I am still giving thanks for an honest February warmup, enough of a respite from a particularly frigid winter that I enjoyed two days of fishing. That turns today, as our daytime temperatures are expected to fall from a comfortable morning high right down the scale to freezing. Tonight, our lovely Catskill countryside will revisit the teens. And yet, I am smiling.

Sunshine was abundant on Wednesday, and I was fortunate to bask in its glow throughout the afternoon until the breeze rose late, driving a chill over the water. Yesterday was expected to remain cloudy after a brief taste of morning sunshine, and with strong winds from the south, usually a warmer breeze at this time of year. I was looking for a high in the mid-forties, but dressed for that wind as, regardless of its favorable origin, it was expected to blow at 10 to 20 miles per hour. The day outperformed on several counts.

While clouds gathered, that sun was strong enough to provide a bit of cheer, to the angler and the river. The winds were rough, buffeting me for all but a very brief period, and requiring the old sidearm casting style developed upon Southcentral Pennsylvania’s tiny creeks, albeit with a nine-foot rod and a long line.

If you have followed this blog, you are distinctly aware that I am a dry fly fisherman. Yes, back in the bad old days I cast (lobbed) weighted nymphs when there was no chance of surface action, but I had my fill of it during my many years in the Cumberland Valley. For most of the twenty-three years I resided there, our dry fly fishing came only between mid-June and August, terrestrial time.

Blessed to retire here among the rivers of my heart, I now enjoy six to seven months of dry fly fishing, content to sit along the riverbank when patience is appropriate to preserve good dry fly water. That still leaves six months of off season, winter if you will, to deal with. As confessed previously here, I no longer have the heart nor desire to lob weighted flies and bounce them along the bottom of the river. I still long to spend time along rivers during every one of those six months of winter, so I have taken to swinging flies when the elements grant me the gift of time on the water.

Our weather turned sharply in November this year, and it has been absolutely relentless, with many overnight lows down in the dungeons of ice, below zero. Thus, I have not haunted bright water since December, having to pick and choose my handful of days even then. As reported earlier, I luxuriated in Wednesday’s sunshine, even enjoyed a glimpse of a rising trout. Once, twice, before he succumbed to the chill of the river and the rising wind. I fished to him, or pretended to, but we both knew there was no chance for a union.

A sane man would have studied yesterday’s wind forecast and sat down with a good book. Apparently, sanity must have left me long ago, for the pull of bright water was far too great to resist.

I tried swinging a little North Country fly, a sparse little beauty of woodcock and orange silk, but I knew it was useless to hope to control the drift on the wind ripped river. As the blow intensified, I changed my fly first for an unweighted Hen & Hare’s Ear and at last to my small, brass beaded Copper Fox. The Fox would sink, while still being light and buoyant enough to allow the choppy surface to tug at it, giving it extra life.

I tie the fly on a size 10 2XL shank hook, a relatively small fry for a streamer fly. The wing and tail of Red Fox tail provide movement and that touch of buoyancy. Fishing it on the swing lets the fly do its job, drifting slowly down beneath the surface, searching for an old hunter on the prowl for a winter meal.

Thought about and planned for, the remarkable occurrence of yesterday afternoon still relied a great deal upon serendipity. One can put themselves in a particular place at the warmest part of the day in hopes of such an encounter, then make the casts and relax while the slow swing and drift makes the offering; but something of the magic of rivers is required for the offer to be answered.

At just about the hour that the river reached its maximum temperature, my Copper Fox shimmied across the sight line of one of those old hunters, a trout moving in search of a meal to last him several days. The swing is different from my usual method of fishing, and it still requires some conscious discipline. One doesn’t strike back when he feels a pull. The rod felt heavier and rubbery for a moment, as the unseen fish pulled the loose coil of line from my fingers, and then I raised it slowly to bow in a very wide arc.

The trout was strong, with surprising vigor for the still very cold water. He ran, he shook his old head, and came up and boiled at the surface. I was into it, and really starting to put the pressure on when I remembered tying that length of twenty some year old 5X fluorocarbon tippet to the end of my leader back home in the comfort of my fishing den. It was a poignant moment for that memory, and I eased up on the rod immediately and gave the fish his head until he was ready to join me in the shallows.

The first time I slid the net underneath him I was astonished to see his length filling my big net and his broad tail sticking half a foot above the back rim. I lowered the net back down into the water and tried to secure my rod under my arm, and that old warrior jumped out of the bag and headed back for midstream! I pivoted quickly and pointed the rod at him, feathering the departing leader and line with my fingers until the brown began to pull against the reel’s light drag.

So once again we danced, running, boiling and finally scooped again with his tail waving in the breeze. I walked him back to the shallows and twisted the fly free. I was trying to lay him along, or beyond the length of my net to measure him, when he jerked away from my hands and darted back toward the middle of the pool. I had judged his length but had not yet been able to actually measure it as is my custom.

The wind calmed for a brief spell after that, and I stood there in the river tingling with excitement. I fished on down the pool and strode back to the top and fished it again, though the wind howled with renewed vigor.

Arriving home, I got a tape and measured along the inside of the net bag from rim to rim: thirty inches. With that tail out of the net, that brown’s nose was perhaps a few inches shy of the rim, certainly well better than two feet long, but I don’t believe he would have taped thirty inches. At least, I don’t want to think he was thirty, that he matched that milestone without the honor of being taken on a dry fly.

I have entered the fish in my log at twenty-seven inches, a conservative judgement, appropriate since I never completed my measurement in the water. He had that cold, steel gray hue of winter on his flanks, and plenty of heft to match his length; an old warrior wintering well.

Whatever tale the tape may have told shall remain a mystery. Alas my fishing camera was back in my fishing den, placed where I wouldn’t forget it, when I grabbed my gear for the day. Though my memory has limits, the vision of my largest Catskill brown trout with his tail waving above the net rim will remain as long as there is life in me.

My boots crunched upon the shore ice as I crept into the river, sending a small wave radiating across the wide flat before me. The midday sun lit the entire riverbed in such clear, low flow, and I watched for any sign of life retreating from my intrusion. I waded slowly and, attaining a reasonable distance from the brush along the riverbank, shook the fly line from my rod tip in tight coils. Too long on the reel, yes, much too long.

I began with a small soft hackle, a North Country fly that has drawn my fascination of late, my heavily substituted rendition of the Waterhen Bloa. Resting there in the crystalline flow it danced with points of light and made me smile. It was a wonderful sensation, feeling the soft flex of the bamboo once more, watching the line unfurl in the air and the fly alight forty feet away. The river bade me welcome as I bowed my head in thanks.

Two months is far too long for an angler to be kept from bright water.

Those few hours were a balm to my soul, the quiet of the river and the warmth of the sun healed much of the pains of this frigid season. There was hope for a rise as the river warmed, there always is, at least in my heart. I was truly alone on the flats and could not shake the feeling that the trout would not lie here in such low flow. I cast near the prominent obstructions, rock and log alike, but no hint of movement was betrayed.

At last, I walked down to the riffle below and waded slowly toward the deepest slot of current. I swung the Bloa, a Partridge & Pheasant Tail, even a pair of streamers without a grab, all the while walking down. The sun was already dropping toward the southwest by three o’clock, and at last the breeze arose, biting with it’s chill.

Standing there, gazing into the glare I saw it, the unmistakable evidence of life – a trout’s rise. By the time I had changed to a 6X tippet and tiny olive dry fly there was another, this time just a soft disturbance momentarily countering the current: a bold hello, and a shy goodbye. As if by design the wind increased just then, even as I tried to cast that little dry fly gently to that rise, the Red Gods speaking clearly: not yet…

Indeed, there is a style in tying the North Country Flies that varies from the norm, the standard method that any capable fly tyer, not a student of the style, would likely employ. The same can be seen in the dry flies of the small cadre of tyers who formed the Catskill school. There is a quality evident when viewing a Rueben Cross pattern or a sample from the bench of the Dette’s.

In my search for North Country drakes and related inspiration, I have examined more than a few videos from international tyers. Mr. Robert L. Smith, author of the acclaimed book “North Country Flies: Yorkshire’s Soft Hackle Tradition” ties these ancient patterns with the style of a scholar. His flies remind me of Tom’s in their exquisite sparseness and technique. Traditional soft hackles flies are not complex patterns, but their image of life is accentuated by the stylistic talents of these tyers.

A number of years ago I attended a wonderful presentation by Mr. John Shaner on the subject of English “spiders”. John, a long-time representative of the House of Hardy, is another talented gentleman who has a strong interest in these old English angling traditionals. I have since become acquainted with John, who was kind enough to send me information on a drake imitation he called the French Partridge Mayfly. Working with the words and photos of these three continues to lead me down the path of British angling history.

With the wild hope of actually spending an hour or two on the river this week, I set about the challenge of imitating something of the North Country style. Should I somehow encounter the miracle of a winter emergence and feeding trout, I realize that fishing dry flies will be unlikely. But what about flies fished nearly dry?

The Waterhen Bloa is a fly touted for fishing to various species of blue-winged olive mayflies, so I set out to equip myself with a small assortment in size 16. Perusing the list of materials for this simple yet lifelike pattern I found I had only one of three materials required, yellow Pearsall’s Gossamer silk.

Yellow silk? Yes, there is nothing olive in this North Country imitation of olive mayflies. Yellow silk is thoroughly waxed to achieve an olive coloration. Beyond that, substitution was required to allow a reasonable attempt at tying this fly. The dubbing specified is water rat, and luckily one of Smith’s videos showed the natural fur. I carefully raked out a small tuft of red squirrel, keeping it loose so that I might touch dub the sparest amount on the heavily waxed silk.

Mr. Smith’s blog site “The Sliding Stream” offered two videos dealing with the various hackles historically employed in tying North Country flies. I had neither the original waterhen, nor his suggested replacement of covert feathers from a coot’s wing. Not even my friend the Jersey Duck Commander had a coot in his considerable larder. The only dusky, bronzy dun feather I have is a wing covert feather from a chukar partridge, the same bird as the French partridge, as I learned from John Shaner.

I was pleased that the touch dubbed red squirrel and the chukar covert let me tie a reasonable if nowhere near historically correct fishing version of the Waterhen Bloa. I believe it has captured the essential image of life I have seen in some of the originals. If the Red Gods smile upon this cabin feverish old angler this week, I hope to leave the final judgement up to the trout.

Along my river walk this morning I was impressed by Nature’s handiwork once more. There is a bit of a thaw that began with Thursday’s rain, was subdued by the past two days of frigid temperatures and will be expected to continue during a warming trend through the coming week.

The Beaverkill watershed contributed a healthy dose of runoff, with the river peaking at 5,000 cfs on Friday. The discharge recording gage on the receiving East Branch at Fishs Eddy is still iced, but the gage height readings show a rise of nearly five feet from Thursday’s rainfall. I knew the Beaverkill had spiked but was surprised at the amount of ice piled along both banks here at Crooked Eddy. Though the mountains were not wearing a coat of deep snow, there was enough added to the melting rainfall to push a lot of water and ice through the system.

Certainly, there was a bump in my heart rate when I first saw the advance forecast, though I dare not let too many thoughts of fishing get a foothold in my daydreams. If the thaw continues, and the winds remain civil… well, we will see.

I wonder what damage this thaw might have caused to the riverbed, and the cost paid in nymphs, larvae and trout eggs? I remember an April steelhead trip to Ohio’s Grand River. The guide that had offered the trip during a chance meeting at West Branch Angler told me that he floated the river at least twice before he fished it each spring, simply to study the dramatic changes the moving ice had wrought, where it had made, and where it had eliminated holding water and spawning gravel.

I will not learn the answers until spring, when my feet will gradually measure the changes to the structure of the rivers. The abundance of the mayflies and caddis will say much, though it will be the end of the season before all the costs of Nature’s sculpture are revealed.

First the river, and then the village itself. We are shrouded in ice for the second day. I’d love to get out, but the odds aren’t very good. Humans fall hard on icy surfaces, it is sudden, and old bones are not as resilient as they once were. I remain inside looking out and praying for the afternoon sun to bring a bit of thawing to my little corner of the world.

I’m still caught up in the idea of soft hackle Green Drakes, doing research and passing the time scrolling through YouTube videos. I found there are a couple of others out there who have experimented with this same line of thinking. I sent a couple of messages to a couple of acknowledged experts on old English patterns, though I’ve had no replies just yet. It seems to me there ought to have been a fly or two of such design crafted in the past one hundred and fifty years or so, and England seems the logical place for it to have occurred.

Yesterday I turned my attention to CDC soft hackles and tied a fly that looks very promising to me. This fly should settle itself right in the surface film and move just enough to elicit interest. A downstream cast and a little pull, followed by a quick drop of the rod tip, ought to get it as much in the trout’s world as mine; right in the doorway as it were, and leaning across the threshold.

After my tying session I went back to browsing video topics and came upon a related pattern from somewhere in Scandanavia. I was not aware that their region of Europe featured hatches of Ephemera Danica, but it seems our Green Drake’s cousin generates a lot of excitement among trout and fly fishers there, as it does in the British Isles.

I have taken a couple of excited browns by purposely sinking one of my CDC duns, even when stripping them in to make a pickup. There are times when the movement simply overcomes their caution, but the movement I design into my flies is typically subtle. These are insects we are imitating and not baitfish.

Years ago, I designed a very realistic looking Green Drake emerger with a big wing of showshoe rabbit. The entire concept of that fly was geared toward fishing it sunk, on the swing, and then giving sudden slack to allow it to pop up in front of a rising trout. If you have ever fished the late Fran Betters’ famous Usual dry fly, you know how easily a snowshoe winged fly can be handled that way.

That fly was conceived on the drive back to Chambersburg after a last day session on the Beaverkill. I had fished the tail of one of the big river’s pools on that overcast afternoon and found Green Drakes hatching in the riffle below the lip of the tailout. Trout were chasing the emergers and taking them with explosive rises and all dead drifting flies, natural and artificial, remained unmolested. I finally sunk and swung my dry fly and managed to get one good grab before the hatch subsided. I remember that fish, because he streaked downstream through that riffle like I had set him on fire, breaking my reel’s drag spring.

A spinning fly reel produces a terrific backlash when there is suddenly no resistance to a fish’s run, a stupendous tangle. Luckily that trout was near the end of his run, and I was able to play him back upstream and into the net by stripping line. If I hadn’t, I would have sworn that he was one of the biggest trout I ever hooked. Damned impressive performance for a sixteen-inch brown.

If memory serves, I carried that new pop-up emerger for several seasons, never finding the right situation for it. It did not fare well in flat water, lacking the speed in the swing and the sudden rise to the surface. I didn’t have any with me last year, when the only hatch of Drakes I encountered was in a nice run of moving water. Who knows? I might have reached nirvana…

It is an old society, one I joined thirty years ago on Penn’s Creek, the grand Central Pennsylvania limestoner. They came in complete darkness there, on a quiet night when the fluttering of their wings was audible amid the gushing explosions of wild brown trout feeding heavily. Fly fishing by sound is a guessing game, lacking in the precision and technique that enthralls us in our practice of the art. Still, that experience was chilling.

On the edge of dawn, I prowled the great pool at Poe Paddy while my fellow campers slept. I discovered a pair of trout, hidden along the banks and gently sipping the wounded duns which remained from the debacle in the darkness; and I connected!

I followed the hatch north to the hallowed Beaverkill and fished the Coffin Flies on Cairns Pool amid a host of celebrants. Seeking solitude an evening later, I watched the water boil as the great white spinners touched down to the surface to deposit their fertilized eggs. My Dette style Coffin Fly engaged one of the big Beaverkill browns, and I gasped as he shot from the riffled run like a missile. Somehow, I recovered from my shock and awe and played him successfully. He will forever live in my memory.

Inducted thusly into the Cult of the Green Drake, I have followed the hatch throughout the Catskills. I have studied the flies, pondered long hours designing patterns, tested them each season that the hatch appeared. This greatest hatch of mayflies can be enigmatic to say the least, and its strength can vary widely. After the great flood of 2006 I searched in vain for two seasons, but the Green Drakes eventually returned.

I have fished the hatch a week before the vaunted Memorial Day festival of the waters, shivering in forty-five degree weather while huge trout crashed the quivering duns, as well as those of feathers and fur. One recent season I believed the hatch was lost until the Drakes appeared three weeks after their Memorial Day appointment. Each season brings the unexpected.

I have designed various dry flies and emergers that have brought me wonderful fishing, but there is always another puzzle to solve. There are times, often early in the hatch, when trout will cruise and explode upon stray nymphs struggling toward the surface. I have seen many times when duns flutter madly on top, right above these subsurface explosions, and I have never seen those surface flies taken. An answer for these interludes is my current obsession.

Thinking about this scenario led me to an exchange with Tom Mason, who so kindly provided the Ray Bergman pattern that he has tied and fished for many years. I had tied a swimming nymph to be fished on the swing when I encounter this subsurface activity, and then turned my thoughts to traditional soft hackled flies.

I had hoped to study an old English pattern derived for their counterpart hatch, Ephemera Danica which they call The Mayfly. I will continue upon this path and see what I can turn up. I cannot help myself.

I have tied three variations of my own soft hackle Green Drake. Dare I hope for the chance to try them on the water? My best instincts revolt at the premise, for I remain a staunch adherent to the gospel of the dry fly. To hope for trout that refuse to surface feed seems blasphemy. These flies will find their place in my fly box, for I need not wish for difficult fishing, it will find me.

The mystery to be solved is one of movement, light reflections and color, as true with most of our trout flies. I think back to the late, great Gary LaFontaine, who donned scuba gear and submerged beneath the hatching caddisflies to see those triggers with his own eyes. Would that I could follow his lead. I cannot, but I have the benefit of his writings and his counsel, along with several centuries’ worth of angling science and theory in literature.

This always happens at this time of year. The weather forecast finally shows a bump in temperature a few days down the road, and I begin checking river levels and water temperatures, making plans to steal a couple of hours along bright water. The closer to the hoped-for warming trend we get, the more I start to believe I will earn a respite from the bleak, frigid hand of winter. Alas, the day finally arrives, and that hand strikes down my hope. So it is today.

This venture of the heart began with a promise of forty-five degrees. There was beautiful, bright sunshine the past few days, a presage to lift my spirits despite the cold. I knew better than to get any sort of tackle ready. The reality today is a cloudy winter’s day, with perhaps a brief high near forty degrees, that the ten to fifteen mile per hour winds will make feel like just another day at the freezing mark. There will be no time upon the river today.

Though I acknowledge I am blessed to live here in these Catskill Mountains, I had to give something away to receive the many blessings of the rivers of my heart. In the milder climate of Maryland or Southcentral Pennsylvania, the little warmups actually occurred, complete with midwinter outings to various ribbons of trout water. Here in the Catskills, they are the stuff of dreams.

Though there were sometimes days available in January, I always looked forward to the February Warmup, a fairly reliable annual event featuring three to five days in the fifties, sixties, and in exceptional years, nearly seventy. Several seasons back, I stole away to the Little Juniata River for a February day in the sixties.

There was just a hint of the sun when I arrived in the village of Spruce Creek, and I harbored high hopes for the dry fly. I made straight for my favorite pool, geared up and hiked into the river. With no sign of an insect, I passed an hour or two swinging a small streamer along the deepest channel, even rousing a respectable brown trout from his winter slumber when I bounced it through unseen fallen tree trunks. I fished with improved concentration then, feeling the waft of warmer air as the afternoon advanced, but there was no further activity beyond the rhythm of my casting.

As the warmth of the afternoon peaked and waned, I accepted the inevitability that my dry fly dreams must wait until spring. I walked upstream, planning my exit at a well-worn path at the tail of the upstream riffle. Nearing my destination, my gaze wandered across the tailout of the next pool, and my heart jumped at the sight of the soft rings that appeared there.

Half a dozen trout were sipping midges in the clear, gentle water above the break, and I set about my preparations. Leader lengthened, and a size 22 biot midge knotted securely to three feet of 6X tippet, I advanced carefully into casting range, creeping to the very lip of the riff. The bow in my light rod was an electric ecstasy as I reacted to the soft take of that first brownie. I played all six in turn, though the last shook the tiny hook still short of the net. Such were those dreamscape winter days.

Come March there was often an opportunity on Big Spring, largest of the limestone spring creeks in the Cumberland Valley. Afternoons might bring a light flurry of olives for a time, and the patient angler could find rewards. Early black and brown stoneflies would hatch on sunny days, not in great numbers, but enough that a handful of trout might rise and be tempted by a sparse tie of hackle and CDC. On one bright afternoon the early brown stones came to play and I managed five gorgeous wild rainbows on the dry fly, the best pair easily eighteen inches! Alas the heyday of the invigorated Big Spring was brief.

My last memory came on a cold day late in February, fishing with my friend Andy. I spotted one good fish sipping olives, and my old Granger tamed that twenty-inch beast. My heart was pounding as I brought that fish to the net, while Andy filmed the battle on his cell phone. The burning sensation I felt in my throat was a sign, angina, I would learn the hard way. Those days on Big Spring are no more, but I am still here as witness to what it once was.

In earlier years I stalked the Falling Spring throughout the winter. When those lovely warm spells came early, magic happened. Once, guiding in December, I made a cast after my client had fished hard through a little run of broken water. I wanted to demonstrate the perfect line control those wild fish required, and a leaping eighteen-inch rainbow made my point brilliantly! The gentleman fished with renewed concentration throughout the rest of that unseasonable seventy-degree day.

That fishery waned too, though I have fond memories of a run of seventy-degree days in early March, more than a decade ago. Stalking the water meadows with a Shenk Sculpin, I landed one of the last great browns in the twilight of that deeply loved fishery.

The glory of a Catskill spring is worth waiting for, and truly, the trials of winter make it even more wonderful when at last those first dimples replace the drifting mayflies!

At last January is behind us, and I sincerely hope it takes these subzero days with it as it retreats in my memory. This is easily the coldest winter I have spent in the Catskills. The more years behind me, the more I seem to feel the cold. Take heart, for that looked for second week of April lies just sixty-eight days away!

I tied thirty flies yesterday, a little burst in my otherwise modest production to finish out the month. That last day flurry brought me to 136 flies, eleven dozen and four for the new year. I found a little inspiration and tied a few of the flies I have had in my head for a while, ideas that had not yet issued from my vise.

Writing about my early awakening to the Partridge & Orange the other day reminded me that I had promised myself to tie some soft hackles for the Hendrickson hatch, and I fulfilled that promise at last. As these flies are to be presented as mayflies, each has a bit of woodduck tailing as an addition to tying silks, partridge feathers and that pinch of dubbing.

The choices should cover the various eventualities of either stillborn duns or unsuccessful nymphs drifting helplessly in the film, though with still a hint of life. I recall a day on the Delaware during the spring of 2020 when two or three trout fed greedily, immune to my usual array of duns and emergers. They worked merrily along the edge of a riffle, perhaps choosing unseen morsels these flies would imitate.

I was sure to replenish my supply of Shad Caddis, heavy on the size 20’s. I made a solo float on the West Branch last May, finding a few reaches carpeted with tiny, just hatched caddis flies apparently stunned by the thirty-four degree air temperature. I never saw a one of them in their normal size of 18, believing that the City’s October dewatering and winter anchor ice must have impacted the population. I found success only by a bit of on the water surgery on my most sparsely tied 18’s, to approximate the proportions of the unusually stunted caddisflies.

Loose ends at the bench, and mid-season ideas not acted upon; winter is a good time to catch up and bring them to fruition.

Tackle gets attention periodically, and soon it will be time to spool some lines and backing with an outlook to spring. There’s an extra spool for a Hardy Perfect that requires such treatment. I’ve been thinking of a four weight double tapered line for that one, for the 3 1/8″ diameter reel will balance nicely with one of my eight footers. There’s a little Abel too, one of the sweet, classic TR models they used to offer. That and its extra spool seem destined for a four and a five, but there’s time left to consider further. I don’t often take rods out in the snow to cast.

The sun is just topping the ridge line to the southeast and my weather forecast says it is two below. Despite yesterday’s sun, and a balmy afternoon in the thirties, I don’t believe our snow is going anywhere. More is expected via another weekend storm. Yes, January may be gone but February will last all month long!

An angler’s fly should offer a strong impression of life. It is a lesson I learned early in my pursuit of wild trout. In the early 1990’s I lived close to Maryland’s Gunpowder Falls, a lovely little river that boasted a good population of wild brown trout and, for a time, wild rainbows as well. The Gunpowder was my primary classroom, and I studied as frequently as possible.

During the colder months, I fished regularly, most often in the first mile below Prettyboy Dam, for the little river is a tailwater fishery that runs between two Baltimore City reservoirs. The bottom discharge from Prettyboy was cold, typically in the range of 42 to 45 degrees throughout the year and, in winter, that first mile of water had the warmest water in the system. I was fortunate to angle through the heyday of the short-lived rainbow fishery, finding pods of football shaped bows midging aggressively on mild winter days.

The Gunpowder had a good population of various midges and microcaddis in the upper reaches of its tailwater and those trout grew quickly on copious amounts of miniature protein. They could be maddeningly selective. Moreover, these trout averaged between fourteen and sixteen inches in length, quality fish that I very much wished to catch! Their difficulty spawned my first original fly pattern, a minute creation of CDC, ostrich herl and Krystal Flash that matched both midges and microcaddis. I already understood that the movement of the herl and CDC, coupled with the light reflecting body, made my little fly look alive, but I was to get further lessons in the importance of that fact.

There were afternoons when the trout refused my little size 22 dry fly, as well as the Griffith’s Gnats I carried for an alternative. On one frustrating day, multiple fish refused my flies right in front of me. At such close range I could clearly see them come up toward the fly and then turn away just prior to reaching it. Baffled as they continued to feed, I noticed a small, old soft hackle pattern I had purchased upon the fly shop owner’s recommendation, a Partridge & Orange. It looked nothing like the midges the trout were gobbling, and the size 16 fly was three times the size of the bugs on the water, but I tied it onto my 6X tippet, greased a couple of feet of the leader, and began to cast to those haughty rainbows.

I could see the fly drifting in the surface film and was wonderfully surprised when a rainbow came up and took it cleanly. My rod throbbed and my reel spun as the smile on my face brightened! That bow was fifteen inches long, a great fish in a river where the browns averaged 10 to 12 inches. As I remember it, I caught two or three more like that on the wrong fly before the hatch subsided. It seemed that movement could overcome selectivity even when the fly didn’t match the hatch! Lesson learned.

Simple, classic trout flies can solve some interesting problems on the water if the angler understands the importance of the image of life.

Since that first winter on the Gunpowder, thirty years of experiences have proven the importance of fishing flies that look alive. Movement within the structure of the fly, and air bubbles and light reflections that can make a fly appear to be moving, are paramount in my own fly designs. My passion is hunting the most difficult wild trout in the rivers I fish. When there are insects hatching, I believe that a fly needs to be a good imitation of the stage of that hatching insect the trout are feeding upon, and it must appear to be alive and moving to fool the toughest trout.

An abundance of one natural food, a hatch of blue-winged olive mayflies for instance, is often responsible for trout selectivity, but it is not the only answer to the selective feeding puzzle. Wild trout that are frequently exposed to heavy fishing pressure can become very selective even when there isn’t a hatch. Pressured trout can be very selective to the image of life.

The three dry flies pictured above were all conceived as imitations of Hendrickson mayflies using my guiding principle of offering the trout a fly with a strong image of life.

My Translucense Beaverkill Hendrickson on the left is tied in the Catskill style, but it features barred and speckled Coq-De-Leon tailing, barred dun hackle, and specially blended silk dubbing tied using pure white silk thread on a Daiichi Crystal Finish hook.

The center fly features the speckled tailing, a color matched quill body, and dark natural dun CDC tied comparadun style. Lastly, on the right, my Drowned Hendrickson features softer barred woodduck tailing, a color matched blend of red fox fur and Antron, and is hackled with CDC and partridge in the soft hackle style.

While the Catskill dry fly won’t move on its own, the barred tailing and hackle will reflect light better and give an indistinct profile suggesting movement, while the high translucency of the silk body adds to the lifelike appearance. The CDC dun will certainly move, and its quill body is a strong imitation of the natural fly. The “drowned” style tie was designed to imitate stunned or drowned duns lying in the surface film with just the slightest quiver of life – alive, but as vulnerable as a mayfly gets.

Cultivating subtle differences in your fly tying can help you solve the puzzles of selectivity. Think about it…

Storms seem ever more commonplace, and often more severe than those recalled from seasons past. We are fortunate this time, our Catskill mountains being too far inland to suffer the heavy snows and wicked winds that this current nor’easter has brought to the Atlantic coast. Here we wait and hope for spring to come; bright, warm and early!

Spring can be a fitful season, particularly in these mountains. Even half a day’s drive south, in my old haunts, Mother Nature can send some strange and conflicting messages.

I remember one April out along the Falling Spring, when I had the day free to prospect for the little limestoner’s wild browns and rainbows. The morning had been mild enough in it’s beginning, but as the Noon hour approached the wind rose and the clouds gathered into a heavy, dark mass. Suddenly I saw a yellow mayfly rise from the surface. Within moments there were more of them, pale yellow bodies and blueish dun wings like our late May sulfurs, but these unseasonable mayflies were a full size fourteen!

The winds began to whip the water about the same time the trout began to rise, and I fought to make a delicate cast with my dry fly. My excitement was palpable as I worked over a good rainbow while the wind cut into my neck with an icy blast. The temperature had dropped ten degrees or more when a snow squall came hurrying out of those black clouds as I played my fish. The wild weather seemed timed to the wild, unexpected fishing, and I caught four very nice trout before the last violent snow squall petered out. The sky lightened and the surface of the little stream was still. I saw no more size fourteen sulfurs that spring, nor in any future years, though I’ll always remember the day it snowed sulfurs.

The West Branch Delaware welcomed me to an early, mid-April hatch of Hendricksons more than a decade ago. By the time I traveled north to West Branch Angler, the warm weather that started the fishing had turned. It was windy and wet, wild weather, with the kind of chill that made me huddle into the high collar of my fleece jacket and cinch the hood of my raingear down tight. Once the hatch had begun though, it was bent upon continuing, despite the falling water temperature.

The fishing was challenging, the wild winds playing havoc with casting accuracy and fly presentation, but the trout I caught were big, hard fighting browns that warmed me from the inside. What a way to start a season! Ever try to put a Hendrickson comparadun one foot above a bodacious brownie sipping in the thin, flat tailout of a pool in a gale? I had one explode in inches of water when I tightened and leave a hell of a wake as he took my line far out into that pool one afternoon, then streak away as soon as my fly neared the surface the next. The same lie – perhaps the same fish? I’ll never know.

Just two short seasons ago I was out searching for some semblance of a quiet pool, protected from the thirty mile per hour sustained winds. It was hopeless! I stopped on the road above the Beaverkill and saw the Hendricksons bobbing in the waves, and two or three big trout pounding them with explosive rises. I parked and waded in, but the winds were relentless. The pool was open to the full force of the gale, and the frequent gusts touched forty miles per hour. The storms give, and they taketh away.