Yes, that fish made my day, unquestionably. The bear cub racing me along the road shoulder during my drive to the river got the day off to a great start anyway, and fooling this trophy brown just made it just about perfect. Fishing, of course, isn’t all about the trophies, the perfect days and the victories though. Sometimes, things get real.

When the sun got high enough and the air warm enough, I changed my leader and tippet and went to work on the hard stuff: the trials and hard-core technical field research needed to develop a deadly fly pattern for grasshopper fishing in the Catskills. Like I said on my last post, it is August, and its go time!

Designing and developing dry flies is hard work, and hopper fishing is no picnic. A lot of water has to be covered with strategic, long distance, pinpoint casting. As I said, there are no wide, windswept grassy fields flanking these mountain rivers. You will grow old and gray sitting on one of these riverbanks waiting for a “grasshopper wind” in anticipation of the aquatic explosions to begin, borrowing a picturesque phrase from the esteemed master angler and wordsmith Mr. Ernest Schwiebert.

It truly was a lovely day, but I guess all of that work had been wearing on me a bit, as my attention to detail slipped just a touch – all that the Red Gods needed to bring on the corollary, indeed the thrill of victory tempered with the agony of defeat!

George Maurer’s “Queen of the Waters” sent that experimental hopper perfectly. The fly alit gently, not half an inch from the shielding cover. With plenty of controlled slack in the tippet, it floated perhaps a foot until the explosion sent a burst of spray skyward. I allowed the precise half a second of pause required, raised the cane, and hooked fishzilla solidly. That finned demon kicked into overdrive and headed to the other side of the river. Perfect, yes? Well, no.

I had not tended my slack fly line studiously, some coils of it were still in my hand. When I struck, my fingers dropped those coils where the Red Gods deposited them on the handles of my forceps residing in a loop on the front of my vest. As those loose coils of line became line moving away with a high rate of speed, the forceps retarded the departure of one fishzilla trout… SNAP! I don’t think that one has happened to me for the past twenty years but, those Red Gods are patient, and punctual.

These events, I must confess, had a decided effect upon my nerves, frazzled seems to be the accurate terminology. I inspected the tippet and tied on a new hopper, cursed and moaned for an appropriate interval, and finally continued with the arduous task of fly development field research.

Feeling that the Red Gods had struck such a blow, I figured they were satisfied and were off to harass some other innocent angler. Little did I realize, they were still very much interested in yours truly, hushed and waiting, all the while planning on tickling said frazzled nerves at the perfect future moment. That moment dawned when I bravely sent my hopper deep into a tight, impenetrable ring of cover, and a big, slow, ominous wake approached it.

In retrospect, I do have to offer my applause for their execution. They tripped the trigger such that I, forewarned a thousand times of their devilment, fell fully into their trap. They let that fish break the surface so that all I could see was his mouth, enveloping my innocent fly and that tripped the trigger instantly!

I swear I felt that fly scraping on his teeth when I launched it in my direction with a triumphant sweep of the rod.

The research log indicates that the third hopper test model had a positive introductory field result.

At times I mourn the lack of some wide fields of switchgrass or grain winding along the hills beside some of our Catskill rivers. I always looked forward to August in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley for the hopper fishing!

Winter does things to an angler’s mind, particularly the dry fly angler, but sometimes a spark twinkles through the bleak white world and something good is spawned: an idea. A few seasons back, I awakened to the thought to search for information, the answer for a question that had dug out of my snowblind brain: are there any woodland grasshopper species? There are it seems, and one in the classic form and native to this southern tier and Catskill region of New York State.

Now that adult grows to be a biggun, a couple of inches long, bet they aren’t born that way. From my vise came the Baby Woodland Hopper. Now this idea, this fly, is still in it’s infancy, but it works. Hopper fishing like the good old days on the Letort and Falling Spring. I have not tied one on at sunup and cast until my arm fell numb, but I have tried them in certain situations. The big unanswered question is how many of these critters live along any number of our Catskill rivers, which rivers, and how often do they get on the water where the trout can get at them? It will take time and a concerted effort to find out.

That first summer of ’24 opened me fully to the possibilities. A two-foot brown in late July, another barely an inch shorter later in August, and a few others. The new pattern hasn’t been used a great deal. Grasshoppers are creatures of the afternoon, and I fish mornings during the high heat weather at that time of year. But I intend to explore the phenomenon at greater length.

How aggressive might be a big, wise old brownie when encountering these new hoppers? One of the early customers exploded on the fly and exploded on the leader when I set the hook, exploding the tip of my beautiful 1940’s four-weight cane rod! The rod has been repaired, thanks to the artistry of Dennis Menscer. That rod will fish some more baby hoppers.

The initial baby fly has a new companion, my Woodland Hopper. A different shade, and a bit larger, but still intended to imitate the juvenile, half-grown grasshoppers – the kids dumb enough to ignore their upbringing and play around the riverbanks. These have not been fished just yet, but it is August, and it is absolutely time for them.

The nice thing with these guys is that they are a perfect size to be fished with a light rod, a four-weight, or the D.W. Menscer 803! The choice will come down to water levels on a given day. Catskill summer fishing is still low water fishing after all.

No pictures yet here, no recipies. I’ll share it once I have proven it, sometime… after I have a little fun with them; you know, when the definitive research has been completed.

Well, the last week of August is winding down, and my last fishing day for the week has been concluded. I felt the air change more than an hour before the thunderstorm came knocking and was snug with my gear stowed and driving toward home when the first drops were falling. There was some good news all around today.

I started late, heading out after nine after publishing the chronicle of my day on the Neversink, so it was a leisurely summer morning for me. I made the long walk along the river, watching the remnant of the mist come alive in the warming air, rousting some deer on the shoreline. One of them sounded like it was touching close when it bounded out of it’s fully greenery screened bed after ignoring it’s companions’ alarm snorts. That one got my heart pumping!

As soon as I stopped to get ready to fish the now famous tree where there are never any trout around, I heard a rise upstream. Watching for a few moments, I saw a rise just above me near the far bank. I tossed my Grizzly Beetle his way several times, but he paid no heed, so I went to work fishing to my fishless spot.

I admit, I was nearly convinced that there wasn’t another big brownie tucked into that cover. But I drifted that fly over every inch of that lie and, sure enough, the Grizzly Beetle was irresistible, conjuring a trout where none really are! The twenty-one incher gave me a good ride particularly when I tried to shoot the proof that he was really there.

Another warm, sunny day, and I had arrived just in time to fish the remaining shade on that tree. The air was very calm, the pool glassy, so I cast that beetle out to any signs of subsurface movement. Once I got a hard grab as I started to retrieve for another cast, making me wonder if another aggressive rainbow was out there, but all of my spot casts amounted to two young brown trout, each some six or seven inches long.

Those two little fish amounted to good news though too. As the river, and that favorite pool as a nursery looks to be in very good shape. Walking down, and feeling the air pressure continue to slowly drop, I thought about the fishing might be three or four years hence. I hope to be there to cast a fly and find out!

Time to change up I thought; time to venture to the eastern side of the Catskills and visit the storied Neversink! The thought came late, but I sent an early message to my friend Kevan Best as he haunts that river frequently. We missed the connection it seemed, as I had grabbed Dennis Menscer’s sweet little 7’6″ four weight and an old Featherweight and pointed east soon after six o’clock.

I was watching the fog dance along the riverscape and heard the phone ring, tapped the circle and heard his voice… “coming over the mountains and I’ll be there in half an hour”. Kevan was searching for tricos, our most diminutive widely spread mayflies, and we strained our eyes into that dancing mist for clues as to their swarm as we talked.

Kevan decided to watch the warming air for the hope to find a cloud of those tiny spinners over the riffle, but soon the pull of a couple of favorite memories drew me upriver rod in hand.

The cool morning air greeted me as the sun tried it’s best to work its way between the fog and early clouds. The river was low and sparkling as I stepped into the faster braids and carefully worked my way toward a little run which always brings a smile to my face! My casts there were gently placed, but no one sampled my fare, this time.

I cast my eyes upon the Victory Pool and felt it had been too long without a reunion with this interesting piece of Catskill water. So named in honor of my first trophy sized brown trout taken on vintage bamboo, a Granger Victory 8642.

I eased upstream, step by step, letting the soft current dissolve my presence from dwellers upstream. Memory drew the first casts.

When I saw the tiniest disturbance and it’s minimal rings, I imagined some fingerling perhaps finding one of those minute tricorythodes my friend waited for patiently downstream, though I know the eyes and the impressions formed in the mind may deceive. I made a cast, then another, laying gently down my chunky, distinctly un-minute dry offering, while those tiny wrinkles in the surface repeated. The cast that turned the moment was lofted closer to the riverbank, letting the drift bring it nearer to those innocent motions of the water fairies.

The soft plop of the rise was answered, and the smooth but heavy arch of the little bamboo proved once again that others but tiny fish may wrinkle the surface. He wanted loose of that reign immediately, though I determined to arrest his heavy rush to the rocks and branches littered along the waters along the shore. Twisting and darting, I judged his size with each flash of his white belly, his back camouflaged by the tannin tinged water.

The battle was close quarters, a series of rushes toward cover and more of the twisting, wrenching efforts he sought to free the hold of what was a moment ago too tempting to ignore. Each time I turned him short of tippet wrecking country and finally brought him to net. The colors were breathtaking, a wild sheen of greens amid a backlit bronze with hints of old gold and bold carmine spots, a gorgeous tableau. I ached for my interrupted morning rush, hurrying my departure sans camera. That picture can now only be reserved in memory.

As morning slipped toward afternoon, Kevan and I toured a few spots, kindly sharing his wider experience with the Neversink I visit too rarely, ending along a quiet, weedy reach teasing us with a few sulfur mayflies as we watched from the shade of the trees. He urged me to try one of the fish who had quietly announced his presence, and I walked well below before entering the water.

It was slow going, fearing a slip on the weed-covered rocks would end the game for both of us, but I managed it. I worked the lower half of that shaded edge of riverbank, failing to interest the downstream resident, convinced no doubt that his lie was suitably impenetrable. I certainly proved his belief.

Slipping downstream and out, I rejoined Kevan back in the trees, happily at least I avoided disturbing the upper resident trout he had patiently observed. We talked for a while until I was ready to hike back to the road. My friend stayed on, wanting I think wished as much just to see a nice parade of sulfurs as a chance at the old fish dining on them before the offered thunderstorms chased him away.

Rainfall and high water in August, fancy that, so my first August fishing had to wait a day. Solitude and a sense of wonder, as after each substantial rain event I perceive the rivers are renewed.

I chose a more standard morning start time, experience telling me a dawn patrol wasn’t needed for this new water. I carried an old Leonard 50 DF, one of the early Hunt versions, wearing a 3″ St. George and the experience of years. I never really know when I visit a rain-washed river, my hopes are high invariably, but experience tells me to expect nothing. Thus, verily, I found that same.

Four hours of stalking, working some good lies and straining my eyes to dissect every inch of that water, lifeless completely for the first couple of hours. Flows change, and trout with them, and the first evidence led me to suspect the few trout training on an eye with the surface were roaming everywhere, though finding little of interest.

Eventually, I had waded all the way and found myself near the scene of the crimes. I had found that fish in mid-July, felt powerful head shakes that have become his trademark, and bemoaned when he fought to get into the snags and straightened out a not too fine wire dry fly hook. Power, and nothing.

Five days after our rude introduction, I tossed him a Cross Special when I caught a sip to a pale little mayfly. Once more, he insisted to take me to his woodshed, and my leader knot broke when I did my best to stop him. Head Shaker two, beaten angler nothing.

I came knocking on other days, even catching a couple of fine other fish, but Head Shaker failed to show. Had he left the county? Changed his hideout? No answers as July passed on. No answers until the first sojourn of August. So, after half a day of fruitless stalking, I peek around his corner once more…

There seems a quiver of movement, and I freeze and let my tired eyes continue the search, but nothing certain is found. A few casts nearby draw no attention, so I stand and wait. Seventy feet away the surface opens up with a terrible detonation and my heart jumps up in my throat. Should I put my innocent little size 16 dry fly in that? So be it.

I let the long line unroll and set the 100-Year Dun at sixty, flipping the rod tip gently to shake out some slack to extend the drift. As that canted little wing slips into a deeper shadow I lose sight, and then divine intervention urges me to lift the rod and the explosion rocks me! Head Shaker!

He is not close enough to his woodshed this time, and I strip the line heading him in my direction. Miraculously, he keeps on coming until I have forty feet of fly line piled on the water, all the while shaking that big head left then right. He dashes from side to side in front of me, flipping and somersaulting to smash the leader with his tail. All I can do is to react, parry his thrusts, until I start to worry about all of that fly line splayed out on the water.

I cannot take my fingers away from the rod grip while he is thrashing, but my right hand begins to wind. The line is loose on the reel spool, and trouble is coming, but I have no choice. If the line tangles, it is over before it starts.

When he takes a breath between dashes and thrashes, I back up a step or two. Eventually, he tries to go around me when I am backing, but I lead him that way, out into shallower water, clean bottomed shallower water.

In mid-river now I watch him flashing in full sunlight, fighting him with the line controlled in my fingers. All of that slack has all but jammed the reel, so I pull a few turns off the spool in case he runs beyond my precarious tether. The fight will be won or lost hand to hand now.

The thrust with the net brings a deep exhale, as he threatens to leap right out of it! Rod tucked under my arm, I clutch the net with both hands, then pop the fly out. It comes free quite easily. Then the camera, aligning him over the graduated scale… all twenty-five inches of him! Lastly a solemn nod to a noble foe, then slip him back into the cold, clear water. We both feel that release.

It has been showery today, and it appears that theme will find it’s way at least part way through Monday. Driving out of Livingston Manor yesterday at the close of Summerfest, the storm clouds were massing along the southern ridges of the mountains. Despite that long, black line all the way west back to Hancock, the evening proved dry. Our rivers don’t seem to have received enough to be affected, but we’ll still take the gamble on storms overnight and in the morning. I for one am hoping for a fishing day.

There is no doubt that, after spending the day of talking about and thinking about fishing, I nearly threatened to head out today. One of the best things about Summerfest is the talk with like-minded anglers blessed to spend their hours with a bamboo fly rod in their hands and a deep contentment in their hearts!

I’ve been sitting here polishing a lovely old Leonard and dreaming about a long, smooth loop of line sailing gently through the morning air, and the wise old brownie whose waiting for my fly to drift nearby…

A vintage English reel crackles to life in the misty summer air, and the droplets fly from the line as a fine trout accelerates away! This is what is supposed to be, surrounded by the solitude of Nature and folded close to her breast. There’s a good dose of Catskill Summer yet before us, and I plan to relish every moment of it!

For the most part, the prognostication has exceeded the reality.

This western end of the Catskill region has found a little rain, this where a bold TV weatherman revealed his map late yesterday predicting an impossible four and a half inches for Deposit. The Central and Beaver Kill watershed took the brunt, with the river touching the margins of the mildest of flood stages. The East seems similar in scope as seen here in the west. So goes the unpredictability of rainfall in these mountains! There are remainders of storm warnings here, but this as yesterday appears not to be a fishing day.

I wrote last autumn about the most recent turn in my own study and curiosity in the legends and historical tales of Catskill rod making. I researched as best I was able to learn more of one of those icons, the H. L. Leonard Model 66 ACM flyrod. Recently, the gracious owner of an amazing private collection has provided some answers, actual facts not legends, taken from the preserved records of a company that was so tightly woven into the fabric of the craft of fly rod making.

It seems that the Mills company, owners, set about compiling a book containing everything about the making of a Leonard fly rod in the early 1950’s. That book was the magic key to enable Mills to rebuild Leonard after the disastrous fire, and among those pages are the specifications of the mystical Leonard ACM rods, including indeed, an eight-foot 2-piece Model 66 ACM. My hand told me it was real with my first cast, but now my faith has been bolstered by history!

I have recounted my own rebirth as an angler, deliverance sprung from that remarkable staff! May the spirits among the legacy of H. L. Leonard ever shadow these Catskill rivers and watch over we anglers of the noble reed and artificial fly.

We are fortunate that some few among us, caretakers, authors and scribes, have done what they may to ensure the history and traditions of the art of fly fishing and the classically simple and beautiful artifacts of the tackle which allow our entry to the worlds of the mists and bright waters.

Summerfest arrives on Saturday, and it is one of my favorite days of the year. The Catskill Museum welcomes all of us touched by this magical art of fly fishing and wild trout, and may the waters of her fair Willowemoc may recede, and there be good cheer and sunny skies!

The dawn patrol, summer’s primary attack pattern, up and early and relying on that spare, single cup of coffee to clear the cobwebs from my head. Find a little sustenance, and then swallow that daily load of pills. When we reach a certain age, they seem to be a given in these times.

I’m reaching for the Superfine once more, after an adjustment to the backing wound on my little CFO III. Don’t want any jamming when trying to wind a lot of slack fly line up when my attentions are… otherwise directed.

On the river it is chilly and foggy, and the water level is lower than my last trip. Thin flows make any approach more difficult than ever, and I have to get closer than I want to survey the pieces of water I hope will betray some hunting fish.

I find no movement whatsoever, though I have heard a plop once or twice at distance. Visibility remains limited, and I see nothing when I search for the source of those sounds.

I have covered a lot of water as now it is after nine, but still no hunting trout have betrayed themselves. The sun is burning off the fog and the river mist, so I can see at distance, but there is no sign of activity. Casting to cover has been fruitless.

I prospect the shallow riffly tail of what passes for a riffle to see if I can awaken something. Finally, I see one good rise, and the reserve power in this little seven-foot stick sends my Baby Woodland Hopper right to it. It doesn’t drift more than a foot before a nice brown comes up hard and we are off to the races! The oxygenated water here gives him plenty of energy and he runs all over the river before I can wrangle him into the net.

Catching that one gives me some energy too, and I work a favorite bank hard with nothing more to show. Finally, I find a sole sipper, but he proves too wise, ignoring various terrestrials. With the sun working above the mountaintop the first few mayflies of the day appear, so I change and revisit that sipper.

Late in the morning now I am feeling tired. The short rod works you harder than an eight-footer, and three-thirty is still three-thirty.

My sipper bubbles up right beneath my little dun, the water quivers with our anticipation, but he won’t eat it. Clear, ultra low flows, and the trout have been fished over and educated. Hell, I’ve educated him most likely, catching him a week or so earlier this summer.

The forecast swears we are going to get a lot of rain, tonight and again tomorrow, though it seems it will be mostly as thunderstorms. Between tonight and Tuesday we could see more than two inches, and that will reboot the rivers.

I guess I can try to sleep in the morning.

How time flies! Today begins the last week of July, and August will be knocking on the door. Some call August the Dog Days, and indeed, temperatures and drought can justify their complaints, but I recall mornings like the one just pictured. Catskill Summer days with warm but pleasant afternoons, often after a touch of a chill in early mornings and cold water flowing in our tailwaters!

I remember that morning. There were some very small flies, green caddis, the kind of flies we see in bug books, but I for one have rarely encountered. Sure, I have tied some, but after a couple of years of disuse, well, what the hell ever fly box did I put them in? That morning I had to improvise. I took the greenest size 20 olive CDC mayfly I had, clipped off the tails with my pocket scissors and squashed down the dun colored CDC wing until it rode like a down wing. That boo bending sweet brownie told me it was just fine!

I remember a last day years ago when I decided to drive to a favorite spot rather than simply starting the drive back to Pennsylvania. I trundled down the steep bank to find loads of BWO’s on the water, and good trout rising, stealing a couple more hours of great fishing before back home and another week of the work that was slowly killing me.

I can’t tell just which kind of August we might have, but I am hoping it is filled like days like those. It begins with Summerfest, always a good time to trade tales with tackle dealers, run into a friend not seen for a year, and just enjoying the day surrounded by like characters.

I plan to do my best to make each day of the month worth living, to spend my hours in fishing, tying, great music and food, and to take a few minutes on the porch late in the day and enjoy a frosty cold one and just look around at these mountains.

We all have seen them, particular spots, places where everything looks fishy, but there never seems to be any sort of a decent trout within a mile of it. The optimists think there must be the granddaddy of them all down there, but time eventually convinces them that trout just seem to don’t like that spot.

I mean, who knows what is in the mind in a trout?

Over time, you tend to ignore those places. You tell yourself well that place looks sooo good, every Tom, Dick and Harry bombards it with twenty casts, bad casts… so big trout learn to avoid it. Sure, once in a while you stop and throw a perfunctory wild cast there, but after enough fishless years go by and you just don’t bother.

Maybe it was my day, but I have been having a lot of good days lately. I missed out on my spring fishing, was threatened that I might be done period, and I have embraced the blessings offered me when I came through that. I like summer anyway. When it gets more difficult, skinny water, trout at their wariest, rare brief little hatches, that’s my comfort zone.

So yesterday morning I am walking, sneaking along the river’s edge, and I decide to go further and take a shot at an interesting new place, and yea, an old place where there is never a good trout there. The new spot doesn’t pan out. New cover may take time to appeal to a lunker trout I tell myself, so that leaves the old nowhere lie. Perfunctory cast and move on? No, I fish it! I work it like a surgeon taking out your something or other.

Now appreciate the fact that this place has never even threatened to produce anything but an odd foot long trout, and that has been nearby, not really on the lie that draws all of the attention. This has been like that for years! But I keep working, just like everything depends upon it. Nurse, retractor, I’m going in again…

The fly has dissected every foot of this lie, and finally I lose sight of my fly in the glare and see a bit of nervous water that hovers where I think it should be. I tighten up and it sort of drags, then comes away. Weeds? I check the fly and it is clean and in good shape, so I put the perfect cast tight in there and let it drift again… kawhomp!

I am on the line and stripping, the Leonard bowed up in a big, full curve, and the water is splashing all over the place. Those first few seconds are everything when the cover is impenetrable. Now I’ve got him out of it and we are on even ground.

I still don’t think the old fellow knows what hit him, but there he is out of his tree in the middle of the river in the sun light, and his breakfast is tugging on him. We had a good fight, but the net wasn’t something he liked very much. Twenty-three inches of indignant old brown trout was hopping mad one moment, and then sitting there at my feet, released to go ponder just what and how this happened.