponents!

Ah, to be lost in such thoughts, while the sun penetrating my window belies the icy world beyond!

There are seventy-five days until I can expect to find that first rising trout of this new season, and winter has taken hold with an iron fist! It is fifteen below zero here in Crooked Eddy.

With our ancient heating system working overtime, it is a balmy 54 degrees in my kitchen. Wearing three shirts and a blanket, I am sitting in front of an impressive little space heater as I write, a truly wise Christmas gift from my friend Mike Saylor. It is difficult now to even dream of springtime.

Spring is a wondrous vision which today seems unbelievably distant, even fantasy. I wish heartily to close my eyes and feel the sunlight on my shoulders as the lithe wand of split bamboo flexes in my hand and the fly drifts down to the curl of the surface.

There are to be certain many colder memories of spring in these Catskills. I can remember and laugh about my sorties for the fabled Hendricksons in the snow. One spring day I was huddled in my fleece on a high bank of the West Branch, my head bowed as the sleet pattered on the hood of my rain jacket. The hatch had begun several days earlier, and I had sorted through the immediate necessities of work as quickly as possible and driven north. There would be no Hendricksons that day, no rises, not even a bump to a subsurface drift once all else seemed lost.

There does seem most often to be a pattern to these Catskill springs. One chilly, cloud drenched breezy day there will at last appear some tiny grayish vision after hours of staring at the water. Wings! They may be Blue Quills or Quill Gordons, though they will invariably be few. On rare occasions, one rise will be seen to greet those first few flies. Nature’s flies will be joined by my own, my fevered casting serving to bring some warmth back to my shivering frame, naught else.

It may be the next day or the day after when another little flurry of hatching flies will cause a second rise, and a third. Eventually my fly will arrive above the nose of an interested brownie and the season will begin.

There will follow a handful of days with increasing prospects. Brief little hatches will struggle off, a few trout may be caught, and eventually the afternoons will begin to warm and usher in the first good hatch of the year. The first of the larger brown trout will show themselves and indeed one may come to hand. Then will come a hard cold front, with temperatures dropping, the winds howling and the all important water temperatures abandoning all of those insects who had begun to hatch and those trout which had begun to feed. The effects of this front may last from two days to a week, while anglers shiver once more and pay penance for those first few trout of the season.

There is light outdoors now, though it brings no warmth so short a time past sunrise. In truth, these may be the coldest hours of the day. There is still beauty in the tinge of filtered sunlight as it touches the tops of the trees on the high point of the northeast ridge. Welcome to Hancock, winter sun, deliver us on toward spring!

I guess I should have said winter activities are heating up, but I couldn’t resist. The next few days will actually be more frigid than the already cold weather we’ve been having here in the Catskills, with highs in the low teens and lows… well let’s not even think about the lows. I hope some of the next seventy-eight days will bring some sunny days in the forties, and sooner than later!

The Catskill Fly Tyers Guild held our first small group winter fly tying session on Saturday, through the kindness of the Catskill Brewery in Livingston Manor, New York. We had a great time, sharing fly patterns and techniques with interested folks and sampling Catskill’s wide array of refreshing craft beers!

I had to make some preparations this morning for our Thursday evening Zoom meeting, where I will be presenting the classic Hendrickson dry fly to kick off the session. As typical among trout flies and fly tyers, even venerable classics like the Hendrickson are modified over time. I clarified that I would be tying what seems to be the most popular standard as tied by the incomparable Dette family of Catskill legend.

Roy Steenrod tied the original Hendrickson dry fly over a century ago, reportedly on the banks of Ferdon’s Eddy on the Beaver Kill. Fishing with friends, one of whom was noted angler A. E. Hendrickson, Steenrod tied a few flies to match the duns that hatched heavily that afternoon. He tailed his fly with barbules from a wood duck flank feather, winging it with the same, and dubbed the body with fawn colored fur from a Red Fox. His hackle was a scarse medium dun shade from a cock rooster. He named the pattern, which became quite popular, after his friend at a later time.

My standard Hendrickson is based on flies I purchased from Mary Dette three decades ago. I blended various shades of natural Red Fox fur with tan dyed beaver and a touch of Antron dubbing to match the color to the Dette flies, but there are variations even in the same pattern. Mary’s fly shows her beautiful upswept hackle barbs for the tail and a bit of cant to the wings. I purposely splay my tail fibers on nearly all of my dry flies, as I feel they float better and have a more natural light pattern. My wings are perpendicular to the hook shank as I was taught by Larry Duckwall, a well-known Catskill fly tyer and student of Elsie Darbee.

Many tyers think pink when they tie a Hendrickson, drawing on another modification credited to Art Flick, the famed tyer, angler, author, guide and innkeeper of the West Kill and Schoharie. It was Flick, the story goes, who used stiff dun hackle barbs for the tailing, replacing Steenrod’s softer wood duck fibers. He saw a pinkish cast to the duns hatching in his best loved waters, and tied his Hendricksons with the urine burned fur from the belly of a Red Fox vixen, to match that pinkish cast. I often tell people that I have never seen a pink Hendrickson in more than thirty years on Catskill rivers. All have been tan, some with hints of gray or olive or yellow at times, but decidedly tan.

My own primary hatch identifying information stems from “Hatches II”, the Al Caucci and Bob Nastasi classic angler’s entomology. Caucci identified five subspecies of Hendrickson mayflies with significant variations in size and color. In my own fishing, the primary hatches have been the tan fellows as pictured above, most often in a size 14. I have found some of these in size 12 on the lower Beaver Kill and on the Neversink tailwater. I commonly found a size 16 mayfly hatching later in the afternoons on the West Branch Delaware, as the numbers of tan Hendricksons (assumed to be Ephemerella subvaria) decreased. These I describe as being colored as old brick red. Perhaps another man’s pink? These do not match the flies called Red Quills, the males of E. subvaria which are anywhere from true red to a darker red shade.

In some years I have observed another size 16 fly, hatching along with the tan subvaria, these a darker brown with light tan markings and darker gray wings. I tie patterns with quill bodies I call Little Brown Hendricksons both in CDC Dun and 100-Year Dun styles to match them effectively.

Once the Hendricksons, Red Quills, Little Browns and those old brick red duns have finished their emergences, I look to fish the last of these celebrated Hendrickson flies – the Lady H! A mixture of dark yellow and golden hues, this size 16 mayfly has gray wings and tails and looks much like the other Hendrickson mayflies. It seems they taste like them too, for the trout devour them whenever I find them. I have taken some of my best spring browns, heavy bodied fish of 24 to 25 inches long, when fishing this hatch with my 100-Year Duns, CDC Duns and Posters tied with my little dirty yellow Hendrickson dubbing blend!

I nearly forgot to mention an occasional visitor during the Subvaria hatch on the lower Beaver Kill. This mayfly has a reddish body and gray wings somewhat different from either the old brick red or Red Quills I have encountered. It is also the largest of the group, requiring a size 10 or a 1X long shank size 12 dry fly hook for the match.

Since Nature insists on so much wonderful variation within our best spring hatch, its no wonder that fly tyers craft so many variations of patterns!

The clouds drift above the mountains to the southwest this morning, and though there is a hint of light in them, they speak to me of snow and ice laden watersheds. It is summer in my memories, mornings whose chill is one of anticipation rather than one of ice.

Walking on a bright morning, the sunlight chasing the traces of mist wraiths from the water, I feel the cork between my fingers. Soft footsteps at riverside, I pass in silence to preserve the spell. Here, where everything before me speaks of promise, I slip into the golden glow of rippled waters. It is quiet save for the music of those waters, and the ratchet of the reel breaks the lyrical refrain as I pull line from it’s spool to cast.

The transformation from this world of peace comes as an electric shock, for as the shaft of cane is raised into a graceful arch the gentle riffle explodes again and again with the leaps of a great fish! The reel screams with his swift departure as the rod arches deeper, and that electricity flows through me, touching my very soul.

As summer waxes I stalk misty mornings, the fog thick enough to obscure the sounds of the hunters. I move as soundlessly as I am able, casting to pockets of soft water revealed by the moving mists, the tension as thick as the air! Oft the fly is unseen, so I watch it drift gently in my mind as fly and thought become one.

Some days the hunters betray themselves, and a quick cast is required to meet opportunity at river’s edge. When the spirit is awakened the chorus of an old Hardy runs through the throbbing drumbeats of the bouncing rod and my heart smiles with the symphony of the chase!

If only it was not so long until these wondrous bright and misty mornings might come to pass once more!

Twas cold and gloomy over the weekend, and my hip was barking due to the general lack of riverine forays. Nearing Noon today, everything was transformed with brilliant sunshine, and I reached for my boots and a down jacket to enjoy a river walk.

The porch thermometer read well above freezing, and I headed off with a smile. I walked briskly, the sunlight having brightened my mood considerably. Nearing the turnaround where the public road ends, I saw something in the distance: a whitetail, perhaps a hundred yards down the remains of a private woods road. The deer was feeding peacefully wherever the sun had revealed a tuft of meadow grass, and I was surprised to find her companion just at the edge of the meadow no more than fifty yards away. I turned quietly and left them to their foraging, undisturbed.

A countercurrent caught my eye in a slot between two ice islands, and I noticed the wind on the river blowing hard upstream. I’d felt none of that breeze standing there, still didn’t, and I smiled with the realization that I was being spared the cold blast in the face by some pleasant whim of Nature. I had dallied there a few minutes, watching the winter wildlife with that gorgeous sun in my face, and got a shock when I turned for the return northward.

Though all of Crooked Eddy still basked in the sunlit benevolence of the day, the mountains to the North were being overrun by a dark, stormy mass of clouds, sure to bring snow before I reached home. I watched that front boil over the mountain tops, still walking in the sun, even as I reached the steps and the cover of the porch.

I was nearly convinced the day had changed her moods once more when I sat down to watch the clouds pushing easterly.

I hadn’t sat there more than ten minutes when the terrain darkened, and the first snowflakes began to swirl about. Ten more and a bonafide squall had erupted!

It snowed heavily for twenty minutes, enough for me to nod and let my eyelids fall in the comfort of the recliner. What better thing for an afternoon snowstorm but a nap?

In truth though, I am not much of a day sleeper. My eyes soon winked to behold blue skies and sunshine once more!

The moods of the day get me dreaming of soft sunlight on my shoulders… and golden cane arching to the music of the reel…

I’ve been reclining in front of the heater with Dana Lamb’s first volume “On Trout Streams and Salmon Rivers”, sipping coffee and wandering along the rivers of my own memory. It is cold and snowy outdoors where those memories lead, though the day might just peek above the freezing mark they say.

As the new light enters the sky my gaze welcomes the mountains to the North and East – a simple pleasure my retirement here has granted me. The price is five months of winter; the treasure seven months of angling with the dry fly.

Spring often comes fitfully, teasing with a few early sunlit days, feelings of actual warmth that penetrate my jacket and cap; even the sight of flies buzzing above the river! Such days are meant solely to increase the longing it seems, for the spirit they awaken never finds the true solace of the rise of a trout to the fly. When that moment does come, it often steals upon the scene when least expected.

Picture a swollen river and legs shivering from both current and cold, the day dark with howling winds. The looked-for hour comes, then passes, the angler’s reward for hope and endurance – more waiting. The aching want struggles to outlast the elements and dwindling possibilities and then… The first glimpse of wings fluttering amidst the roiling waters, the heartbeat quickens, and at last a subtle ring appears where the current lessens along the far riverbank. Now, a step deeper into the icy flow, the rod flexing stiffly in the air, and the line loosed toward the new beginning!

Once that blissful day arrives, it is too often followed by a return to deepening cold, growling winds and hazardous flows, though every few seasons the progression of spring continues with smiling days. Two rises tomorrow, a significant hatch the day after, and suddenly the fishing becomes expected. Pray that this year the Red Gods will smile with that rare benevolence!

Snow is falling at Crooked Eddy, gently, as this week’s winds seem to have abated at last. Dawn’s light struggles to filter through the cloud cover giving the fresh snow a faint blue glow as I ponder another winter’s day.

It is a quiet weekend here, with preparations for coming activities. Another week and Guild tyers will gather at the Catskill Brewery to share our craft and fellowship. JA and I will conclude our day with time in the rod shop. My strips are ready for rough beveling, then winding and heat-treating. I hope to accomplish all of that if I can, so planing may begin thereafter.

In my quest for knowledge, I have been contacting rod makers from Pennsylvania to Europe to discuss their individual heat-treating regime, particularly any changes applicable to the new Lo o bamboo. The variations are interesting.

Fly tying rises and falls as the rivers, a quick outlet for nervous energy on one day, serious study and contemplation of new designs on another.

I’ve been working my way through that new volume of Schwiebert, just a tale or two at a sitting. Stolen pleasures, like an evening cup of coffee with a hint of Beaverkill Bourbon Cream… and Dana Lamb waits there upon the bookshelf with his remembrances of the Golden Age!

Three months of winter lie still ahead, countless hours of dreaming, planning and wondering. Will the hatches come early, or with that false start so often seen? A hint, then nothing! Spring comes in it’s own time…

I left my buddy to work the first good rises we found and continued my search. A few flies had started wriggling their way to the surface, and we both trusted to patience and stealth to bring rewards.

I waded down river gently, sticking to the edge and taking pains to prevent my passage from sending pressure waves out into the pool. I must have spent half an hour covering 75 feet of river, and the flies began to increase in number once I passed the head of the pool.

When the trout began to rise it was all at once, several of them, all within reach of a long cast. I worked the closest riser with my Hendrickson and he proved to be willing. A nice fish, perhaps fifteen inches, he made me concentrate much closer upon the riseforms scattered throughout the area. The next candidate to bend the bamboo was just a bit larger, the second to succumb to my Hendrickson.

A few Blue Quills mingled with the Hendricksons, and when I finally located a rise with less splash and more bulge, true to form he ignored the Hendrickson. My drift was good, but this fish was obviously interested in the smaller mayflies struggling in the film. A change to a Blue Quill Cripple proved to be just what he was looking for, though not until I downsized my tippet to 6X!

The Menscer bamboo rod bowed heavily when I tightened, and the old CFO sang his praises as he darted away down current. I did my best to pressure him away from the next pod of riseforms, ever conscious of the delicate tether we shared. He obliged by turning away from me, running out to the middle of the river. I was smiling broadly when I finally brought him to the net: twenty-one inches of golden bronze and dark-spotted muscle.

The Hendricksons were coming steadily, and though the battle had pushed several fish downstream, they weren’t so shy as to ignore Nature’s bounty. Ten gradual steps downstream put me within easy casting range of the first in line, and I studied his riseform carefully before casting. I judged this fish to be of decent size and had offered two drifts when my eye caught a heavy swirl and bulge in the next line of drift. A step down and a step out gave me the angle I wanted.

As the trout turned back to the drifting Hendrickson duns, I had knotted one of my CDC Sparkle Duns to my leader, allowing the fever of the hatch to prevent me from changing back to 5X tippet. An angler’s gamble, one born of countless experiences, some of which had led to victory, and others to defeat. I have waded many miles of rivers and well remember the expediency big trout often require.

Conventional wisdom would lead an angler to expect a larger trout to feed longer, taking advantage of a good hatch to take in all of the calories his bulk demands, yet often this is not the case. Perhaps it is their inert wariness that grows with the experience of years. I have found many such fish that rose just a handful of times before vanishing. It seems as if they feel you before you ever offer a cast. On this day, it would be 6X or nothing.

It required a couple of casts to match his rhythm, then perhaps two more to drift the fly teasingly to him, the flecks of light-carrying bubbles in the dubbing and the wavering fibers of the CDC wing convincing him, giving proof of life. When the cane arched, and the reel screamed to life, I knew the greatest finesse would be required to win this battle.

I fought the fish out in the secondary current that washes the shallow bank of that reach of river. There were no logs or brush piles as often populate the main flows at the foot of our steep riverbanks, but this pool has a fine complement of rocks and boulders in it’s gravelly bottom. I kept the rod shaft as close to a forty-five degree angle as possible, reacting quickly but gently to each turn of direction. If I could keep him working in that spring current and away from the sharp-edged boulders, I believed I could win the war; and so I did.

A deep, heavy bodied Catskill brown some twenty-three inches long can weigh in the vicinity of five pounds, and I agreed with that estimation as he lay glistening in the meshes of the net, a glorious gift of spring!