Amid the glories of a Catskill spring and summer, life is a whirlwind of beauty and angling largesse, but it is in winter that my thoughts return to the gentle limestone valleys lying west of the Susquehanna.

I developed early an intense interest in difficult trout, angling in those formative years on northern Baltimore County’s Big Gunpowder Falls. The stream was intimate, her waters clear, and her wild browns, and for a time rainbows, darted restlessly to avoid the frequent human intrusions. I loved her dearly.

Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley offered something more. There flowed the little rivers of legend, holding a store of temperamental wild trout amid icons of angling history. This pastoral valley was the epicenter of the second great age of discovery in American fly fishing. I welcomed the opportunity to study in the classroom that had spawned Shenk, Koch, Fox, Marinaro and more!

The learning curve was steep, though I was fortunate to count the greats among my professors. I learned casting and tactics beside Ed Shenk and Joe Humphreys, talked flies with Ed Koch, and for two seasons travelled to the limestone streams at every opportunity. Finally, I relocated to Chambersburg after founding Falling Spring Outfitters and began to live the angling life to its fullest.

The opportunity to fish and daily observe the hallowed waters of the limestone springs enthralled and challenged me, for there were always new problems to surmount as our association grew in intimacy. An angler learns a great deal in those environs if he is receptive to Nature’s lessons, chief among them humility. I learned that both victories and defeats are wondrous moments in an angler’s life.

I found a special magic amid those gentle meadows, conscious of the presence of those who had gone before as I hovered behind clumps of waving grass, eyes searching for a rise. Summer brought forth every nuance of the hunt, with stream and meadow exploding in a rush of vegetation. How many rises were located first by hearing, then pinpointed by long study of the edges of land and water? Finding the trout’s hide was but half the battle, for each cast would then of necessity be planned and executed in intimate detail.

Those limestone trout offered a single chance for glory, and dozens for failure! A back cast tangled in the head high grasses spelled defeat immediately, so too a forward cast just inches off target. Hot, breezy days offered more opportunities for trout rising secretively to terrestrials, but increased the difficulties of a flawless, one-shot presentation tenfold. The memory of those days still excites me!

There were intimate joys not since encountered. A short, quick, perfect cast with a frail six to seven-foot rod, a Shenk Sculpin taken beneath a root ball by the rush of bright water and emerging with two feet of angry brown trout splashing in the morning light! Sight fishing to some leviathan obscured by moving cress and elodea until I was far too close to maintain composure.

I recall the magic of a summer evening, waist deep in cold water and greenery. Darkness was close at hand, and I was about to climb out and retire when I heard the whisper of a rise ahead. I could see only the bounty of weed beds along the right-hand bank, but I cast my Baby Cricket to that sound, and it was taken softly. The weed bed exploded in a boil and the tiny six-and-a-half-foot rod was quickly overmatched. Keeping the rod in a frightful curve, I battled the unseen foe toward the narrow, clear channel in midstream. He ran up current, buried in another, and I fought him back to open water again. It was all a flurry of constant motion and boiling water in the darkness! Somehow, the 5X tippet held, sawing through another pair of heavy weed beds and, when I brought him back to the channel that last time, I reached for the net. Five pounds of wild brown trout, his wet flanks sparkling in the last glow of twilight lay in the mesh, my hand shaking as it turned out the hook.

Such are the memories entwined in the magic of the limestone years.

Morning at Crooked Eddy, and I hear the dripping of snowmelt from the high roofline onto the low metal roof above my station. I walked out to look for the freezing rain we have been warned about and found the temperature somewhat less than a full degree above freezing. The rain is expected closer to midday, more than half an inch by tomorrow morning, and I do not doubt it will flush the light snow cover we have into the rivers.

The Delaware reservoirs have spilled on and off since the heavy rain of December, and now linger just below capacity. Releases are higher than we have seen these past few Januarys, and I am thankful for that. Better for the trout as well as the mayflies, caddisflies and their brethren, and I pray that good flows continue through February and March.

Hope remains for a little warmup between spillings, a chance to visit bright water, swing a fly and soothe my already winter weary soul.

I have volunteered to tie my simple Blue Quill Parachute for Thursday evening’s virtual gathering of the Fly Tyers Guild, and have settled on tying a size 14, that my simple webcam will allow acceptable visibility. What to do then with a fly twice the size of the natural? Not a hatch matcher, though it is a fishy looking fly, so I’ll simply toss it into a spring fly box to be trotted out on one of those spare days.

Perhaps I should set aside a small box for the dries that aren’t intended as close imitations, the Atherton’s, Fox Squirrels, Catskill Adamses and the odd variants I sometimes tie with an extra length of oversized hackle. That seems a fine idea.

In the past I have tucked these fishy flies in beside the proper imitations, where they have oft been overlooked just when a perfect opportunity to try them appears. To me they feature some bit of attraction, whether the dark, subtle bugginess of the Catskill Adams or the glint of golden tinsel on an Atherton No.2, and that impressionistic quality of life. Strictly speaking, species specific imitative patterns are conceived for the hatch, while these other fellows are cast with a more general appeal. Exuding an impression of life and generality, they seem to be able to appeal to a trout that happens upon them. There are many such hours along spring rivers.

Long vigils are common, particularly until the river temperatures ascend to the high side of the forties. Fifty degrees is the classic, magic number, but there are many days when weak sunlight seems more vibrant to the river starved angler, though the sunken thermometer struggles to betray 46 degrees.

It is funny how I always carry a small box of the early stoneflies which brought the first dry fly fishing to the Big Gunpowder Falls and the Pennsylvania limestoners, though I have never seen a single trout rise to one on an early Catskill river. I did imagine one though, that first hopeful winter, when the calendar said spring. The little black stones were buzzing half in inch above the surface, skittering and skating along screaming eat me! I wanted that first taste of dry fly fishing so badly, I tried to convince myself a reflection flashed in the corner of my eye was a swirl!

Seventy-five days of wishing and waiting lie ahead. Each one will linger perhaps two minutes longer than the one before; a few breaths! I’ll tie no stoneflies as those days pass, though, despite my best experience, that little fly box will find its way into some vest pocket come March. Old habits… well, you know what they say.

It is the twenty-second of January, and eight degrees here in Crooked Eddy. Sixty-seven days have passed since I last waded bright water and bid farewell to another season, so in truth, I am not yet halfway through winter’s journey. My thoughts once more run to summer…

I was sitting, huddled in a blanket this morning reading Rhoderick Haig-Brown. As he recounted the various streamer flies employed for the native cutthroats, salmon and steelhead of his Campbell River, my mind wandered to Ernie Schwiebert’s Letort Beetle. It has been many years since I tied and fished that groundbreaking classic.

Ernie recounted the fly’s birth in his “Legend and the Letort” from “Remembrances of Rivers Past” (Copyright 1972 Ernest Schwiebert): “Ross Trimmer and I were sitting in the Turnaround Meadow one August afternoon. I was tying flies and noticed some pheasant skin pieces in a hackle cannister. There were a few dark greenish throat-feathers on one fragment. We tried them instead of Jungle Cock, soaking several feathers together with lacquer to get toughness and opacity.” He trimmed these to an oval shape and tied them in flat over trimmed hackles, adding “Success was remarkable and immediate.” Schwiebert recognized the perfection of Vincent Marinaro’s concept of silhouette being the trigger for the Letort’s summer sipping trout and modified the Jassid style to mimic the larger and more robust beetles so prolific in the water meadows. Anglers have been grateful for his chance inspection of that hackle cannister for decades!

While there are days upon our summer rivers that I do best with a beetle that plops when it lands upon the surface, there are times during the lowest flows when such patterns are ignored. The trout lurking in the hides of the still pools are wary, and my summer fly box needs a row of Schwiebert’s genius!

Just over the mountain, beside the gliding waters of the West Branch Delaware, Dennis Menscer applies the final coats of varnish to my ultimate foil for days such as those, a flamed eight-foot wand to make magic with a number three line! If I close my eyes I can feel it now, laying out a feather beetle like a whisper of soft summer air…

I am caught in time, dreaming of summer delight amid the unforgiving chill of winter.

Indeed, a good half-dozen of those beetles must be tied, and I know just the feathers to employ. I have a black phase cock pheasant skin that should enhance that critical opacity.

Soon, I must begin the task of sorting fly boxes, noting any patterns and sizes that need replenishing. Reels and lines were put away cleaned and ready for use, but they will get a look, just in case. Still so many days without chance for fishing. The rivers are high and icy, reservoirs spilling into their tailwaters, and rain and a warmup headed in this week. The snow will be melted rapidly once more, and the rivers rise.

What I need is moderate flow, that joyful fifty-degree warm spell, and sunshine! Those are the days when a swung fly might tempt leviathan.

There is a taste of sunshine this morning, though it is not expected to last. The air will not warm for hours, and then not much above freezing. The paradox of timing looms as I ponder a riverwalk, the sun lights the old road and the mountainside until mid-morning, when the air still lies cold. The sun warms the body and brings cheer, yet I fear the frigid air will torture my beleaguered lungs.

Tomorrow will bring snow and ice, and as the week warms the rain will fall, erasing the winter clarity of the big river.

Yes, I am a true believer in matching fly color to the mayflies and caddisflies I find on my favorite waters. The preponderance of my own experiences convinced me long ago that matching the color and the translucency of the insects I seek to imitate is a lofty but worthwhile goal.

I enjoy the various discussions whenever this topic comes up. Within the Catskill Fly Tyers Guild, there are many talented fly tyers, some who I accord the title of scholars in deference to their broad knowledge of the history of dry fly fishing and the art of enticing our quarry to the surface. I often find these fellows stacked against me in the color debate. As much as I respect their knowledge and opinions, I simply cannot ignore my own experiences.

In the broad realm of our immersion in angling though, there will always be instances that run counter to each of our accepted theories and beliefs. In discussing a featured fly for next week’s online gathering, the Blue Quill dry fly was suggested and embraced. I offered my own derivation pictured above for those interested in a non-traditional and easy to tie pattern that has proven itself time and again. It happens to be though, one of those proofs against the color theory.

Throughout my decades angling the Catskills, I have been a fly tyer, fishing almost singularly with my own flies. During all of those years, I did occasionally purchase some flies to fill an immediate need. These flies came from only two sources: the Dette shop on Cottage Street and flies tied by the late Dennis Skarka of Catskill Flies. It was Dennis’ pattern for the Blue Quill that inspired my own tie.

Dennis was a perfectionist at the vise, and took the time to bleach his own peacock eyes to secure lighter quills with the dark ribbing he desired for his pattern. He tied a synthetic winged parachute with dun tailing and wrapped hackle, a simple, beautiful fly that was very well received by the trout. I changed the body, being unwilling to endure the bleaching of peacock eyes and turning to the black and white barred primaries of our eastern wild turkey. The biot fibers vary, and the tyer can alter the general appearance of the dark ribbed body from a stark black and white to black with a light to medium gray, by selecting the biot fibers carefully. Blue Quill hatches can be remarkably heavy, and the reflective properties of the steel gray Antron yarn wing post make these small flies visible when light is difficult, the windblown surface is choppy, or the naturals are overwhelmingly numerous.

The underside of the natural mayfly varies also, from shades of brown to brownish gray, so to fit my own color theory the fly requires a brown abdomen, not one of black and white or banded shades of gray. The trouble is this fly, like Dennis Skarka’s original, is a deadly taker of trout feeding upon Blue Quills.

Nearly all of the dry flies of my own design sit low on the water, their bodies in the film, something I tend to remind my contemporaries when discussing (arguing?) the color theory. Many maintain that color matching is vital in wet flies, but needless in dries. I find my belief in color matching is reinforced season after season, though there are exceptions. If I force myself to set aside the Skarka influenced Blue Quill and fish brown bodies, I might find reinforcement in even better performance, but that is going to take some time. The old turkey biot fly isn’t going to be replaced with a dyed biot or Translucence Series fly until it fails, one day when I am certain the refusing trout is taking Blue Quills!

The fly carries a lot of memories including the capture of the hard charging twenty-two inch West Branch brown that christened my “Trout Bum” bamboo rod, a gorgeous three-piece eight-footer crafted by my friend Wyatt Dietrich in tribute to his mentor, the late George Maurer. That moment came amid the turmoil of trying to find a home here in the Catskills in early 2018, a season that didn’t end up granting me a lot of time on the water.

That same parachute allowed me to tangle with the one of the largest brownies I have ever battled, a fish I believed would have topped 28 inches if the little size 18 hook would have held for that last fifteen feet to the net! We never forget those that remain almosts.

Thank you Dennis, may they rise frequently for your beautiful flies as you angle around the next bend. I miss our talks and fondly recall the gift of our last one!

Another cold day here in Crooked Eddy, colder than I would like, though not as cold as Mississippi yesterday morn. I have set half a dozen quill bodies aside to dry that I might complete the flies this evening when the electronic variation of the Catskill Fly Tyers Guild convenes. I am partial to the luster and protection provided by a coat or two of Hard As Hull polymer head cement and tying a clean fly demands time to allow the potion to harden. I find it fish proofs the delicate quill bodied flies, though beware that a grasp and a twist with forceps can still ruin your fly.

The lead photos dramatically demonstrate why I so miss the natural dun toned CDC. Compare the play of light (my daylight spectrum tying lamp) on both natural and imitation. Dyed feathers simply cannot give a tyer that! I eschew dyed hackle capes for the same reason.

This evening’s gathering will discuss many of the classic patterns designed to match the various mayflies recognized as the Hendrickson hatch, featuring the Red Quill. Art Flick’s original is a beautiful fly, and I regret that I do not encounter these “males of Ephemerella subvaria” every season. My most reliable reference for mayflies remains Al Caucci’s and Bob Nastasi’s Hatches II which, if memory serves, maintains that long held conclusion. The authors do discuss several different species of Ephemerella flies they all consider to be Hendricksons.

Currently, on Catskill rivers I find the tan bodied flies to be most common, usually a rather uniform size 14, though I once saw a large number of them in size 12 on the Neversink tailwater, and a few of these on the Beaver Kill. The Red Quills are indeed smaller, matched with a size 16. I have plucked them from the surface to find dark red bodies like Flick’s fly, bright red bodies and even what I relate to a powdery antique brick red. I have not seen this variation within a single emergence, and cannot say if all of these, or indeed any, were subvaria males. I do tie separate imitations for each!

I have noted a very large tannish brick red fly on the Beaver Kill which seems a lit larger than a size 12, and might be better matched by a size 10 standard dry fly hook, and on each occasion, there were the ubiquitous tan bodied size 14’s on the water with them. Have I noted new species of mayflies? I don’t think so, rather some of Nature’s very unique variations that I guess may be attributable to changes in water chemistry.

Though I once suggested to anyone who asked that they carry the venerable Red Quill in size 16 on these waters, seeing so many variations would lead me to recommend they might catalog that classic fly from size 18 up to size 10, just in case.

Here in the Catskills, the Hendricksons are my favorite hatches, and seem to be less variable in their intensity from year to year. In light of that, I tie, and have tied, far more than I my ever use. There are always new ideas, and of course I don’t ever wish to run out of the hot pattern during a hatch!

It is likely that I will reorganize my main fly boxes once more this winter, relegating the flies to fish over the Blue Quills and Quill Gordons to their own box, sharing some space for a few choice olives. After last April, a few size 18 ants will be tucked into the box’s foam lid! The Hendricksons have more than earned their own fly box, a special, classic Wheatley!

It seems I have had variants on my mind of late. They have ghosted through much of my recent reading including Art Flick’s biography, and the stories of Gene Connett, Dana Lamb and others. In fact, I was moved to tie a quarter dozen quill bodied Hendrickson Variants just this morning.

I remember these beautiful big dry flies drawing my interest very early in my fly-tying career. When I first visited the Catskills more than three decades ago, I came armed with Mr. Flick’s favorite fly, the Gray Fox Variant. His Dun Variant was another pattern that was stored in one of my big compartment fly boxes, one that had seen some use back home in Pennsylvania, where the Isonychia mayflies Flick designed these big dries to imitate were found on waters such as the Little Juniata River.

I confess that my fascination with these flies waned over the years, enthralled as I was with my own patterns and experimentation. I have stashed a few variants in my big fly boxes in recent years once more, and my plan is to give them some time on the water.

One the recurring themes with classic fly patterns is that their reputations as trout catchers have been earned through decades of seasons and thousands of anglers. A majority among the new guard seems drawn to the latest conglomeration of materials, foam, synthetic flash, bug eyes and rubber legs that gets featured in magazines and videoed on YouTube. As a result, our heavily pressured wild trout do not have the familiarity with the classics that their ancestors did. That lack of familiarity often results in a lack of the avoidance behavior frequently observed on our popular rivers.

I would guess that there are a lot of brown trout out there that have never had a variant dry fly floated over them, and that makes me think I should have them on my tippet rather than sitting in a fly box!

Art Flick considered his Gray Fox Variant to be a good imitation for the Green Drake, as well as pale Potamanthus mayflies, but it was his favorite pattern to fish regardless of the presence of these two giant mayflies. If you think about it, there do tend to be a few big bugs around through a long stretch of the trout season and, while a Gray Fox Variant may not be the best hatch matcher’s choice when trout are rising to sulfurs, these big flies might just be golden when cast and twitched around cover when there is no hatch going on. How many times have you seen or heard a terrific splash on one of those dead days?

I plan to fluff up the hackles on some of my stored variants and make sure they are handy once those long, sunny days of spring and summer roll around.

Come to think of it, there is one Art Flick variant that I have been fishing regularly. The Flick Blue Winged Olive is really a scaled down variant tie. I have had some great success in recent summers fishing the sparse little pale olives I find on summer mornings. I tie a thin thread body on size 20 and 22 dry fly hooks with a long, sparse hackle fiber tail and an oversized rusty dun hackle. I have taken some big browns on these and found them surprisingly visible even on long casts across flat, featureless pools.

Besides enjoying great writing, reading old, classic angling books can give you some fresh ideas and expand your knowledge of the wonderful pursuit of dry fly fishing.

Last night I shared a special dry fly with my friends of the Catskill Fly Tyers Guild, a simple little dry fly I call the CDX. Sharing a favorite fly pattern isn’t generally a big deal, though in a way, this one was, for time has proven it to be one of the best designs I have ever created.

This fly came about some fifteen years ago, and I had kept it a secret, known only to three of my best and most trusted friends. I had liked Craig Matthews well known X Caddis for some time. It is a simple and effective dry fly that sits low on the surface. I used to tie mine with a thinner trailing shuck than the original, something I did most of the time when I used a shuck on any dry fly. I figured that, if the X-Caddis was a good fly, then maybe I could make a caddis pattern that was even better.

Readers here know that I have used CDC feathers throughout my thirty some years as a fly tyer. I didn’t start because it became popular. I started using it the first time I laid eyes on these wispy little feathers because their appearance screamed movement. Real insects move, and our heavily pressured wild trout have learned that lesson well. I set out to design a versatile caddis fly that moved in the currents and moved in the wind.

I wanted to take advantage of the materials used to make my caddis look alive, and I began with the X-Caddis’ trailing shuck. A trailing shuck is great for an emerging insect, but I didn’t want my new caddis to be limited to hatch conditions. I also think that a lot of tyers use far too much material when they add a trailing shuck to a fly. I wanted movement and the sparkle of light reflections, so I used a very small number of Antron yarn fibers and teased them with a pull across my scissors blade. That frays and crinkles the fibers of the yarn giving me a wild and very sparse “bubble tail” – movement, air bubbles and sparkle equal life!

I have a group of dubbing blends that I have prepared over the years to match the caddisflies I have encountered. My general formula calls for a rough fur with short spiky guard hairs, and squirrel is my favorite. I add a small amount of compatibly colored Antron dubbing and then some of the yarn itself, cut very short, say 1/16th of an inch long. I choose and blend various colors to match the insect, ending up with a rough, spiky, sparkly body. These blends were perfect for the new CDX.

Paramount in getting the movement I was after were the wings, and there is no better choice than CDC oiler puffs. If I can get those in a little larger size for caddis in sizes sixteen and up, I am a very happy fly tyer. The puffs have a curvature along their length, and tying in a pair of them side by side with the tips curving away from one another makes an ideal moving caddis wing.

I finished my prototype with a couple of turns of barred dry fly hackle. CDC will get wetted eventually during fishing, and a touch of hackle for a collar provides some floatation as well as a light pattern for the insect’s legs. Once tied, I set out to find out if my new design fished as good as I planned.

I learned that I had something special when I tied a Shadfly CDX to my tippet here in the Catskills. It did not matter whether the trout were taking hatching flies, egg laying flies, or spent caddis, they eagerly accepted the CDX. Many big Catskill browns have fallen for this simple fly, trout that ignored or refused other usually effective caddis patterns.

On the first day of summer 2013, I was fishing limestone home waters on Big Spring south of Newville, Pennsylvania. I carried my seven-and-a-half-foot DreamCatcher bamboo rod with a size 18 tan CDX when I saw the rainbow pictured above lying in a deep pocket of crystal-clear water. The trout wasn’t rising, though there were a few small tan caddis flying around. This fish rose and sucked in my CDX on the second cast igniting the fight of my angling life!

It is rare today for me to fish any other caddis pattern during the season. I choose an appropriate CDX to match the flies I observe or the species that is active at that time of year, and I fish it with unfailing confidence. So that is why the fly has been a well-guarded secret for so many years.

You can fish the CDX in flats, riffles or runs, no matter what the caddisflies are doing. If there is a trout out there who is willing to rise to a caddisfly, he’s going to eat a well-presented CDX. I do tie a few of mine with a little extra hackle, three or four turns instead of only two, reserving these for the heaviest water.

During more than three decades of fishing Pennsylvania limestone spring creeks and beautiful Catskill freestoners and tailwaters, I have too often witnessed wild trout taking selectivity to it’s outer limits, taking only the natural caddis or mayflies that moved within their window. Movement within the fly and an optical simulation of movement and thus life are our best weapons when we engage these super-select spotted warriors!

That title was once a very common utterance. In my youth, thousands of products from household gadgets to automobiles were hawked with a “ninety-day guarantee”, and those that didn’t sell so fast might be offered on time: “ninety-days same as cash”. The point is that, back then, ninety-days was considered a substantial amount of time.

These days, I guess that period represents the last significant milepost along the long journey through winter; spring may not be imminent, but it isn’t a lifetime away either.

The snow is falling heavily here in Crooked Eddy, and I am hoping that it continues. No, I don’t wish to be buried in it, but the alternative is said to be a couple of inches of rain on top of the snow fallen during the passage of these two winter storms. I don’t care to see my rivers battered with flood waters. There are trout eggs down in that gravel, and millions of immature insects, two classes of life that I would like to find more of when spring does beckon me back to the water’s edge.

Just over the mountain here, three beautifully flamed pieces of bamboo are being perfectly crafted into next summer’s magic, and that is the thought I like to keep foremost in my mind! I need to get out the fly boxes that house the tiny pale olives, sulfurs and terrestrials that are essential to that magic, to take stock of which patterns I need to tie, and perhaps put my mind to designing a new one.

Ah summer! You lie out there at the limits of my vision!

It is easy to sit and dream of balmy days upon bright water. My memories are full of sunlight and it’s sparkle on the gentle riffles, images of a secret wink of light beyond the edge of shade, my grip tightened on the cork. Though I feel blessed to wander rivers any day of the year, summer is my favorite season!

As I gazed at the warm brown cane I was taken there, crouching along the edge of a flat and mesmerized by an intermittent ripple in the current fifty feet away. A flick of my wrist and the thin gray line unrolls, my little fly settles gently and nearly vanishes in the drift. Time stops, until that ripple becomes a ring, and that warm brown cane turns to lightning in my hand!

It finally looks like winter this morning, more than two months into the great void. So far, this much talked about first winter storm has not hit Crooked Eddy too hard. It is still snowing though.

The Weather Channel was all abuzz about double digit snowfall in New York and Pennsylvania, but we have nothing like that here. I was missing the snow as Christmas came and went, but I don’t need a foot of it to bring a smile.

The specter that is still hovering involves storm number two, expected to bring more snow to begin the week and then rain and warmer temperatures midweek. Catskill anglers, and all who love these rivers would heartily prefer a flood-free season.

I would like to see a couple of little warming trends each month now until spring. Ideally, that would give me a day or two during each of winter’s remaining months to get out and wander along a riverbank, with a little hope that something spotted might intercept the swing of my fly. Time to keep working with the movement flies I have designed, and perhaps even devise another.

Right now, I am in the midst of the annual lull in my fly tying. I finished out the year 2023 with a few ideas, and now I am taking it easy for a while and enjoying my winter reading.

I missed the first winter fly tying session at the Museum yesterday, and I hear that quite a few of our Guild tyers showed up, despite the snowstorm bearing down upon us. I really didn’t feel up to it and didn’t want to spend the afternoon coughing at my fellow fly tyers. I’m on my doctor’s third suggestion to beat this bronchitis, and I really hope it works before the next little gathering in two weeks.

The books are keeping me connected to bright waters for now, although most of the best ones are older volumes which speak of days long gone. I do tend to smile at the fact that our Catskill rivers have continued, something not expected in many of the angling writings penned after WWII. Despite our environmental progress, there are still great challenges ahead, lest the current generation be the last to experience the wonder of wild trout rising to a mayfly hatch.

For my morning reading today, I savored an old classic penned by the late Eugene V. Connett. The little book entitled “Magic Hours” held a pair of tales, the titled story and one called “Secret Waters”. He told of a Long Island meadow stream, spring fed, and briskly cold in August, and the wonderful wild brook trout he caught there.

Small streams fed by limestone springs have a magical allure, and I wandered along many of them during the years I lived in Southcentral Pennsylvania. There was always that hope of discovering something special!

Sadly, I never found a real pot-of-gold at the end of any of those limestone rainbows. Man’s talent for polluting, bulldozing, and generally destroying such treasures is no secret, and yet I strive to retain just a bit of hope in my heart.

There is another classic old volume on my bookshelf that tells of a forgotten region of limestone fed streams, and that leads me toward dreaming once more. The area is still farm country, and I cannot help but wonder if a few of those forgotten waters still run clear and cold, the homes of precious forgotten strains of wild trout. If man has not seen fit to bring the ruination he so often has, perhaps a tour with a light cane rod and a stream thermometer could reveal at least a hint of the magic revealed in the words of a gentle, long departed angler scribe.

Oh how I would love to find a secret gem, where an old man might cast a dry fly in January, February and March! Too much to ask in these times I am certain. Secret waters are a myth in these days of rabid information… or are they?