Well, here we are just two weeks before my countdown ends and there is snow in the forecast. No matter, for I have been tying dry flies. Certainly, there are always dries in my vest, no matter the season. When the clock of the season has but a few clicks left though, I have a habit of stashing a little Hope Box in a shirt pocket. This was the week that I tied the flies and organized that box.

In the center, half a dozen CDC olives are nestled in, the most likely flies to see action. Around them are arrayed a few specimens for the other early hatches: Little Black Stoneflies, Quill Gordons, Blue Quill Parachutes, and Hendricksons. It isn’t uncommon to see a rogue band of any of these spring mayflies suddenly bobbing on the current, not a hatch, but a handful of early duns that could be a week or more earlier than the rest of their kin.

There is a new pattern of mine well represented, the Catskill Adams. That one is the perfect tannish, grayish, buggy looking fly, the kind you chose for a few searching casts to the corner where you saw, well, something. It’s clearly not a rise, none of those lovely concentric rings in the water, but perhaps a little swirl or a subtle boil underneath; the kind of thing that tugs at my heart and says there is something alive over there. The Catskill Adams looks enough like any number of early season bugs to draw a trout’s interest should anything at all make him look up.

This has been the coldest winter I have spent in the Catskills, with lots of sub-zero days and nights, fierce winds and heavily iced rivers. My off-season fishing was spotty as a result. I fished into November until winter appeared, and then there was a little warmer trend in the first half of December. I took a really nice brownie mid-month, swinging one of my movement flies, and then the long, difficult cold spell that almost makes one regret living in these mountains: almost.

There was an honest February warmup, just when my spirits were at their low ebb, and I was freed for a cherished few days of fishing. After two frigid months the sun appeared, and a little rain came down and whisked the ice from the rivers. There are still blocks of it perched on scattered riverbanks even now. One cast, one swing stood out, a beacon in the wasteland of winter; the cast that brought a monster brown to hand. Shaking as he shot from my grasp, his wild energy gave me just what I needed to power through the rest of winter!

Things begin to get busy over the next week: the Angler’s Reunion, the Catskill Cane Revival and hopefully, a few hours spent along a wadable Catskill river with a bamboo rod in my hand and that little Hope Box there in my pocket. If I am lucky enough to be walking along the right riverbank at just the right time to see one of those early flurries of wayward mayflies, I know that a trout could rise. Probably just once, but that’s enough to give me a casting target and feel the hope swelling in my chest! Its always especially nice to get an early taste of dry fly fishing.

I was fretting over the freezing rain bands passing through the western Catskills this morning, as I had an early appointment to get my boat trailer inspected. Here in Crooked Eddy the temperature hovered just above freezing, so I headed out early to allow for a slow, careful drive on Route 17.

I found no icy patches, not even on the various bridges spanning the wide East Branch Delaware, and the boat is back home and mostly ready for another fishing season. Reservoirs are spilling, and with half an inch of rain pretty well guaranteed for tonight, that will certainly continue. The thermometer reads forty degrees, but the dampness makes the air downright bone chilling. Looking forward to the last week of March, Monday’s high temperature is forecast to be 28 degrees!

Early spring is often an ill-fated dream here in the mountains, and in truth it can cause as many problems as it solves. I guess it has been a little over a decade since we had a true early spring, with lots of warmth and hatches popping weeks before their normal arrival. Back in Chambersburg, I recall consistent daytime temperatures in the seventies in March. I remember it well.

I was having some issues with my truck and had an early appointment to get things straightened out. “We’ll have you out of here in half an hour” they had told me, but things didn’t go that way. I was unhappy, even a little angry, as I had expected to head straight for a distant limestoner to catch a morning hatch of blue-winged olives on my day off. Those hopes were dashed by the time they finished with my truck, without fixing the problem.

I drove over to the Falling Spring instead. I wasn’t expecting much, as the stream was already into its decline at that time, and I clearly recall walking along on this beautiful sunlit day and grumbling to myself that the fishing on the Spring was no longer worth my effort. Moments later I cast a Shenk Sculpin to a brown trout better than two feet long and ended up landing my largest brownie ever on the tiny limestone spring creek I had called home for many years.

I guess the Red Gods were offended with my poor attitude, for the rest of that early spring proved disappointing. Catskill hatches were a month early, but they were also quite sporadic, and strung out over several weeks. There were no concentrated emergences of any of our usual mayflies, at least not when I was anywhere near the rivers, so the dry fly fishing was poor.

When I am feeling the chill and wishing for a rising trout this time of year, I remember that season and the dues Nature extracted from anglers for the early start to the season. That sobering thought helps me pull up my collar and busy myself with the little day to day chores of preparation for the fishing season.

I may just get my drift boat rod out of its tube today and polish it up; check the old fly line to see if it has another season in it. The tackle bag has been sitting here beside my tying bench for a week now, and all of the late season fly boxes have been replaced with the appropriate early season boxes.

April will show up in another week and everything will be ready to go here, except the mayflies and the trout. The anticipation will build once a few sunny days start the water temperatures climbing again, and there’s no doubt I will find myself drifting down the river before its time. Hey, there is always a chance some over eager trout will rise and slap an early stonefly or something, right?

Spring at last, spring at last, oh Lord its spring at last! Of course, there was more warmth here in the Catskills during the last week of winter than we will enjoy during this first week of spring, though the change of seasons still rates a celebration. I recorded eighty-three degrees on my porch Friday afternoon as the sun shone down from the western sky. It is a degree above freezing this morning, here in Crooked Eddy.

I finished up the winter with a little research, checking references and reading up on the late Ray Smith, Catskill fly tier, guide and sage of the Esopus Creek. I had read about Ray in some of the books collected here chronicling fly fishing in the Catskills, though I learned even more through a chance correspondence. Interested in adding to my little library, I had responded to a listing on the Classic Fly Rod Forum a couple of seasons ago and made contact with the widow of an angler named Terry Finger. Mrs. Finger told me a bit about her late husband, whose books she had offered, and was kind enough to send me an electronic copy of an article Terry had written about the man who had taught him to tie flies and fed his youthful interest in fly fishing, Ray Smith.

I had wanted to tie Smith’s signature fly, The Red Fox, and wished to learn any details of the pattern that I could. Like so many heralded Catskill flies, the fur of the red fox provides the body and the main coloration for the fly, though the photos I had seen looked to me to have more of the reddish coloring from the shiny guard hairs that give the animal its name. One of the things I learned in reading about Mr. Ray Smith was that color was of paramount importance in his fly tying. Legend has it he cared more for hackles with the perfect color than the lip-piercing stiffness many fly tiers covet.

While I was conducting my research, I came across a posting on the Forum asking about the Beaverkill Red Fox. When I think of Catskill patterns, I think of some of the fine works by author Mike Valla, and I found both red fox dry flies in his “The Classic Dry Fly Box” published by The Whitefish Press in 2010. Mike’s work provided a photo which confirmed the recipe posted on the Forum and, so armed, I picked up a red fox pelt and set about blending the appropriate dubbing for the fly spawned on the Beaverkill.

Both the Forum post and Mr. Valla’s book referenced Harry Darbee’s “Catskill Flytier” (Lippincott, 1977) in which Harry provided the following account of the pattern’s history: “Vera York, Neversink, picked from an alder branch one of Ed Hewitt’s secret flies, the Beaverkill Red Fox, and made it popular with many anglers. Johnny Woodruff got it from her and brought it to us. Soon it became known up and down the Beaverkill, and is credited for winning one of The Anglers’ Club contests.” With such a resume, what Beaverkill fly fisher could resist tying a few for use on the river?

Roy Steenrod’s venerable Hendrickson may be the most famous dry fly to come from the banks of the Beaverkill River, its fawn colored fox fur and blue dun hackle are notable differences from Ray Smith’s famous tie. Both of these gentlemen used woodduck flank for their tailing and winging, and both chose generally light shades of blended fox fur dubbing. Certainly there are a number of major hatches on both rivers that are well matched by a tannish colored mayfly, though the Hendrickson pattern has been aligned with Ephemerella subvaria for generations. The late Arnold Gingrich wrote that he felt the Esopus was “basically a Light Cahill stream”, though in analysis of his own comment he seemed to question his reasoning. Ray Smith certainly believed that light ginger hackle was more effective for his Red Fox. Traditional Light Cahills were tied with light ginger hackles as well.

Ed Ostapczuk, the reigning sage of the Esopus, has written that the dark Isonychia mayfly provides the best hatches on the Esopus today. The dark tone of Hewitt’s Beaverkill Red Fox immediately had me thinking about Isonychia. Curious, though I have it in mind that both of these classic Catskill dry flies will take trout on both rivers. In truth, the direct associations of classic Catskill dry fly patterns with specific species of mayflies is a more modern development. The early, innovating Catskill tiers developed flies that were effective under varying conditions throughout the season, and during multiple hatches, one of the reasons they have stood the test of time and countless trout.

Now that spring has dawned, our anticipation for the season of the dry fly grows moment by moment. Soon I will slide a classic Hardy reel into the seat of a favorite bamboo fly rod, open my fly box and choose a fly to offer to that first rising trout. If it begins like most such seasons, there will be a handful of mayflies noticed upon the currents, likely flies of more than one variety. The rise will not be that of regular feeding, it will be impulsive and sporadic, as fitful as the changing weather of spring in the Catskills. Perhaps the perfect opportunity to present a classic Red Fox or Beaverkill Red Fox, don’t you think?

I wandered along two rivers yesterday afternoon. The morning sun retreated, though the air temperature reached sixty degrees eventually, leaving me wondering what might have occurred if that sun had shone high and bright throughout.

Wading along the Delaware I saw the fledgling season’s first helicopter attack: a handful of Little Black Stoneflies buzzing low above the surface of the calm river. I was swinging flies of course, still in that winter mode as dictated by the forty-degree water. I had no takers, no bumps and rubbery tugs to be transformed into motion and excitement, but the sight of the little stones put a smile in my heart.

Wading out I finally saw an honest to God rise, actually two or three of them, though one just caught the corner of my eye. Judging the riseform – glad to be able to use that word again – and the type of water involved, I expected chubs more than trout. Since I had a North Country Spider knotted to my tippet, I did make a few casts, apologizing to myself and any divine entities overseeing my folly for my stubborn desires.

I know how unlikely it is that any significant trout would rise to those little flies there in the cold, flat current of the Delaware. Yes, perhaps if there were more than half a dozen of them over the course of a couple of hours of wandering, and perhaps if that sun had stayed out and warmed the surface two or three degrees… And yet, I had to begin my morning here, with fine thread, black dubbing, wild cdc feathers and a dun grizzly cape.

Tying morning dry flies is one of my little rituals you see, a simple act that stokes my enthusiasm and engenders hope for a touch of luck for the day. In truth, many tough fishing days have been saved with a fly tied that very morning! I have a couple of boxes full of early stoneflies, relics from my years along Maryland and Pennsylvania trout waters. In those warmer climes, the stones would often be the catalysts for the first dry fly fishing of the season. Little black stones skittering across the gentle pools of Gunpowder Falls, and the blacks and early browns bringing good trout splashing to the surface on Big Spring on a bright March afternoon, brought many smiles to my face.

I could tell you that it was simply more practical to tie those three little flies and drop them in a handy pill bottle, rather than moving a bunch of stuff and digging through the storage box that houses my many fly boxes to find those existing stoneflies. The fact is, I would rather practice my little ritual and try to seal a bit of luck for the afternoon!

I enjoyed the late morning sunshine on my river walk just now, listening to the snowmelt trickling down from Point Mountain – the sound of spring awakening. I found the river clear, its rocky margins clearly visible from the elevation of the road, imagining dimples from rising trout out there in the glare.

It is my hope that Quinlan will be the last winter storm of the season, and this week’s run of warmer days will mark the rebirth of spring in the Catskills. For the moment sunshine is warming the rivers, though that trend will moderate as snowmelt increases. It would be ideal if that moisture found its way into the soil and onward to the shallow aquifers that feed the springs in the high country, rather than spilling from the slopes as runoff. We shall see.

Certainly, there will be plenty of unsettled weather before April kisses us hello, though every angler wishes the best for his rivers during the tumultuous change of the seasons.

Here’s hoping that there are more nymphs wriggling in the gravel than last season’s hatches might lead us to believe; that the mountain tributaries hold a treasure trove of new trout fry that will find their way downstream in their time; and no spring floods shall disturb this rebirth within the rivers.

Dana Lamb, in his “The Ides of March” from Woodsmoke and Watercress, gave us his prayers for spring: “I’m looking for the April thunderstorms that wash away the drab dull colors of the wintertime. I’m looking for the spring to break wide open; to hear the phoebe and the robin and the meadowlark; to see and smell the violets and the blossoms on the apple trees; to watch the swallows sweeping low across the satin surface of the stream; to wait for ripples of the rising trout, as evening falls and nymphs emerge, and all the world is sweet with scent and song and gentle colors.”

I’m lining reels and waxing rods while the sun streams in through my window today, for there is hope on the breeze that winter has bid us farewell!

Ah the Neversink, thinking of that lovely river always makes me think of Gordon. Their legends are so inextricably entwined! The photo marks my first trip there, fishing the tailwater reach below Neversink Reservoir, that early quencher of the city’s thirst that drowned the prime historic waters haunted by Gordon, Christian, Steenrod and Cross, as well as old Ed Hewitt and his Rods. My heart aches that I cannot fish those miles of river today!

As a travelling fisher of the Catskills, I headquartered at West Branch Angler for nigh on a quarter of a century, and the Neversink was more than an hour distant from that second home. There were many miles of rivers between, and a great deal of wonderful fishing, so I heeded the call of the Neversink mostly under emergency conditions. That river would tend to be fishable when every mile of the Delawares and Beaverkill ran dangerously high in early season thus, when I encountered bad weather on those first spring journeys, I routinely checked the Neversink gages with hope in my heart.

My late friend, Dennis Skarka directed Michael and I to the tailwater reaches of his Neversink when we stopped at his wonderful Catskill Flies shop that chilly May morning in 2003. We found the river crystal clear as pictured, with a good hatch of Hendricksons bringing wild browns to the surface. We enjoyed a fine afternoon, catching a number of very nice trout on dry flies, despite the little handicap that unfamiliarity dealt us. We had come down the bank to find a large pool with duns on the drift and rises popping from mid-river to our bank. We quickly determined we were on the wrong side where it was too deep to cross, so we fished close from the bank until we caught the bankside risers, then worked our way out from the edge.

Though I have many memories of Hendricksons on the Neversink from those long-ago days, it is of course Epeorus pleuralis that is associated with Theodore Gordon’s namesake dry fly, the Quill Gordon. Students of Catskill angling history know that Gordon tied light and dark variations of his dun hackled peacock quill masterpiece to match any number of spring hatches, though the April Epeorus mayfly is the one hatch commonly called the Quill Gordon.

Though I have cast Gordon’s Quill on the Neversink, the better hatches of the mayfly I have fished have been on the West Branch Delaware and the hallowed Beaverkill. I recall one April when the Cannonsville Reservoir began to spill while I was driving the four hours from Chambersburg, so that I arrived to face higher flows than expected when I left home in the darkness.

With the river steadily rising, wading was a tricky proposition, until I eased into a backwater area on the West. There were large, dark mayflies on the subdued flows there, and good trout began to rise. I tied a size 12 Quill Gordon to my 4X tippet and stalked slowly upstream. I took three or four fine browns, trout from sixteen to eighteen inches long, until I reached a protruding rock and a more subdued, bulging rise that promised more. Several casts were required to bring a rise, as the trout seemed to move left and right in his lair behind the rock. At last, my fly and the fish met in the same line of drift, and the excitement increased.

The fight lasted about sixty yards, as the great fish turned and headed downstream on a slow, powerful run. This was a heavy fish, and I tightened the drag on my reel when he was halfway down the backwater. I knew if he reached the heavy current of the main river, it would be over. There was no stopping that fish and, when I tightened further just above the heavy current, he simply kept on going until my line went slack. The hook bend was bent wide open when I retrieved my line. No thrashing, no boiling, just a straight pull. I managed another pair of quality brownies before the hatch petered out, though I will never shake the memory of that one unseen trout, motoring south in spite of me.

At the beginning of my first full post retirement spring, I encountered a nice hatch of Quill Gordons on the high, rushing Beaverkill. The river was flowing over one thousand CFS, and there was very little in the way of wading available. I plucked a couple of the slate winged mayflies from the surface as they fluttered past my feet. While barred with dark grey, the lighter segments of their abdomens were a strong, dirty yellow. I took my first pair of brown trout for the season on a Catskill tie. No others rose to the hatch.

Back at my tying bench I remembered the stash of yellow dyed turkey biots JA had given me decades before, and created my own dubbing blend to match the Beaverkill Quill Gordons. They have since become consistent producers when Epeorus pleuralis is on the water.

It is my nature to experiment with fly patterns, and I have expanded my Quill Gordon collection with dubbed and biot bodied CDC Duns and my Theodore Gordon inspired 100-Year Dun. All have become staples in the early season fly box I’ve marked Gordons & Quills. The soft hackle is this afternoon’s creation, inspired by the success of the related patterns and my growing interest in England’s North Country flies. Since the Epeorus duns emerge near the stream bottom and make their way to the surface I included a sparse woodduck tail to provide the correct profile and a hint of motion. The hackle is a dark dun colored covert feather from a Mallard wing.

There are a few flies yet to be added to that fly box before it is slid into the pocket of my vest. I have hope for a crisp, breezy April afternoon with a perfect wading flow, and Gordon’s Quill fluttering upon the surface of bright water!

So, at last my own personal countdown has reached its final milestone: thirty days remain until that lovely second week in April, the week when I can expect to walk the riverbanks with some confidence in finding a rising trout to draw the interest of my dry fly. The signs have been mixed of late, reminders of winter closely followed by hints of spring, but clearly the time is near.

On Sunday last, I languished on my porch as the late afternoon sun streamed in, driving my thermometer to an unexpected seventy-five degrees! On Tuesday there was snowfall throughout the day, Crooked Eddy awakening yesterday to a white world, yet by afternoon I was on that porch again in streaming sunshine, tending the grill. We are told to expect a larger snowfall again tomorrow.

Sitting there as the grilling steaks hissed and crackled, an unseen bird serenaded me repeatedly. I closed my eyes with that sun on my face and listened, imagining a greening riverbank and a freshly hatched Hendrickson mayfly alighting on my hand…

Thirty days, and now the work begins with a new urgency. The boat must be readied, fly boxes sorted and the right gear for the new season stocked in the boat bag and tackle bag. The flies tied over the winter must be transferred to their correct boxes. The fly pouches in my vest will need to be restructured, the streamers swung through winter afternoons put away, and the early season dry flies fluffed and readied for their debut.

I shall make a better attempt at storing the experimental flies this season. I set aside a fly box for them this time last year, and then it never found its way into the vest. A few flies were taken from it at various times and stuffed in my regular boxes making them difficult to locate at those magic moments. Experimental patterns are intended for the trout that ignore the normal, proven imitations that stock my regular boxes. I see no other path to determining if their designs, wrought of some new theory or line of inquiry, are better, truly more effective improvements over my standard fare.

Other than the classic Catskill patterns, my boxes hold few flies one might see in another’s fly boxes. In truth, even my Catskill standards are most often tied with my special blends of dubbing, color matched to the parade of mayflies and caddisflies I have observed over three decades of angling these Catskill rivers. Not to say that my flies are revolutionary, their forms and styles are not unique, for hundreds of fly tyers have similar ideas, witness the same hatches, and no doubt ponder the same responses of the trout. An individual tyer’s flies have subtle differences, though to us these subtleties are the stuff of legend.

Last evening, I enjoyed John Shaner’s presentation of two framed collections of historic flies recently cataloged from the CFFCM’s archives. Among the treasures discussed and reviewed were flies tied by Theodore Gordon and Herman Christian. I smiled at the flies with single canted wings included in both collections, inspiration for my own 100-Year Dun. This style of tie seems to have largely disappeared for a century, the Catskill school evolving with the upright divided wing construction Gordon observed in Frederick Halford’s flies from England. That has provided me with a perfect opportunity to show the trout something different during many past seasons!

Snow is coming today, perhaps throughout the day, and I am settled in for another winter morning. Was it just Sunday evening that I sat on the porch in shirtsleeves? The warmth of September seems far away.

March gave way to a brightness of spirit in the old days, whether snowy or sunlit on any given day, there was always the expectation, the confident belief that tomorrow could be bright and warm: a day for fishing!

After my fly shop days, I worked a four-day schedule, designed to give me time to fish, to hunt, to write and to dream. Winter was still a rather bleak season, though our fishing remained at least somewhat available, thanks to the gifts of the limestone springs. The February warmup would come and go, in some years offering the first taste of dry fly fishing for the season in waiting, but March was always filled with new hope.

I haunted Big Spring, once Nature had healed the damage from the Commonwealth’s mismanagement, and I began to look at March as a dry fly month! Many were the Monday mornings that I walked the meadows, hunkering along the banks to watch the bright gravel, once the morning sunlight had its chance to banish the overnight chill.

March routinely brought days of promise. Early in the month the stream’s bright water might offer Blue-winged Olives with a touch of overcast or the Little Black Stoneflies on a sunny afternoon. Some days both would appear. These were not the heavy hatches so often vaunted in angling lore, the insect populations were recovering after all, but there would be flurries of activity to reward the patient angler. Hunting these occurrences, I never knew what magic the subtle rings I spotted might foretell. Big Spring held some prodigious rainbows in those days.

Stalking closer and studying the riseforms would fill in the details of the story. The quick little bursts in faster water were usually young rainbows, some hand-sized and still parr marked, while others stretched to nine or ten inches, showing the typical crimson band along their flanks. These fish were always fun, their wild energy overflowing from the hookset, bringing terrible bends in a light three weight rod, or a vintage bamboo.

It was the subtle, bulging riseforms stalked in the slow reaches that caused my heart to race. This was a game for 6X tippet and a prayer, for many of those Big Spring bows exceeded twenty inches. Deceived, they would streak away across the shallow flats, destined for their favorite weed bed! Many times, my frail tippets succumbed to those weeds, or one of the rocks projecting from the gravelly bottom. There was no controlling that first rush, nor the second.

March was a special time back in those years, beginning with sparse olives and finishing with the Early Brown Stoneflies in a full size 16. An impromptu hatch of Early Browns provided one of the wildest flurries on a sunny afternoon. I was walking along the bank, stopping frequently to watch each reach of holding water, when I saw the first stone fluttering on the surface. A trout rose hard in the run before me, and then another, as I cut off my Little Black Stone and knotted a larger brown version. The first trout took the fly greedily, while more rises began to pop throughout the run. In perhaps twenty minutes it was finished, but five quality rainbows had come to net during the rush, the largest a solid eighteen-inch fish who ran and leaped throughout the run.

It seems funny now, still waiting for a reluctant Catskill spring, to remember how I once looked forward to fishing in March! The limestone springs provided a unique challenge in those days. With much of the aquatic vegetation dying back in winter, I always thought of those times as the bare season. A stalking angler was much more obvious to the trout given the water clarity and more open pools and channels. That clarity also demanded the finest tackle. Six X tippets are not the angler’s primary choice for trout measured in pounds, but the wild trout were wary of anything heavier.

My common winter rig was a three-weight rod of medium action, a small disc drag reel, and an old gray Orvis fly line that was as subtle as possible. Still, my leaders ran to sixteen feet. I wish someone still offered a nice gray line like that. Stealth matters. The soft rod and gentle drag would give me a fighting chance when I fooled leviathan. Though many battles were lost, the elation of that first rush was something! The memories warm me even now, as I wait for snowflakes.

Sixty-five degrees yesterday afternoon and, though the wind kept me from feeling the warmth, it was good to be fishing again. I gave it three hours, until the runoff from the morning’s showers colored up the river. Alas the trout chose neither to take advantage of the day nor the flies I offered on a tantalizing swing. All good, for I was out fishing, and there is no better way to spend a March afternoon.

Of course, by the time I pulled into my driveway and put away my tackle, the wind had dropped so that I was a little overwhelmed with how comfortable it felt on my porch. The afternoon sun visits regularly you see, and without the winds I enjoyed out on the river, the porch was positively balmy. Sitting back with a frosty Cold Snap and a snack, I nearly dozed off. The thermometer told the tale: seventy-five glorious degrees!

I noted a comment from a follower today, asking if I might post the specifics for my Full Dress Copper Fox. I am most happy to oblige.

Thread: Uni 6/0 in Rust Brown

Hook: Size 10 3XL nymph hook, Daichi 1720 or equivalent

Bead: Brass or tungsten in copper color 5/32″ dia.

Tail and Wing: Red Fox tail

Body: UV Polar Chenille in copper

Hackle: Hen Pheasant covert feather

Collar: SLF Prism dubbing in rust brown

For the tying: Place bead on hook and slide to eye, wrap thread on behind it and wrap down the shank to the beginning of the hook bend, then back three turns toward the eye. Cut a small clump of fox tail fur and tie it in at that thread location, wrapping the thread over the butts, stopping at a point about 1/8th inch behind the bead. Trim the remaining butts and spiral your thread back to the initial tie-in point for the tail. Cut about a 3″ piece of the Polar Flash Chenille, pull a few fibers back over the fur tail and tie in the chenille binder, then move your thread up to the tie down point for the tail butts. Wrap the chenille forward, brushing the long flash fibers back toward the tail with each wrap, and tie it down when you reach the tie down point for the fur tail butts. Cut another small clump of fox tail for the wing and tie it in thoroughly on top of the hook, then clip the butts. I like to put a couple of drops of tying cement on those tie-down wraps at this point. Select a hen pheasant covert feather or smaller barred body feather, remove the fluff and gently stroke the barbs away from the tip. Tie it in by the tip and clip the excess feather tip, and then wrap the hackle collar. Tie off the hackle, clip the feather stem and dub a small collar in front of the hackle up to the back of the bead. Whip finish tight behind the bead. I prefer double whip finishes, that is two five or six turn whip finish knots, before clipping the thread.

Enjoy tying a few of these flies if you are so inclined, and have some fun fishing them, slow and steady on the swing in these wintry water temperatures!

I have a thing for movement flies, patterns that win some points in the imitation category, but do most of their scoring due to a strong image of life. The little streamer fly I dubbed the Full Dress Copper Fox is a perfect example. It has a general sort of blurred baitfish shape that is suggestive of a sculpin perhaps, though it was not designed to mimic the sculpin profile. The flashy, copper UV enhanced body could give the impression of any brownish, coppery fish, but movement is its primary attraction.

I tied a couple of little minnows the other day and have since decided that a minnowy version of the Copper Fox was in order. Enter the Ghost Fox: UV pearl and white combined with the same formula as its predecessor. I love Arctic Fox tail. The late Ed Shenk told me decades ago that it was his preferred material for his famous Shenk’s White Minnow, a fly that has a legendary reputation. There has always been something about the natural fox fur that makes flies more productive, and I have used it for my Shenk Minnows and a lot of other streamers during the past thirty years.

Fox tail moves well in the water, yet keeps its shape better than marabou, which can roll back and get caught on the hook when swimming and twitching through the water. The bulk of the soft fur gives the fly a touch of buoyancy too I think, even when well wetted.

I tend to fit a small tungsten bead to the head of these small streamer flies, giving it enough current penetration to sink quickly early in the swing, and being generally safe to fish on one of my off-season bamboo rods. I still watch the winds when I make my choice between cane and graphite for a couple of hours of winter fishing. Strong, unexpected gusts can still damage a rod when they drive your fly into the blank in mid-cast, weighted or not.

Perhaps the roller coaster of our February/March weather will give me the chance to wander out there somewhere and give the Ghost a swing. It has a lot to live up to considering the recent accomplishments of the Copper Fox!