There have been hints of it this week, and then last evening I saw it clearly looking out my back window. Since boyhood I have noticed this change, this unique color to the light as afternoon nears evening, and it has always brought me pleasure.

There is no place to witness Nature’s spectrum like her waters, particularly her highland rivers where both that special light and mountain shadows play!

Nearly a month of summer remains, but I can feel the chill at daybreak. Trout have become even harder to find than they have been throughout the bulk of this difficult year. I saw a handful of flies the other day, larger mayflies which appeared grayish in the shadowy air… isonychia? Four or five of them lifted off from the soft, low water as I waded downstream to keep an appointment. No trout rose, though I know there must be a few along that reach… watching.

I had chosen a little rod to fish fine and far off, delighting in how handily seven feet of 50 year-old bamboo would send my fly 60 feet or more to my target. I had great fun with my fishing, amplified by the short rod, though it amplified mistakes in my timing as well! I rose two fine trout, touched neither one, as I tried to adjust my line handling and timing to the short rod.

Back in the Cumberland Valley, a seven-foot four weight was in my hand constantly, but fishing here upon the wide Catskill rivers I have become an eight-foot rod man. Does it make a difference? Why yes, more than you would think. That extra twelve inches moves a lot more slack line with a mend, or a hookset!

The cane rod I have spent the last eight months crafting is in between, at seven feet nine inches, a good length I think. A little more than seven-and-a-half. I have owned two rods of this length, though both have been traded – for eight-footers! This one will stay.

Ed Shenk taught me to love short fly rods. He loved the challenge of fishing with rods from five to seven feet, his favorite a six-foot one-piece bamboo Thomas & Thomas dubbed “The Gnat”. I have rods of 5’6″, 6′, 6’6″ and 7′, all of them up to the challenge of trophy trout, though seven feet is about as short as I will go on a larger river.

Today an eight-footer will get the call. I am leaning toward the three-weight, though there is some wind expected. They are saying five to ten m.p.h., but that’s what they said yesterday. Mother Nature doesn’t heed their predictions. A much cooler day with an afternoon sun to warm the air masses slowly might just bring some gusty shenanigans about the time a few of those gray mayflies could appear. Perhaps I will take the four…

Thinking this morning about seasons and the gradual waning of another Catskill Summer. Just about a month remains until the autumnal equinox arrives on September 22nd. Long range forecasts seem to give us a 50-50 chance as far as September being either wetter or drier than normal with temperatures like to be a little on the warmer side. If the Red Gods gave me a vote, I would favor wetter and cooler for the benefit to our rivers and their wild trout.

During the decades when I haunted Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley, late summer was hopper time. On any given afternoon I could tie on a Letort Hopper and wander the meadow of my choice, with my chances of fishing success being pretty good. A warm wind blowing through the meadow raised my expectations!

I recall a shaded nook in the Quarry Meadow on my home water of Falling Spring. I had designed a new hopper pattern, one that I would later send with a friend to Montana for trials during his summer guiding season on the Ruby River, and I knew there was a good fish frequenting that little nook. The approach and casting were difficult as expected. Big limestone spring trout don’t just rise out in the middle of the stream after all. No, fish like that one had to be earned, and I was anxious to try my new hopper on him if I found him at home.

It was a hot, still afternoon, and I didn’t see a rise back up under that old boy’s hidey hole. Picture a collection of fallen tree limbs and rocks deep back under the shade of a leaning old willow, with drooping limbs that demanded a low cast to shoot the fly beneath and far up into the cover, a one cast situation.

I scanned the streambed before entering the water. Scaring an unseen 6″ trout on my approach would be enough to eliminate any chance at the fish I wanted. On the way, a little whisper of breeze passed through the willow, something dropped, and a soft rise appeared way back in there! I took my time and worked my way into position for my one shot. Taking a breath to calm my nerves, I worked out enough line with my 7-foot fly rod and shot that hopper up under the willow limbs and deep into the hot zone. One solid plop later I tightened and immediately laid the rod down close to the surface to extricate that brownie from the rocks and limbs before he knew what was coming.

He found himself out in the sunlight and proceeded to tear up the weed beds while I switched angles to fight him over clean gravel. On this day, the good guy won. That brown was close to 20 inches long when I laid him along the length of my net. I think my grin was at least that wide!

Fishing early in the mornings and late in the evenings was typical during spring, summer and fall during the years I operated Falling Spring Outfitters. Winter was a morning fishing situation as darkness fell before I closed the shop at six each evening. On the edges of darkness, crickets were active, and a Letort Cricket often found itself tied to my leader. One summer evening stands out in memory.

I was working up through an upper meadow, carrying the 6’6″ three-weight rod I had built at Ed Shenk’s urging. A size 16 Letort Cricket was knotted to my 5X tippet. Late in the summer, the water weeds were everywhere, often so thick it was hard to tell the meadow from the stream along the edges trout loved to haunt. The weeds lined the channel except for one place where there was a small pocket of open water about the size of a dinner plate. I spotted a soft rise in that pocket in the twilight and sent my cricket in to do battle. When the soft rise came, I tightened, and the tiny rod doubled over as the water erupted!

I don’t know how I managed it, waist deep in the center of the channel, but I switched the fully loaded rod back and forth rapidly as the brown charged from one bank of weeds to the other, keeping him more or less in the open water of the channel. If you can imagine that channel being no more than ten feet wide and boiling like a cauldron with the trout’s frantic battling, you get the picture. The brown I finally brought to net was touching two feet long!

Twenty-five years along those limestone springs taught me to be a hunter and stalker of trout, and summertime was the perfect time for the game. It is no wonder that I still love stalking the mists of early morning!

Taking a breath yesterday along the river, I realized that the fourth week, the last full week of August is upon us. I could swear it was just a few days ago I thought about August first coming up, remembering a particularly wonderful day when I walked up a pod of large brown trout I had all to myself. The season flows along as the rivers, and such moments do not wait for anglers.

I am about to begin the last sanding of three sections of my bamboo fly rod. These have received twelve coats of Tru-Oil, with two more to go, and then their finishing will be complete. My second tip is lagging behind. Finish application began later as there was a little sweep to be straightened under heat before I began to work the oil into the bamboo. That same finish is being applied to the curly maple reel seat spacer. Next week I will be wrapping silk to mount the snake guides, then varnishing those wraps, again finishing in multiple coats. Diligence, and a little luck, should see the rod completed just in time for the Catskill Gathering.

It was snowy January when this rod project began, the culmination of more than a decade fishing bamboo, reaching back to the beginnings of dry fly angling in America. My original hope was to complete the rod in time for spring fishing, underestimating the time that would be required to learn enough about this craft I have flirted with, and planning for more winter hours to spend in the Catskill Rodmakers Workshop during the first three and a half months of the year.

Of course, fishing has taken up some of my time. I have logged seventy-four days upon the rivers of my heart, fewer than expected five months into the dry fly season. Many days lost to heavy rains and high water this season, particularly during what is taken for granted as the highlight of spring.

I spent some pleasant hours this week, early mornings busying myself with rod work before sunrise, then haunting the rivers in search of the all too hard to find hunters in the mist. With the bright waters so very low and clear, I reached for that special three-weight bamboo rod I cajoled Dennis Menscer into making for me. Two very fine and difficult wild browns succumbed to it’s delicate solicitations, gorgeous trout of twenty-three and twenty-four inches. Their memories may have to last me through this coming week, if I am to complete my rod on time…

It has been refreshing these past two mornings, with temperatures in the fifties and that first breath of autumn’s preview. The rivers continue to drop, and I write this morning wishing the overnight rainfall we were promised had given them a freshening as these two mornings have given me. Maybe today the promise will be fulfilled…

There is a special rod that was conceived for extreme low water conditions such as this, a rod I asked simply to do the impossible. My idea was an eight-foot three weight, a taper to fish fine and far off with my battery of summer flies with the greatest delicacy, a rod that could handle trophy fish without risk to the fairy light tips such delicacy of presentation requires. Who else but the Catskills’ master rodmaker Dennis Menscer could accomplish this feat?

When Dennis presented me with the finished rod last February I was shaking, and not from the cold wind whipping snowflakes from the skies. The anticipation built all through spring until summer and it’s most demanding fishing conditions arrived. The rod passed the test last summer, bringing browns of twenty and twenty-one inches to hand and I was ecstatic with it’s combination of grace and power.

Yesterday presented greater challenges. A cool breeze came intermittently, with gusts to challenge so light a rod. The Red Gods played their games, and I missed two good fish as I tensed watching wind shortened drifts. The sun finally made a full appearance as midday approached, and the water grew quiet.

A week ago, I had watched a few scattered rises, unable to find any trace of insect life on the surface. I glimpsed a brace of small mayflies flying above the river, too distant to even hope to identify. Later, at my tying bench, I considered the writings of the late Ed Van Put and his steadfast reliance upon the Adams dry fly any time he found trout rising over a miraculous angling career. I tied half a dozen of my poster style Adams dries, visible to my aging eyes at distance with the reflective properties of their pale gray Antron wing post. Standing in the river wishing for even one small rise in the diminished flow, I thought of Van Put and his Adams, and tied my little poster to my tippet. It seems Ed sent me a little of his Adams magic.

Cast near the bank I had been fishing without response, the tiny fly drifted perhaps a foot before the head of a large trout splashed up and devoured it! I was caught off guard, frantically wrangling loose line as the light rod assumed a deep, throbbing bend.

Oh, it was a wonderful show, that great brown running hard and pushing a bow wake in the shallow water once I turned him away from the deeper cover. Dennis’ perfect taper worked him hard yet protected the fine tips of the bamboo while the St. George regaled with it’s chorus!

So how does a three-weight bamboo fly rod handle two feet of wild Catskill brown trout? Perfectly if it’s Menscer’s masterpiece!

August has been hard to figure out. For a terrestrial fisherman like myself, high summer is the time for Nature’s trout food to get bigger. Trouble is the water is shrinking and I have been sitting here at my bench this morning tying shrunken patterns.

Usually, I am fishing the larger versions of my stable of summer flies, with the exception of flying ants, but their productivity has trailed off. The trout tend to range at this time of year as water temperatures rise and flows decrease. That seems to be amplified due to the general lack of summer hatches. I have seen very few of the once prolific summer sulfurs, none of the little pale olives, and no tiny spinners. Common sense says the trout should be eager for a substantial meal, yet here I am tying miniaturized versions of my summer killers.

Rod work has gotten in the way of my fishing too, as I race to finish my bamboo flyrod project in time for the 31st Catskill Gathering just after Labor Day. Divided intentions don’t lead to the perfections of either quest.

Better weather is coming they say, with a week of true Catskill Summer weather ahead. Those kinds of days are conducive to longer angling outings, giving me a break from the heat as well as the trout. Sadly, there looks to be just a trace of rain in the ten-day forecast.

Hard to imagine it, but we have passed mid-August already. Despite a glorious beginning, the days turned hot, and rain came barely at all. As river flow declined, so too the fishing.

One event certainly commanded my attention. It was morning, crisp and cool, though not as early as I would have liked, as I stalked upriver in another hopeful search for a hunter. There was a sudden rustling in the brush, followed by gentle rippling of the water behind me, and I turned to see a young fawn in the shallows. Without warning, the little deer began bounding through the river straight toward me, veering just in time to pass me by four or five feet, running straight through the loops of fly line trailing in the water. Amazingly, the fawn avoided tangling it’s legs in the line and bounded quickly straight across to the far bank, vanishing amid the foliage of the forest’s edge. I didn’t check my watch for my heart rate… I didn’t need to!

The month has become zero hour for my rodmaking venture. Thanks to the vagaries of Mother Nature, the tasks spilled from winter through flooded spring and on into summer, and now the Catskill Gathering is just three weeks away!

Last Saturday JA and I attacked the project anew, mounting ferrules and tiptops, after checking dimensions and cutting the four rod sections to their final lengths. I wrapped the epoxied ferrules with dental floss and headed home, with finishing to begin on Sunday morning.

The hand rubbed application of Tru-Oil gun stock finish produces a very nice rod finish and is more achievable for those of us who lack the proper work area for varnishing. A few days’ time is required, as JA recommends some fourteen coats. I realized when removing the dental floss on Sunday that we had both forgotten the straightening needed on one rod tip, so the finishing process began for three rod sections instead of four.

The first coat was applied Monday at five o’clock, then the second through the sixth coats working early mornings and evenings. Sanding was accomplished yesterday at the Catskill Rodmakers Workshop. I had stained the curly maple reel seat spacer to bring out the beauty of my favorite wood’s figuring, so the work began yesterday with epoxying the spacer onto the butt. Once cured, the preparation and basic construction of the custom cork grip proceeded with individual cork rings being selected and filed to enlarge the bored holes, fitting each to the tapered rod butt. Fitted and glued, the rings are fitted to the clamp and tightened.

This Saturday morning, I began the second phase of finishing (the first on that laggard, just straightened tip) which will include two coats with a light sanding between.

JA is featured fly tyer at the Museum today, so I’ll visit and give him some good old-fashioned encouragement by kibitzing and arguing that his beautifully tied Thunder Creek Streamers won’t float worth a damn. If you are in the region today, stop by and watch a master at work! I have seen JA tie these flies before and his work is not to be missed.

Long hours and distance have been the main ingredients of my summer fishing. It is wholly a down year, with little in the way of summer hatches, the predictable low water conditions, and very few fish showing any evidence of their presence. I shared the water with an eagle yesterday, and even he looked a bit worn from extra hours of hunting. It was a week for fishing out of the way lies and changing tactics.

The trout should be hungry, but I believe many are ranging wider than normal due to the scarcity of flies. I think back to the morning I watched a little water snake get devoured in a terrific boil. Haven’t seen that before, not in more than three decades of wandering trout waters. Low water makes the approach all the more difficult, and casting distance and delicacy paramount.

It’s easy to get sloppy during a long, hot day, powering the rod too much for the distance so that the presentation suffers. I tend to do it when I get tired. Bamboo makes it somewhat easier to self-correct, but it still takes concentration to diagnose one’s failings and correct them. In tough conditions, you may get only one chance, and it is painful to blow that opportunity with a poor cast.

I went down to a three-weight outfit yesterday, a T&T graphite rod graced with a lovely little Hardy reel, and coached myself to ease up on the power. Faster, stiffer graphite rods tend to make casters punch them, and that really isn’t the answer to more distance.

I chose the three-weight to suit the conditions, and once I forced myself to maintain a light touch, I found what I was looking for – a chance to spin that little Hardy and make some of that special English chamber music!

Yesterday was sort of a training session for Dennis Menscer’s 8′ three-weight masterpiece to come on deck next week. There is no appreciable rain in our ten-day forecast, and the coolest day in that run is advertising a high temperature of 83. Fishing is not going to get easier.

An old acquaintance could make an appearance as a backup too. Back in the day, Orvis was the last holdout to move to manufacturing fly rods with stiffer, faster actions and higher modulus material. The debuted their “PM-10″ rods in lighter line weights when I owned my fly shop, including an 8′-4” two weight that I eventually had to own. If the wind blows a bit hard for bamboo, that 842 might be reintroduced to the Catskills.

I was late to the river, life taking my full attention earlier in the morning, and the sun had already warmed away most of the mists and clearly defined the lines of light and shade. I had chosen the sweet, old St. George to accompany the vintage 50 DF and felt the balance was about perfect in my hand.

As I have learned more about the legacy of old Hiram Leonard, I have recognized a definite preference the rods demonstrate for a classic double tapered line. The reel however wore a modern favorite, one of Airflo’s Tactical Tapers, so I turned away from the intended water to make a short cast to see if the old rod approved. It turned over all sixteen feet of leader perfectly, so I took the fly in hand and waded gently into the river’s flow.

One of the lessons decades upon bright water teaches is the importance of drift lines. These are not the main current paths with their seams and chutes, their lurking boulders beneath. Consciousness of such are among the first lessons an angler learns. The drift lines I speak of are the subtle, minor currents, those traces through a pool which may only appear to the observant. They are revealed sometimes by nothing more than an occasional glint of light, a few specks of leaf matter or foam. Time has taught me to observe and consider this evidence.

I chose one such line of drift for my first fishing cast of the day, and the sweetness of classic bamboo placed my chosen dry fly in the heart of it. There in the early shade the little hopper drifted four or five feet and met another lurker interested in that same, subtle line of drift.

There is nothing to quite compare with the voice of a classic Hardy click check when a good trout runs for his freedom. It is a sound that thrills my soul!

August has arrived with that lovely morning chill and sunny, warm afternoons! Summerfest has come to the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum this very weekend, and I wandered the tents and tables with glee for yesterday’s opening. I even tied a fly at the Guild’s table! Casters were working their best for the Hardy Cup and vendors offered much in the way of classic cane, vintage reels and memorabilia. Master hackle grower Charlie Collins brought down a beautiful assortment of capes for the fly tyers to covet. Of course, I bought a couple myself!

July bowed out last week and blessed us with a day of rain which cooled off our boiling atmosphere, leaving August’s dawn delightful. I wandered the rivers, shivered just a little in the early morning breeze, and found an unexpected hatch.

A few tiny sulfurs drifted where a riffle tailed out, and here and there a larger mayfly could be seen. I fished with the more plentiful small sulfur, but the better rises seemed rather strong for these mayflies. No trout touched mine, so eventually I got the message. Though barely a handful of larger sulfurs emerged, those were what the best fish wanted!

A size 14 100-Year Dun, a pattern put away since May, replaced the 16, and a strong rise began a long engagement with a beautiful 20-inch brownie! I slipped him back after retrieving my fly and he shot away back to his lie. Looking for another? Such gifts are usually brief, but to be there for the right half hour can be sublime!

I tied a couple more of those canted wing fourteens early yesterday morning, after donning an insulated shirt to ward off the 50-degree chill here at my bench. Taking it easy on this Sunday morning I added another to re-stock my summer boxes, along with a CDC dun variation and a trio of my Pale Isonychias.

My tyers log stands at sixty dozen, just a month past the halfway mark for 2025.

Sitting hear and dreaming, I can still feel the last of the morning chill, though we are headed past eighty today.

It is more or less the mid-point of our dry fly season, and I hope that this second half will be fruitful. Driving along Route 17 in yesterday’s morning mist I asked that September be a little cool and wet as opposed to the hot, dry, low-flow riverscapes of recent years. Good, cold river flows might just stimulate some more surprise hatches like those sulfurs! Sometimes I wonder if Nature holds a few in dormancy when unfavorable conditions predominate. There is still much we do not know about her magical control of our ecosystem.

Between enjoying the prime days of midsummer, there is much left to do at the rod shop, for the Catskill Gathering is barely a month away!

I had one of those far too rare chances to fish with my buddy the other day. It was a nice, misty morning that warmed into brilliant sunlight on bright water. I had high hopes for success, but of course realize that doesn’t come around whenever we want it to. It is enough to go fishing…

We fished on through the mist and into the brilliance of full sunlight without a hookup. Our plan was to fish a couple of pools, one early and one late, and JA was moving to the bank as I came slowly down river. I took a moment to make a couple of critical casts.

A long cast was sent on it’s way, the line mended judiciously to extend the drift, as I watched the Grizzly Beetle float down, down, down into the promised land. There was no take that I could discern, but a sudden soft bow in the line told me something was afoot, and I tightened into a state of nirvana.

The river was cold this early and this trout was feeling his oats, ripping the line in mad dashes so that my little Hardy Bougle` was screaming, shattering the morning silence as we danced. JA made haste in his photographer mode while I gave the old boy all of the muscle the eight feet of vintage Colorado cane could spare. Finally tired from those runs, I led him close enough to slip the net beneath.

There are not too many things more beautiful than a gorgeously colored wild brown trout in the glow of Catskill morning sunlight. I eased the fish into alignment with the measuring centerline of the net and smiled as all two feet of him splashed a bit of that cold water in my face; and then the bubble burst.

I spotted my reliable Grizzly Beetle right there in the top of his neb. Had he taken the fly and spit it out by the time I noticed the line movement and tightened? Or had he come up and bumped the fly once a hint of drag betrayed it as a fraud? I’ll never know the answers, just as this wonderful brownie will never grace my log as a fair catch.

This has been a difficult season to say the least. Such are the wages of angling, though I am thankful for every day, each hour that I am graced to wander these Catskill rivers. Perhaps Mr. Neb and I will meet again. A bit of leader adjustment, a modification of fly, or a change in casting angle may prove to be the key to success…