It was a long day for me, geared up and headed out around ten in the morning, and by the end of that day, I felt it. The years remind you of their tally, even when you try to forget.

I was tired because I covered a lot of water, wading against strong current in the kind of fast water where you’ve got to be certain of every footstep, lest the river take you away. I felt those currents in my legs last night, sitting back and trying to watch the ballgame. I dozed through more innings than I watched, the pain waking me when I tried to rise and climb the stairs.

The winds were typical for April, strong and gusty and unrelenting. Throughout the day I saw only the little black caddis that have hovered around the water for a couple of weeks. With the sun out bright before Noon, I saw a fish move away from me when I inadvertently waded close to his lie. A good fish, but he surprised me there, out in the middle of the river in that strong flow. I cannot tell you that fish was a trout, though I hoped it was. The rushing water and its depth obscured the details.

The hours passed as I searched, my flies finding no takers, my eyes no fluttering wings upon the surface. At last, the winds became too horrendous to battle in that wide, open reach of river and I sought relief. The protected reach I sought was still festooned with anglers, so instead I parked near a smaller pool, just to take a look at the water. The winds were not quite so steady there, though I saw nothing but an occasional caddisfly. I considered my options and stayed, sitting down on the riverbank to watch and wait. No more searching, no more water to cover for these old bones. Time for patience and reflection… and hope.

It was nearing three o’clock when I decided that any activity I might see would be brief, and that I would have to be out there and ready to take advantage of it. I confess this little pool is a comfort zone early in the season, a place I have found that unexpected opportunity when I wanted it badly. After three days of hunting non-existent rising trout, this was my last hope. This week, my target week, was nearly done, and the warming trend that promised what was not delivered was ending too. There is snow in Tuesday’s forecast.

I waded out slowly refamiliarizing my feet with the contours of the bottom, and when I reached an appropriate position, I dug them in firmly and waited.

Clouds were gathering, battling the afternoon sun with its welcome warmth. The winds calmed for short moments, then gusted back to life as I waited, scanning the surface that my eyes might turn one of those windblown seeds into an actual mayfly.

Ten minutes is not a lot of time in the course of a day, though it can be enough time to heighten the spirit. I saw the first one out at distance, a little essence of gray color and motion that I recognized as a mayfly struggling to dry its wings as the wind tumbled it along the choppy surface. I spotted two or three fluttering that way before I saw one actually sitting in its normal posture, the vision my brain could use to confirm my initial suspicion: Quill Gordons.

Now you will read many authoritative treatises on Epeorus pleuralis, and each will tell you to expect the hatch by one o’clock. Decades spent upon these rivers tell me that mayflies have a very different sense of timing than anglers. I smiled to myself as I selected a fly from my fly box and knotted the 100-Year Dun to my tippet.

I did not try to count the flies that emerged during those ten minutes of activity, though it was not a significant hatch. If I were to guess, I would say a couple of dozen flies fluttered and tumbled past me out there in the thread of the current, with only two or three actually sitting on top and riding the glide, and then it was finished. My eyes strained looking for more, all the while searching for the rise of a trout.

I was ready when that rise finally happened. I lofted the line and sent the fly out there, just short to judge the drift, then pulled another few feet of line from the reel and made the cast that would begin my year. The canted wing of my dun drew my gaze, my fly riding the glide, until that splash of white told me it was time for fishing now.

The rod bowed and bucked as the trout fought the pull of the line, using the strength of the current to his advantage. I did not rush him, could not in that fresh, strong spring flow. I gave line when he demanded it, took it back when he allowed, until the moment ended in the meshes of my net. He was a quality fish, a good brown trout of perhaps sixteen inches, and he had proved he was as ready for the dry fly as I was.

Seventy-five degrees, though the trees are still bare, there is evidence of a few early buds here and there. I got my legs wet yesterday, though river levels are still high, they are trying to round into shape. Today’s forecast calls for thunderstorms, with a chance for some to be severe, so everything in the angler’s world rests in the clouds.

I just finished up a baker’s dozen of flies headed for the river today, at least if the weather allows. I’ll try to wade once again. I have been caught in thunderstorms during a river float a couple of times, and I would as soon not repeat the experience.

The troubles with wading high water, and to be honest there are a number of them, have got to be reckoned with. The Red Gods tend to dictate much of this, particularly their rule that any trout which might happen to rise will be at least near the limit of one’s casting range, if not just beyond it. My best casting requires calm concentration and comfort with my surroundings, and wading in high, fast, cold early season rivers isn’t a comfortable situation, thus it tends to require most of my concentration.

The Red Gods are smiling, for there’s a good trout coming up out beyond that sunken boulder ninety feet away. If I relax and don’t succumb to the gremlin on my shoulder screaming “More Power“, I can place a nice cast out there at ninety feet, but the fast current washing the pebbles out from under my boot are distracting and make it harder to ignore the gremlin. Umph! The fly line rockets out there and kicks awkwardly, dropping the fly at 88 1/2 feet. I repeat that cast three times before I try to force myself to calm down, slow down, and cast the right way. The grins on the faces of the Red Gods widen with each cast, until I regain my calm and lay that fly out there delicately at ninety feet for a perfect drift. The Red Gods counter by sending a twenty mile per hour wind gust into my casting shoulder just as I release my next cast…

Sound like a familiar early season scenario? I’m sure it does. On the good days we persevere, relax, take a couple of steps up out of the hole we have waded into, set our feet firmly and wait for the calm spells between wind gusts to cast. Here’s to the good days, though the frustrations of battling Mother Nature help make fly fishing rewarding, for they make it ever more challenging.

I have certainly spent a great deal of time throughout the winter months thinking about the classics, both in tackle and in fly tying. The beautiful simplicity and elegance of British North Country flies made an impression upon me, and I gathered a better supply of tying silks and game bird feathers to allow some tying and experimentation in that genre.

John Atherton’s ideas and fly patterns intrigued me somewhat last winter as I experimented with blended silk and ever more of my favorite barred cock’s hackles. This winter I fully took the plunge, finally securing a small portion of seal’s fur and working to replicate his primary dubbing blends that I might tie his patterns accurately. Seal was once to fly tiers as synthetic yarns and dubbings are to us today.

In thinking about the properties of materials, I am always on the lookout for those that help me construct a fly with a strong image of life, thus reflective materials such as Antron have figured prominently in my tying. I thought it only appropriate to blend a little dubbing for some of my favorite patterns using seal as opposed to synthetics, to pay homage to the classics.

I began this project as I begin many of my fly design projects, with the Eastern Green Drake. I have always found that the larger the insect, the more difficult the task for both the angler and fly designer. I strongly believe that larger flies are the easiest imitations for trout to detect to be frauds, for it easier to see much more detail. The Green Drake is the largest mayfly hatch I expect to encounter in any given season, and thus I place paramount importance on crafting flies to solve the most difficult trout.

I have tied many CDC patterns with a single-color wing, and they have been very effective. I do however recognize that certain trout in certain types of water and light conditions will pass on an opportunity to take these flies that have seduced many of their brethren. Matching color and the natural venation of the green drake dun’s wings is best accomplished by a multi-colored wing. In the Heritage Drake I used dyed green, a small amount of black and pale yellow CDC to imitate the fluttering wings of the natural, an approach that has succeeded in the past.

I often wonder if old Gordon and his contemporaries might have paid a little attention to those wavy little feathers on the butts of the ducks they plucked for flank feathers. Since they were first used for flies in Switzerland and France a century ago, its seems that some of our legendary anglers, men like Hewitt and LaBranche, might have been exposed to CDC feathered flies. I have never seen mention of them in any writings from the Golden Age, though it seems it should be a traditional Catskill fly tying material.

I first found CDC feathers readily available in a Gunpowder Falls fly shop in the early 1990’s, little packages labelled by Umpqua Feather Merchants, and simply had to have some. CDC was a main ingredient in my very first original fly pattern back in those days, and I found success with them immediately in my formative years. Thirty years later, there is more likely to be a CDC dry fly on my tippet than any other type of fly.

The 100-Year Drake has been a stalwart design for me, beginning with the Green Drake and progressing through most of our primary mayfly hatches. The addition of an all natural blend which very closely matches the duns’ coloration fits perfectly with this classically inspired pattern, and provides another alternative for encounters with those special wild trout that remain unconvinced.

A touch of orange dyed seal has inspired a blend for sulfurs, one used for the thorax alone on a 100-Year Dun pattern, and I have been thinking seriously about a Hendrickson, a pattern I would hope to be fishing in the month of April barring a recurrence of flooding. I do have a lot of experimental Hendricksons already filling my fly boxes, likely too many to fish in one season, but I hate to ignore inspiration!

Perhaps I will blend a little dubbing right now…

It is eight o’clock in Crooked Eddy, and it is raining. It is thankfully not the heavy rain that brought our rivers to flood stage yesterday, though any rain is much more than residents and anglers particularly want to see. Watching the TV weather this morning, I listened dully to the tale of another cascade of storms headed our way for next week. Such is springtime.

We are fortunate, for this moderate flooding rarely damages property or threatens personal safety, though those of us eager to embark on the finest season of fly fishing will have to wring our hands and wait a little longer. We have not faced the ravages of tornados, wildfires or war, thank God, so an extra helping of rainfall ought to be greeted with a nod of quiet appreciation.

The forecasters say we can expect another inch and a quarter of rain over the next ten days. Barring concentrated localized downpours, that means that rivers will remain far too high for fishing throughout. The Delaware reservoirs are three to five percent over their capacities, those in the eastern Catskills a bit less, though all are spilling. The rivers below them will remain higher longer than the freestone rivers.

Unbuffered by a reservoir, the Beaver Kill rises with a dramatic spike in her flow. An hour or so before Noon on Thursday she flowed near 1,000 cfs, just after midnight reaching her crest in the range of 20,000 cfs! At 6:30 EST this morning the flow had receded to 3,280 cfs – dramatic indeed. The upper East Branch below Pepacton Reservoir remains above flood stage this morning, the reservoir dampening both the river’s rise and its fall. Where these rivers meet in East Branch, New York, the smaller upper arm of the East Branch Delaware is contributing perhaps twice as much water as the larger Beaver Kill, with her high flows sustained over a much longer period.

Today’s rain will likely cause all of our rivers to rise, for the soil is well saturated. Our forecast for Hancock predicts thirteen hundredths of an inch of rainfall, though the effect upon our rivers will have as much to do with the duration of the rain as with the amount. Stretching the inch and a quarter of the next system’s rainfall out over ten days will most likely cost us all of the fishing I had hoped to be doing over the second week of April. The tailwaters will remain too high for safe boating, and the freestoners too high to wade. That is Nature’s will.

There is warm weather coming too, just what I wished for next week. Another little tease the lady chooses to throw the way of the angler.

Age makes the waiting cut a little deeper, for we never really know how many bright moments lie ahead. I do acutely feel the loss of each potential day upon the rivers of my heart, though I am ever thankful for those I have possessed.

I spend a lot of time watching rivers, studying the peaks and valleys of the flow gage graphs, my anticipation building as the curves drawn to depict receding flows flatten. I interpolate the shapes of those curves over time, searching for windows of opportunity. Once in a while, one such window may open, and I will have rod and reel and waders close at hand. A couple of hours between stormfronts can be magic…

Catskill rivers are near if not above flood stage today, with some roads closed due to flood waters. It will be some time before there will be anglers wading our rivers.

Indeed, I am watching the river gages this morning, for the rain continues steadily. I am musing and wondering how many days might pass before I can don waders again and slip into the gentle current. There are many memories of spring…

How many times have I felt my pulse rise as I crossed the bridge at Hale Eddy, the excitement of the new season palpable? Friendly greetings and handshakes at West Branch Angler, settling in for another stay along the river, arising in the morning with wading boots frozen on the porch of the cabin.

The West Branch always had a special intrigue, particularly in April. Hendricksons on one pool, Blue Quills on another, bright days, gray days, there was always a new challenge to explore!

I recall one glorious afternoon as it drifted into evening, Hendrickson spinners alighting early, before the lowering sunlight dropped behind the Pennsylvania mountains. The flies drifted along the edges of bankside current seams on the far side of the river, and the wide, soft bulges in the film told of wonderful browns. Wading as deeply as I dared those rises lied beyond the limits of my reach, but just barely. I fought to calm my pounding heart, and when I succeeded my casts unrolled out there along that seam.

The water was clear, and that far bank brightly lit, so those fish refused my offerings on 5X tippets. Six X at maximum range was a gamble – it takes a good sweep of the rod to move so much slack line to set a hook, sometimes too much for the fragile point. There was one I wanted badly, for once he showed his nose above the surface and I knew how special he was. Calming, casting, reaching to extend the drift precious seconds before the mid-river current spoiled the game, and at last I had him. He boiled and started his run, then the fly came free; lost yet relished, I return there often in my mind.

I recall special mornings, walking the river while many anglers lounged over breakfast, secure in their convictions that there was no hurry, that Hendricksons arrived at three. I would stalk certain lies with a biot bodied spinner knotted and ready, to find evidence of a gentle sipping rise in moving water, or a spreading ring amid a shallow tailout flat. Battles won and lost.

There was an afternoon I took an unusually long walk, studying the quiet river. Finally, I chose a grassy bank for a seat, unwrapped my sandwich, and enjoyed my lunch in solitude. Glancing casually along the bank I saw the first ring, and then another. I finished hurriedly, crawled low back downstream where I could slip in gently. I landed a number of fine wild browns that day, quietly sipping Blue Quills along an unremarkable stretch of bank, always grateful when the river shared her secrets.

There was the morning I waited for my best friend to arrive, waited that is along a favorite run. He was due at noon, and the hour was nigh when a barrel-chested brownie drifted down with the current and rolled nearly upside down to take a struggling caddisfly, so close he splashed my waders. An eight-foot cast with an eight-foot rod and my reel was spinning! He torched the drag and powered down river. A twenty-two inch brown rested in my net when it was finished, his flanks heaving as I slipped him back into the run; easily the largest trout taken with the shortest cast in my angling career.

I have a beautiful bamboo fly rod that was fishless until I brought her to the West Branch in April. Anglers were everywhere, my time short, and the river high. I hiked to an out of the way spot where wading would not risk my life, trusted to the magic of the river. Blue Quills again, and one trout feeding regularly in a horrendous lie. My little biot parachute bounced down the bubbly current but not quite clean enough. I sidestepped upstream, adjusted my angle, and that lovely, darkly flamed cane delivered the perfect drift. The rod was tested with a heavy arc and a pair of long, wild runs into the backing. Tested as only a trophy trout in high, fast water can test them. I admired the rich palette of gold and bronze, peppered with blood red spots, smiling there as the water rushed around my knees. No better way to christen bamboo!

The rain is steady on my metal roof this morning, rivers and reservoirs already amply supplied. It is that time, a time for watching river gages and fretting over each additional drop of rainfall. Four days to go – will they be wadable?

It is true that I have a drift boat parked out front, though anyone who knows me will tell you I am a wading angler. I prefer to approach my rising trout on their own terms.

It seems certain that the boat will be my platform for the beginning of this dry fly season, and I will be glad to have it. I have missed too much fishing over my decades of spring fishing in the Catskills. High water tends to be a given come April, and that is why I scoured the area after retirement, at last finding a well-used craft. There are times I enjoy the serenity of floating.

I usually make a solo trip before the first hatches arrive. Drifting and looking over the river as I pass, noting where new trees have fallen, and deeper pockets where ice has gouged a gravelly flat. Once the mayflies appear these spots could harbor a good fish, sipping subtly where most anglers don’t expect him to lie.

I nearly made that float this week, though yesterday’s forecast convinced me to walk a bit instead, to try to find wadable water before the rains came and whisked it away. A fifty-degree day is less than comfortable in a boat on the breezy river, particularly when the damp breeze and rowing with muscles not used over winter work their dark magic on my arthritis. Tuesday outperformed though, with bright sunshine driving the temperature into the sixties. Too late I realized it would have been a perfect day for that first solo float.

I did wade a bit, watched the chimarra caddis and early stoneflies flitting about in that breeze, I even cast a dry fly; simply to enjoy the feel of a fly rod actually casting its long, graceful loop. The river is still too high to reach the places that the trout will rise once more insects are stirring and the flows are more accommodating to efficient feeding.

As the rain pushes the rivers ever higher, I am back to tying flies and making sure the boat bags are filled with the right flies and leaders for the long-distance bank picking game of early spring’s dry fly debut.

My log shows forty-four dozen flies have issued from my bench since January First, so I am ahead of last year’s production, nearly double in fact. There has been an increase in experimentation as I whiled away the frigid months of winter. A new interest, the sparse creations of England’s North Country, has blossomed, and I have increased my store of tying silks and soft hackle feathers and learned some new techniques.

It seems a good day to delve into that new realm once again. JA has seen to it I have a fresh pair of coot wings for my soft hackling pleasure. Coot you see is the preferred substitute for waterhen which I believe is quite scarce even on the Continent. The Waterhen Bloa is a simple yet killing fly for imitating the olives, delicate spiders with a lovely image of life when deftly tied.

Some of the Catskills highly evolved wild brown trout will show far too much caution beneath a dry fly, even one delicately tied with silk and quivering fibers of CDC. Might a spider first tied a couple of centuries ago prove to be the convincer? I plan to find out!

The morning passes, and the rain continues its drumming upon my roof. Methinks the higher vantage point from a drift boat should give a better view to track a dainty olive spider in the film…

A restful Sunday morning has brought time to reflect upon a busy spring preview. Snow is falling steadily as I write, another chapter in the whimsically unsettled weather we enjoy as spring arrives in these mountains.

Activities began Thursday evening, as I attended my first Angler’s Reunion Dinner at the Rockland House in Trout Town itself: Roscoe, New York. I made an afternoon of the event, visiting with JA at his cabin and talking fishing and flies, fly tying, and our hopes for the season. It had been a while since we had the chance to kick back and share the glories of the sporting life. It was good to see the smiles of friends old and new at the Rockland, and the sumptuous dinner they so graciously served was wonderful! Soup, salad, salmon and their famous prime rib left us smiling even more broadly, topped off with a creamy, delicious chocolate cake and superb coffee.

On Friday I returned to the eastern Catskills, visiting the Dette shop for a special Wheatley fly box, then on to the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum. I dropped off a few books, finding Tom and Martha Mason, Dave Catizone and others talking informally, a conversation I was happy to join while my small donation was logged in. There is always something interesting to learn from these Catskill scholars! Afterwards I enjoyed a slow, quiet walk through the museum, taking the time to enjoy many details of new and freshened exhibits, including the new Edward Ringwood Hewitt display of personal fishing tackle. The sight of his vintage Garrison 206 fly rod brought joy and surprise, as I expected the old master to have carried one of the longer models of his day. My own Jim Downes made tribute 206 is a light, fluid and surprisingly versatile wand at seven and one-half feet, and I nodded to myself approvingly, imagining old Hewitt deftly playing some brute below one of his check dams on “his” Neversink!

Saturday dawned with a bit of sunlight, though it would be hours before the temperature edged above the freezing mark. Nine AM found me helping Mike Canazon, Mike Canonico and his grandson Noah assemble rod racks in the Roscoe gymnasium for the 2022 Catskill Cane Revival. I had attended in 2019, my first Catskill spring after retirement, and enjoyed the opportunity to cast dozens of rods crafted by professional and amateur rod makers.

This year’s event was worth the wait, with some special surprises. My friend Dennis Menscer has been hard at the bench these past months, crafting his wonderful hollow built flyrods. He brought forth a truly remarkable little Payne he extensively restored. Inquiries have convinced Dennis this rod had to have been custom made by the legendary Jim Payne. Lithe and delicate, it casts a three-weight line as if unrolled by a gentle breeze. Several of us who enjoyed casting it believe a number two double tapered line would be an even more impressive complement. As always, Menscer’s restoration work was magnificent!

My friend Tom Mason kindly allowed a group of reverential enthusiasts to cast his stunning Payne 200, giving us another chance to favor Dennis’ refinishing work. The eight-foot classic performed gloriously with a Wullf Bamboo Special in line weight WF4F. In my hands the rod seemed a perfect model of a true progressive taper. It rolled out beautiful loops across the floor to the limits of the gymnasium wall, and I envisioned how perfectly it would fish fine and far off to a bankside riser on a picturesque Catskill summer day!

I was particularly surprised when Per Brandin walked in with a bundle of rod and reel bags! Per and his lovely wife Jean-Marie Gobillot have been giving considerable time to the Catskill Museum this winter, and it was a treat to cast some of his remarkable rods and to talk with them. I was truly moved by a stealthy olive toned rod Per strung up for our casting pleasure. The rod was eight feet, and designed for a light number three fly line, and I fell hard for its astounding combination of smoothness and accuracy from a few feet on out to the wall. Clearly the walls were the only limitation to its ability to present a dry fly delicately at distance!

Per was kind enough to relate the story behind this remarkable little rod, inked “The Green Hornet”. He told me of a shop rod his late friend and mentor Sam Carlson kept, wrapped with green silks, a rod Carlson dubbed The Green Hornet. Per had learned of green toned rods made by Leonard and others generations ago, with an eye toward stealth on our Catskill mountain streams, and that history along with the Carlson connection had inspired him to build his Green Hornet, the bamboo and reel seat spacer dyed green prior to finishing. The story was as charming as it was interesting, and I will fondly recall my enthusiastic casting impressions of the Brandin Green Hornet, as I stalk late summer browns upon the rivers of my heart.

My afternoon was spent at the Museum where, after a cup of Agnes Van Put’s justly famous soup, I sat while a revolving group of friends chatted and watched Tom Mason tying sparse and beautiful North Country spiders. Per and Jean-Marie joined us, as well as Catskill Guild President Joe Ceballos, as happy tales and reminiscences of fishing and flies filled the atmosphere. The hours passed too quickly, even given the extra hour we lingered past the scheduled conclusion of the day’s programs.

I caught up with a handful of friends I had not seen since last season, learning that one, Kevan Best was continuing his successful pursuit of Grangers, a path I have some familiarity with. Kevan had been a vanishing angler once last summer’s parade of high water began to limit wading opportunities, last seen at the Summerfest gathering. I learned he has busied himself tying salmon flies and planning a trip north to the Maritimes to angle for the King of Fish. I think wistfully of such environs, slipping back to the memories of the Golden Age so beautifully gifted in the writings of Dana Lamb. One day perhaps…

Much of the morning has passed in reverie, and the snow continues, a soft blanket upon the lawn. Might the rivers bear me and my boat this week, or will they continue to rise and discolor? No doubt I’ll be watching water temperatures, for though I don’t expect to encounter a rise on my season opening float, it is good to at least have a bit of hope tucked into my tackle bag!

I wasn’t very long into my fly-tying adventure when I began blending dubbing materials to imitate the complex colors of the trout stream insects that found their way into my clutches. I recognized early on that a tan mayfly wasn’t simply tan, that its coloration was made up of a variety of shades, with their appearance affected by the available natural light. It seems I was a John Atherton fan before I ever knew who he was.

Atherton was known as a consummate artist and a highly skilled angler. His one contribution to our angling literature was published in 1951, just a year prior to his untimely death. I had never run across a copy in my thirty years of acquiring used angling books, though I learned a little about him in the writings of others. Fortunately, Skyhorse Publishing re-issued “The Fly and the Fish” in 2016 and I was able to secure a copy.

John Atherton’s artist eye saw a connection between the insects of our trout streams and the impressionist style of painting, blending dubbing materials to mimic the multifaceted colorations and particularly the lifelike qualities of the insects. He designed five numbered patterns of dry flies he felt confident fishing on any trout waters. Creating good imitations with an image of life is also my quest as a fly tier.

Last year I tackled my own version of Atherton’s No. 3 dry fly, the fly created for the many yellow bodied flies of late spring and early summer. I was working with pure silk dubbing, blending these to get a color I thought suitable, then ribbing the fly with the fine oval gold tinsel that is found on all five of John Atherton’s numbered dry flies. It is a lovely fly, but I wished to do more, to blend the same materials he specified to achieve my best impression of his patterns’ colors and their same lifelike effects.

My good friend JA has shared an interest in the Atherton flies. He blended the five dubbing mixes, kindly opening his stores of precious seal’s fur to me, that I might blend these colors too. It was the lack of seal that had kept me from following the artist’s recipes. Another facet of Atherton’s design was his selection of barred hackle capes, something I was well prepared to do. I too have loved barred hackles and appreciated their more lifelike appearance ever since I began tying flies.

That Dun Cree is beautifully barred with medium dun and ginger, and perfect for the No. 3 dry fly as a substitution for the specified mixture of ginger and medium dun hackles; and the barring gives it a very lively image on the water.

I have blended the dubbing mixtures for flies No. 2, No.3, No.4 and No. 5 using the artist’s specified natural furs and tied the first batch to add to my fly boxes in anticipation of the first hatches of springtime.

As with our major mayflies, these blended dubbed bodies offer a tableau of tones, and the sparkle of the seal’s fur and the speckled guard hairs of the hare’s ear fur ensure a shroud of air bubbles to produce that special sheen so like the living insect. I look forward to their time on the river.

It will be hard to allow enough opportunities for the many experimental patterns I have designed since the close of last season. The Atherton flies are new to me, though they are patterns proven before I was born, and thus deserving of a certain respect. Now that I have finally been able to reproduce these groundbreaking flies, I will find time for them at the end of my casts!

I always find joy in studying the history of angling and fly tying. Reading works such as “The Fly and the Fish” lead me to kindred spirits and like minds, making a real connection with that history. I find similar joy in angling with classic tackle, particularly a fine bamboo rod and reel made decades before my birth. It adds a little spark to present a classic dry fly with that vintage tackle; to watch them take a lovely wild trout once again.

Old dogs can learn new tricks, even this one, thanks to my friends. I have been tying trout flies for better than thirty years, but my friend JA has been at it far longer. He counts his experience at five decades! For many years, JA has been an elite commercial fly tier, turning out hundreds of dozens of perfect patterns for a number of fly shops, and he also has a long history of gathering and processing his own fly-tying materials. The man is an artist on both accounts. You are never going to find materials of this quality in a fly shop.

My Dyed Wild series dry flies owe their existence to JA’s expertise in dying wild turkey primaries, as well as his generosity in providing me with a wide array of colors. Recently, he suggested I should try the other side of the feathers, the wide side as opposed to the biots found on the thin leading edge of the primaries. Once I began tying with these fibers, I found even more versatility in some of my favorite feathers.

Some anglers complain that biot bodies are fragile, and indeed rough handling with forceps, or the teeth of a big trout can damage the body of your fly. A simple solution is coating the finished body with Hard As Hull polymer head cement. Tie your fly bodies, a quick whip finish, then clip your thread and coat the fly body, setting it aside to harden. Make a dozen or so and let them dry thoroughly, then you can finish your flies. You can also tie the complete fly and coat the body afterwards, though you will have to take care not to get cement on the wings, dubbing or hackle.

The trailing edge fibers (notabiots?) have a thin trailing edge and a ridged leading edge just like the biots, so they can be wrapped with either edge forward for ridged or smooth body segmentation effects. I guess it might be reasonable to call these little feather fibers trailing edge biots, but that is a long name for a thin little slip of feather.

There is a lot of versatility in natural fly tying materials without even getting into the realm of synthetics. Many of the traditional Catskill dry flies call for red fox fur dubbing, and a lot of those patterns vary widely in coloration. If you tie a lot of Catskill flies, it is worth buying a complete, tanned red fox pelt so you have everything you need for all of those classics. You will find white, buff, cream, tan, reds, browns and grays as you look over that pelt. Mixing and blending fur in these different shades will give you many combinations, and the ability to alter your blend to match specific insects on the waters you fish.