It was cloudy, though pleasant when I took my walk along the river late this morning. Rain and dreary skies were expected, but there is brilliant sunshine flooding the landscape as I write this. Had I known I would have planned for some fishing.

I like the sunny days during winter weather, always hopeful that a small rise in water temperature might activate a couple of trout. Yes, I know early December is still autumn, but when I try to don my wading boots and find them frozen solid, winter can’t help but come to mind. It was sunny when I geared up yesterday afternoon, so I didn’t expect to find my boots iced, assuming they had air dried enough to ignore the heavy frost overnight. So yes, I think of December fishing as winter.

Still trying to find the answer to winter fishing in my favorite rivers it seems. Logic and reason dictates that the slower, deeper runs at the head of pools should harbor any active trout, but if any are active, I haven’t found them! Our last rainfall event seemed to blow in from warmer climes, and the rise in river flow was accompanied by a rise in water temperature, despite the heavy cloud cover. Fishing one river that shot up from the thirties to the mid-forties produced two bumps on a streamer, and yesterday afternoon’s sunny odyssey produced a single strike.

Perhaps the problem is that my heart simply isn’t in it, not like it is when there are trout rising to hatching mayflies. Early in my fly fishing career I was a year round angler, fishing midges on top when there were rises, and nymphs or streamers when there were none. I put a lot of effort into fishing subsurface, and caught a lot of trout that way, though I never enjoyed chucking lead in the same way I lived for the dry fly.

As I have grown older, how I fish has become more important than how much I catch. I have cultivated my love for dry flies, bamboo rods and classic reels over time. I have not been a numbers fisherman for a very long time. Perhaps that is why the winter game is eluding me. I have developed my thinking, my approach, to hunting large, wild trout, and thus fish different places than I did when I simply tried to catch a bunch of fish. I generally don’t cover a lot of water. I fish select places slowly and carefully.

When most of the trout in a given river are inactive due to cold water and their lowered metabolisms, the chances for a strike, much less a hookup, are fewer and less frequent. If you are fishing the right spot at the right time, you may get a strike or two. Fish the wrong spot and you’ll get nothing but exercise. Perhaps I should look at those days when I do get a bump as small successes. I guess I’m just not that philosophical yet, though I am content to continue to fish my way.

I really don’t care to spend hours systematically high sticking little nymphs through the riffles and runs to try and pick up a few small trout. Been there, done that as they say; back when I was younger. I’d rather fish at my own pace, thoroughly working a fly tied to display a bit of flash and a whole lot of movement, in the quest to slip that fly in front of a big winter brownie and entice him to eat it.

I enjoy that winter sunshine whenever I can find it, and I think my approach is sound when it comes to targeting rising water temperatures. There is always an element of luck in fishing, and I figure that my turn ought to come around again.

The rain has subsided and I can see some blue sky outside the window above my tying desk. It has been a day of chores: packing leaky waders, some unused tackle that will help fund tackle that will be used, and a holiday gift for a friend. Trips to take care of the mailing, etcetera, and then some time to relax at the tying desk.

I passed a personal milestone this afternoon, as my output of trout flies for the year passed 170 dozen, the previous high mark set last year. I have an entire month to go before the New Year so I expect to reach a lofty new plateau, perhaps I’ll even crack 200 dozen! That will depend in part upon December’s weather.

Since I was establishing a new high, there was no question that I had to tie dry flies. They make up more than 95% of the flies I tie. I felt it would be proper to tie my most productive fly for 2020 in that final batch, so most of today’s dozen were the two tone sulfurs that provided my most memorable days this season.

The pattern came about from observation as most do. I had captured some sulfur mayflies with a tinge of yellow in their pale dun wings, and tied a few imitations I thought might appeal to the trout. I paired two CDC puffs for the wing, light natural dun and pale yellow, formed the body with my blended silk dubbing, and added a sparse trailing shuck in a light reddish tan. Sulfurs proved to be a major hatch this spring, and the new pattern worked remarkably well.

I had hoped for a little fishing today, with a forecast high near sixty degrees, but rain and high winds made this a better day to take care of those chores. There are fewer reaches of river to fish tomorrow, as the season closes on several of our Catskill waters. I had a thought to fish a couple of spots I hadn’t fished this year, to make one brief visit to waters I had been forced to neglect in my preservation driven effort to avoid the crowds that increased the dangers of the Covid virus, but Mother Nature trounced my plan.

My tying desk still needs a cleanup, and there are certainly stores of materials that could be sorted. When you tie flies for thirty years you tend to accumulate a lot of feathers and fur. When you owned a fly shop as I did, you accumulate even more.

There’s some snow in the forecast for the middle of this week, and I can picture myself out on the river somewhere with the white flakes flying. It’s kind of fun. Thinking about it causes me to recall a morning on Falling Spring, many years ago. I was out fishing around eight o’clock, getting an hour or so on the stream before opening the fly shop for the day, and the wind was howling and the snow flying. A friend who lived nearby saw me on his way to work and stopped to ask me if there was any weather I wouldn’t fish in, laughing through his words. I told him I’d fish as long as the water wasn’t hard.

I have fished in some crazy weather, perhaps the worst of it on an early April trip to Elk Creek near Erie, Pennsylvania. I was fishing for steelhead, and the wind was gusting to 50 miles per hour. I was standing in a deep rocky chute that dumped into an unwadeable pool just a few yards downstream, when one of those 50 mph gusts hit me square in the chest. The wind pushed my torso back, back, right to the point of tipping backwards and possibly drowning. I hung there for what seemed like a very long time, and just as I started to lose my balance and topple backwards into the hole, the gust subsided. Close call. When I turned around and looked back toward Lake Erie, the sky was black. It was mid afternoon, but the storm headed my way was something I knew better than to mess with, so I reeled up and headed for the truck.

The water wasn’t hard that day, and if I remember correctly, the fishing was pretty good, but yea, it turned out there was weather that I wouldn’t fish in.

The story of Pennsylvania’s Big Spring is a story of politics, grass roots conservationists, the marvelous resiliency of Mother Nature, and the boastful pride of a State agency that could not leave well enough alone. In terms of the volume of spring water discharged, it is the Cumberland Valley’s largest spring creek, at one time the home of a State record brown trout, and a treasure that was manipulated by man for his own desires.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, none other than Theodore Gordon fished the stream and wrote of the tremendous head of wild brook trout the winding spring creek contained. It was said that trout of two pounds swam in numbers in the gin clear limestone water. The brook trout population declined as mills and private hatcheries changed Big Spring. Brown trout, once introduced, prospered there at the expense of the brookies, and it was a brown of some fifteen pounds that claimed that State record for several years.

In 1972, the Pennsylvania Fish Commission built a trout hatchery at the headwaters of the stream that was to be the end of a spectacular wild trout fishery. The hatchery was faulty from its inception and polluted the stream for nearly three decades in the name of “better fishing”. Local anglers and conservationists fought back and, bolstered by a 1995 study prepared and published by the late Dr. Jack Black and local biologist Gene Macri, the anglers and conservationists finally won. The hatchery was closed in November 2001 and later dismantled. Quietly at first, Mother nature began to heal Big Spring’s wounds.

During my first decade living in the Cumberland Valley, I fished Big Spring only a handful of times. Mush of it seemed barren, save for a cluster of hatchery escapees in “The Ditch” growing fat on the waste fish food and other organisms pumped out of the hatchery outfall. To me it was a very sad place.

Three years after the forced closure of the hatchery, I stopped along the stream one summer afternoon. The water looked better, there was bright gravel in spots amid the aquatic weedbeds, and I decided to explore a bit to see if the stream had begun to heal, or if it was simply a mirage born of hope. I was standing on the bank tying a Baby Cricket to my 6X tippet when I froze, gasping as a behemoth rainbow trout eased past along the edge of the stream at my feet. As the fish moved away, I flipped the fly out, moving nothing but my wrist. It fell short, but the trout continued idly away from the bank, finally allowing a pickup and a proper cast. The cricket landed to the right and a couple of feet ahead of the trout and he tipped up, as if in slow motion, and inhaled it.

My strike and the monster trout’s screeching run lasted perhaps a second before my CFO reel backlashed from the speed of the departing line, the balled up line stopping the spinning spool abruptly, as the trout snapped the tippet and escaped. Such was my introduction to the healing of Big Spring.

After that encounter, I began to fish the stream with intent, and began to find an increasing number of wild rainbow trout from parr marked fingerlings to wide flanked brutes well over twenty inches long. Oh, and I finally purchased a disc drag trout reel.

During my early explorations I caught some beautiful rainbows, but landing the monsters did not come easy. Tackle was refined beyond the disc drag reel, to include somewhat longer, softer rods and fluorocarbon tippets. An eight and a half foot three weight outfit was common for lunker hunting, something with as much give as possible to protect the 5X and 6X tippets the clear water and wariness of these trout demanded.

Perfect presentations were often ignored, particularly with the dry flies I preferred. While the rainbows adapted beautifully to the improving water quality, their spectacular growth was attributed to the heavy biomass of crustaceans in the stream. There still weren’t a lot of winged insects available to the fish. A few sparse blue winged olives and some midges provided a rising trout or two very rarely until summer, when terrestrial insects improved the odds of tempting a resting bow to rise to the fly.

Throughout the winter months and into spring, subsurface fishing with the Limestone Shrimp I developed in 1993, and Ed Shenk’s classic Cressbug, produced most of the fish brought to net. These two flies represented the major forage base.

While fishing these two imitations with stealth and drift control allowed me to hook up with any number of heavy Big Spring rainbows, landing them was a brave new world. These fish were true heavyweights, spring creek rainbows with steelhead-like proportions, exceedingly strong and lighting fast when hooked. Big Spring offered large areas of heavy aquatic weeds, blowdowns, and large rocks and timbers from old stream improvement structures in it’s resume of escape cover. You can’t muscle a four or five pound, frantic, hard charging trout out of this cover with light tippet and small flies, you must learn to think ahead of them to play them away from disaster. More were lost than landed for a while, but slowly the odds tipped in my favor a bit more often.

There are some glorious memories of battles with Big Spring rainbows, including the first big boy brought to net on a dry fly. The Baby Cricket was my favorite Cumberland Valley dry fly throughout the summer, and I was fishing it on my 8′ 4″ Orvis two weight in early July 2007. I spotted a shimmer in a gravel bottomed pocket upstream and cast the little cricket just above it, allowing a drag free drift that was interrupted with a hard, quick take. The gentle flow through that pocket exploded into crystalline mist when I raised the rod, and a big trout bolted upstream toward a tangle of rocks and heavy water weeds!

I laid the rod down, pulling a full arch into the shaft, back and away from the snag, turning that bow just short of the edge. Each time he targeted a new obstruction, I flopped the rod to the opposite side to turn him, saving my fish by inches each time. The big downstream run came once I had turned him short of three or four of his nearby weed beds, and I let the light drag of the reel do its job until he headed for a new obstruction. Finally tiring him, I walked down and scooped him into my big catch and release net, laying him on top of one of those weed beds he so coveted for a quick photo before release.

I look back on the elation of that day and sadly realize that that breakthrough catch I believed heralded an amazing future for angling on Big Spring, instead heralded the beginning of the end. On April 5, 2008 I attended a symposium on the past and future of Big Spring at the Shippensburg University Foundation Conference Center. The mood was bright and I was impressed with the work that was underway to assess the stream and plan for it’s continued health. I remember leaving that presentation with a new, positive outlook on the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission and their careful, scientific approach to determining what, if any, stream improvement would be undertaken for the future. I was to learn the hard way that this was simply the old enemy in new clothes.

The first stream improvement project appeared to do some good, invigorating a formerly barren reach and adding habitat, though at the expense of a few old favorite fishing spots. The project area attracted a lot of new fishing pressure, so I frequented it less as time passed, enjoying my favorite reaches elsewhere. The numbers of huge trout increased gradually as Nature continued her healing process away from the project waters and insect hatches began to appear. There were some sulfurs and caddis in spring and early summer and fishable hatches of early black and brown stoneflies that provided some early dry fly fishing in February and March.

On the first day of summer 2010, I landed the fish of a lifetime, a gorgeous wild rainbow better than two feet long and calculated to weigh more than ten pounds! That fish took a size 18 beetle and fought me for an eternity. Three years later to the day, I was stalking the gravel runs between the weeds when I spotted another gargantuan bow on station. The light bamboo rod delivered my special size 18 caddis dry above the leviathan, and he tipped up and inhaled it! To this day I find it hard to believe that lightning struck twice to begin those two summers, but it did: and I netted another massive wild rainbow of ten and a quarter pounds!

Today that lovely glide of bright gravel has been obliterated by the second PAF&BC “stream improvement” project. The reach downstream of the project water was also destroyed by the siltation from the work, performed with heavy earthmoving equipment in the stream. The growing population of trophy wild rainbow trout has been sacrificed to an impossible management plan which purposely destroyed them.

The sad fact behind this plan is that the Fish & Boat Commission wanted to be able to take credit for the Big Spring fishery, for the healing that Nature produced when they were forced to end their decades of pollution, and they could not. They formulated a plan to eliminate the wild rainbows that Nature had chosen to repopulate the stream in a thinly veiled, ludicrous effort to bring back the historic wild brook trout. The plan included “habitat improvements” that were unfavorable to rainbow trout spawning and, ultimately establishing catch and kill regulations for rainbows on this catch and release water. Public outcry stopped them short of catch and kill, but they allowed poaching and habitat destruction to take care of those politically incorrect rainbows.

I have always believed that the very special original genetic strain of brook trout indigenous to Big Spring was eliminated long ago. The loss of that unique genetic strain, changes in land use, the chemistry of the rainfall that ultimately feeds the spring source, soil chemistry and the myriad of physical habitat modifications that have occurred simply will not allow this fishery to regress by a century. The day will not come when two pound brook trout dimple the surface like rain at the evening rise, as Theodore Gordon once observed.

I believe that the agency was driven not by a desire to renew the heritage of Big Spring, but by their passion to save face, to be able to take credit for the comeback of a stream they had devastated for decades.

My fishing frequency declined as the stream and its wild rainbow fishery declined, in the wake of that second project. Eventually the loss of that wonderful fishery caused me to all but abandon my home waters, and formulate my plan to retire to the Catskills. Despite the efforts and accomplishments of a remarkable grass roots conservation effort, the legendary Cumberland Valley spring creeks have become faint shadows of their former selves. I have no doubt the state of those once bright waters today brings spectral tears to the eyes of the ghosts that still walk the water meadows.

One can only hope that reason might one day return to those entrusted with the preservation of our natural resources. These great waters can yet be saved, thought the political task far outweighs the physical effort required.

Though my passion runs to fishing for large, difficult trout with dry flies, bamboo rods and classic reels, much of my love for the outdoors is founded in the small moments. Some have been captured, and thus may be shared in photos, other shared only in words, and some so brief as to bring a smile, a hint of recognition before they are gone.

Too many anglers fail to reap the best rewards of their sport, concerned solely with their fish count. They fish a handful of days per year at breakneck speed. Loud, brash and celebratory when counting fish, they turn sallow, disgruntled when the “bite” isn’t on. To take the fullest measure of the outdoor experience, one must learn to take what the river offers.

The company of friends is a great part of the angling experience. Not crowds mind you, but a favored companion can add new dimensions to the day…

Light is the master artist of the outdoors. How many cherished small moments are wrought by a simple glint of sunlight!

Light is part of the essence of bright water. For those of us whose souls are touched by it, it is part of the essence of our being. In my minds eye the light shimmers and reveals the clues, the magic of Nature and the beauty of the shy trout.

As I walked upriver yesterday afternoon, the chill of the Delaware’s late November flow made my toes tingle. I was alone on the river I believed, until I spotted the eagle high in the tree beside the landing: another fisher still casting his hopeful gaze upon the water. He remained, even as I reached the car and prepared for the short drive home, and I smiled and wished him well as I departed. Small moments…

I began my off season fly tying today, with the first session of a little annual ritual of mine: tying Hendricksons. It’s not that I have an urgent need for them you understand, for I have one of those Plano Stowaway storage boxes just for my Hendrickson patterns, and it is full. These are not vest size fly boxes, they are something like 7″ x 11″ and more than an inch and a half deep. Eighteen compartments stuffed to the top with everything from classic Catskill ties to a range of CDC emergers, cripples, and drowned duns; and yes, I am tying more. I do it every year.

There is something about the Hendrickson hatch, mainly that it is the first really heavy hatch of large mayflies each spring. It is without question the event that brings the big trout to the surface for the first time and kicks off my favorite time of year: dry fly season! My anticipation begins sometime in May, when the last of the current season’s Hendrickson duns have hatched, and the last of their spinners have been sipped by the happy trout of my Catskill rivers: only eleven more months until the next Hendrickson hatch!

The result of this obsession is, well, considering buying another Stowaway box to be marked Hendricksons since I can’t get any more flies in the first one. My mind is always working on fly designs. Nature’s little puzzles, and how to solve them with some new material or technique, are being sifted through and analyzed somewhere in the back room of my brain throughout the year. April is coming you know.

I don’t go crazy and tie dozens of them at a time. I work out ideas a few flies at a time. I have blended my own dubbings to match hatches for thirty years. I have a blend of pure Red Fox fur for classic Catskill Hendricksons, my original sparkle blend that I color matched to flies tied by Mary Dette, a blend I call pink enhanced, and the Beaverkill Hendrickson blend I used today.

This afternoon I was thinking about the jave quill prototype I tied some weeks ago, and I decided it was time to put a few by for spring. I tied three of those and three CDC comparaduns, half a dozen flies. That’s not a lot, but its an important first step toward wading into the roiling river next April, fighting to hold my position in the high, fast water, and searching the pool for hatching duns, and that first heavy rise.

As I work my way through the winter, there will be more of each of these flies added to the box. I’ll start pill bottles for a couple of my best friends, to make sure they have the right flies when they join me: fighting 1,000 cfs of current in an attempt to bring the first twenty inch or better brown trout to the net. I am hoping and praying that we will all be vaccinated and free from the scourge of Coronavirus well before I begin watching river temperatures on April 1st.

If you look closely at the photo, you will begin to understand why I have tied so many different Hendrickson patterns over the years. Notice there are fully emerged duns sitting on the surface, some that are half way up and half way down below the film, others that are spent with wings apart or wings together, crumpled and crippled duns, nymphs with enough gas to float on the surface, but not enough to break open their shuck and emerge. There are size variations and color variations – and all of these permutations of the Hendrickson mayfly offer opportunities for selective feeding to our friend the trout. Believe me that the trout will take full advantage of them!

If you have fished the hatch on several occasions I have no doubt that you have enjoyed watching a fine fish rise repeatedly at close quarters, inhaling bug after bug while you employ your most artful presentation of exactly what you see on the water, and have your fly ignored. You pick up a bug or two, change patterns, and repeat the performance with the same result. Undaunted, you chose a size smaller fly, tie on a lighter and longer tippet, perhaps shift your casting position just a bit to offer an even more perfect drift… It is amazing how much time one can spend upon a single insufferable trout; and never catch it.

There are other days. Days when you grab a size 12 Catskill Hendrickson pattern, tie it to your 4X tippet, make a cast, and catch a trout. Another cast to a splash in the riffle before you brings another trout to hand; and so it goes. When you return tomorrow afternoon, smug in your uncanny prowess as an angler, and cast that same fly on the same riffle, you will likely find an experience similar to the one first mentioned. You end up with a size 18 Red Quill thorax tie with red eyeballs painted on the thread head and exactly three hackle fibers on each side of the perfectly shaped cut wing to mimic the naturals six legs, cast perfectly in the correct line of drift, while your trout leisurely sips duns an inch to either side of your fly!

The Hendricksons are special. They offer sublime challenge and reward, as well as abject failure and frustration. The hatch keeps us coming back each spring, armed with new patterns, new tackle, new ideas. Some work for us, on some days marvelously so, and some do not. Through it all we are enriched in our experiences, savoring both the banner days and the frustrating ones, for they are all part of the game.

Did I mention that I tied some Hendricksons today? Yep, April is coming!

After a week of wind, cold and even snow, I finally returned to the river yesterday afternoon. Blue skies and sunshine greeted me, but not with that welcome warmth I cherish. Patches of snow still lingered along the banks, and there was ice in the backwaters outside the river’s flow.

The gage on the West Branch read forty degrees, four or five degrees warmer than the other rivers at hand, so I decided to prospect the last riffles in the hope that a couple of the Delaware rainbows that swam there in summer might have hung around. It was a vain hope, pure and simple, but it allowed me the excuse to walk the river once again on a day that looked and felt like winter.

Such a sudden transition as this month has wrought is a chore for my psyche to come to terms with. A week of summer like afternoons onstream, sitting on my porch in a dream state, savoring the last warming rays of sunshine and bidding goodbye to the day; then waking to snowflakes and heavy frost! I feel as if I was thrown from Nature’s bosom into an icy void!

So I walked, and cast, and walked some more, crunching the ice underfoot in my defiance.

Winter fishing here is very different from my many years in limestone country. In small waters, trout do not move far as the seasons pass; they make no long migration for the spawn. Even when they chose not to sample the angler’s fly, they are often visible, breeding confidence that one is fishing over trout. In our wide Catskill rivers I am still learning my quarry’s winter habits.

When fishing becomes strictly a subsurface affair it loses more than its beauty and art, for that confidence departs when usually productive waters give no hint of a trout’s presence. Logic dictates that the rainbows, spring spawners, should still be on the feed, and the riffled waters provide oxygen and cover, as well as most of the food. My logic seems flawed, as the only rainbow I have landed in the past month lied in a low water tailout, and took a swung fly.

Brown trout are expected to be displaced, as so many migrate to the tributaries to spawn, but when do they return? It is nearly a month since the last good runoff event, with enough flow to allow some spawners to ascend some tributaries, and it seems some portion of them should have returned to their favored haunts, but I have no evidence.

It is intriguing to have to step back and learn these rivers all over again.

Over the past two winters I have targeted the clearer and warmer days, when afternoon sunlight raised the water temperature a degree or two. Warming water has the potential to activate a few dormant fish to feed. During the first winter, river flows were higher, and more water requires more radiant energy to warm it, so the temperature gains were very moderate. I took a few nice trout that winter, and felt I had improved my spare knowledge of winter angling on the Delaware system. I felt confident with the next winter’s lower flows, and the knowledge gained that first year, and proceeded to go fishless throughout. Was I fishing over dormant trout, or was I fishing in the wrong places? I have no evidence from which to draw a conclusion.

Part of the magic of fly fishing is the grand mystery. Science and time on the water solves bits and pieces, but the mystery remains. An honest angler with a lifetime of experience will be the first to admit they are still learning on the water.

There is to be more sunshine today, I’d best get ready for school.

I managed to get through my first winter in the Catskills swinging soft hackle bead heads with an eight foot bamboo rod. Though it wasn’t what you would call productive fishing, I managed a good fish now and then, just enough to keep me interested and out there enjoying the stark beauty of winter among the mountains. Lets be perfectly clear here: there were many more hours spent in total than there were “nows and thens”; many more.

My second winter proved “less productive” a convenient euphemism to relate that I didn’t have a strike until sometime in March. No fish were actually hooked until that first little foot long riser near the end of March, though I am pleased that he took a size 20 dry fly and was landed; and thanked profusely for his efforts!

I offer this information by way of apology and explanation for my personal failings at the present time, namely that I have been considering actual nymph fishing as a viable activity during the forthcoming winter.

My experiences these past two years have left me with the cold, hard knowledge that our Catskill trout will not expend the energy to rise from the bottom to chase a deeply swinging fly in the thirty-seven degree water temperatures I have encountered on the warmest winter days. The hopes I maintained for the occasional rise to midges or early stoneflies have been completely dashed. I had been confident that I had outgrown the terrible affliction of subsurface fly fishing, but perhaps not.

Back in the limestone country, dry fly fishing around my home in Chambersburg was generally stimulated by the appearance of terrestrial insects in late spring and summer. The last decent sulfur hatch I fished on my home water of Falling Spring was in 1994. Trico’s provided some morning fishing in July and August for a few years thereafter, but the mayfly populations continually lessened over the years. Other than in summertime, fly fishing the spring creeks meant nymph and streamer fishing.

Back there twenty-five to thirty years ago, I worked out a system for “stealth nymphing”, developing the right combination of tackle and techniques for catching our shy, pressured wild trout in shallow, gin clear water, particularly during what I referred to as “the bare season” from mid-autumn through early spring. As the aquatic vegetation died back, the streams became even shallower, and much of the cover the trout held in, beneath and around disappeared. Stealthy approaches and presentations were absolutely required for success.

My system included a long, light rod, specifically an eight and a half foot three weight (yes, that is a very long rod for the classic limestoners where Ed Shenk taught us to angle with five to six foot rods!), a low visibility gray fly line, Airflo intermediate Poly Leader, and six to eight feet of fluorocarbon tippet in either 5x or 6X diameters. This tackle was ideal for presenting a small Shenk Cressbug, or Mark’s Limestone Shrimp without any weight on the leader. The long tippet, turned over marvelously by the Poly Leader, allowed the fly to be cast several feet upstream of a skittish holding trout. Only fine tippet laid down on the water above the fish, and the fly enjoyed a few feet of drift and thus time to sink before reaching that trout’s lie.

Eventually I ordered a nine foot three weight Sage rod to provide some additional line control and the stiffness to cast streamers more effectively with the light tackle, but the rest of the system stayed the same, working magic when more traditional methods failed.

I used small brass beads on some of my little nymphs back in those days, expanding my array of bead heads when tiny tungsten beads became available in black and dark brown colors: weight, without the flash! Over the years, as bead head flies exploded in popularity, painted and anodized beads offered a wide range of colors, though I prefer either copper when I want some flash, or black and brown when I don’t.

Freshwater shrimp or scuds are common in tailwater rivers, but I have avoided fishing my Limestone Shrimp in my Catskill waters, as I have avoided dead drifting sunken flies, period. The dark thoughts I confessed to at the beginning of this blog have me contemplating the resurrection of that deadly fly and my stealth nymphing rig.

There is still time before the rivers reach the awful thirties, time to swing those soft hackles on bright bamboo and perhaps find a taking trout, though this morning’s twenty-four degree dawn tends to lead us toward those winter river conditions faster than I would like.

Forgive me for my failings, brothers of the dry fly, but I have been too much of a hermit this year with the threat of the virus, and I fear I cannot pass five months of winter weather without the balm of bright water to soothe my spirit!

Time flows more quickly with age, I am certain of it. Can it be seven long months since spring flirted, with a bit of sunshine and handfuls of mayflies between her bouts of wind and snow? It seems only days since I brushed off the remnants of yesterday’s snow and eased into the river with a dry fly secured to my leader. The chill of the water worked its way into my bones as I waited, but anticipation warmed me when those first Quill Gordons appeared in the drift!

Hendricksons followed, big ruddy duns fluttering as they bounced downstream in the roiling currents. It was a good hatch, much better than I expected, though a single trout came up to enjoy it with me. I will remember that fish, as he bent the rod heavily and caused my reel to shriek as he bolted down river, all the river’s thousand CFS of flow behind him. He was energized despite the high, cold water, and battled me for some time. I had him close at last, barely half of my leader between him and my rod tip, when a little jump let the hook fall free!

April’s weather remained skittish, with the rivers getting colder rather then warmer, but the flies still danced upon the surface, as many fine trout danced at the end of my line. I found solitude and rising trout from the drift boat, riding the high flows of springtime and longing for May sunshine and the greening of the mountains. May snowfall preceded that sunshine, as the weather roller coaster of a Catskill spring continued.

Just when the calendar promised the grand blossoming of the season, the wind, weather and crowded rivers returned a lull in activity. I searched for the rising trout I craved in vain most days, until at last soft June arrived with fair sulfurs on warm afternoons. At last the largest browns appeared eager for the dry fly, and I was blessed!

June was a beautiful whirlwind for me, with great battles won and lost, and moments of quiet reflection as the sunlight brought a glow to bright varnish over flamed bamboo; ’till summer came and brought change once again. Hot days and hot nights lingered, and rain, precious rain seemed the stuff of lost dreams.

I have grown to love summer in the Catskills, waiting with great anticipation for retirement and my move here to allow me to savor its beauty day after day. I learned much last year, my first full summer of fishing, yet there was more to learn this year. Each season upon the rivers is different, the weather always seems to defy the norms, and the habits of the trout change with Nature’s ballet, as the flies vary in species, size and intensity. It is a grand theatre to study and enjoy!

Once I learned enough of the new patterns and textures of summer 2020, the rivers offered up their gifts once again. I adapted as the changes came, avoiding the crowds of visitors that the insanity of this pandemic year sent fleeing to the mountains. I have always sought solitude on the rivers, but this year it was more a daily necessity than an occasional desire.

Summer mornings brought reacquaintance with the tiny flies I fished two decades ago on the Pennsylvania limestoners. I enjoyed fishing tricos once again, adored the frustration of fishing flying ants on size 28 hooks with trout boiling all around me.

Once again I stalked summer’s low, clear waters with terrestrials, fine tippets, and light bamboo rods. When my stalks were successful, the rewards were sublime. When success eluded me, knowledge was my reward.

As summer faded to bright autumn I finally had the chance to fish with my best friend. Mike and I have fished together regularly for twenty years, talked frequently, but travel restrictions and common sense kept us apart until late September. It was beautiful along the Delaware, wading cool water on bright, warm afternoons and watching eagles soar as color gathered amid the forests lining the river. Success came in small doses under the most challenging fishing conditions of the year, but it did come.

October has always been a favorite month, and this one was perhaps the most gorgeous I can recall! I was surprised to still find tricos after several frosts, and became amazed at just how picky our wild trout can be when such tiny fare becomes their daily bread. Late in the month, when I thought all hope of dry fly fishing had vanished, I was graced with rare moments, gifts from the rivers of my heart.

Reflections – moments that will remain with me throughout the long months of winter and throughout all the years of my life; the memories of a grand season.

They say we will have a warm winter in the East, so there may just be a bit of light amid the darkness of an angler’s winter. Who can tell. I know that my hope for adventures with the dry fly must wait until April nevertheless.

As I sit at the bench through the coldest, most blustery days to come, mixing fur, feathers and steel with a bit of hope and magic, I will let those reflections of the season wash over me, bringing the soft glow of amber sunlight to my eyes and joy to my heart!

I truly felt the change from seventy degrees to forty as I uncased and assembled my over and under, shivering just a bit as I zipped my hunting coat all the way up to the top of it’s high collar. A cloudy morning, with no expectation for even a glimpse of the sunshine I had enjoyed for the past week, and I was anxious for the climb ahead to warm me. I dropped a pair of 7 1/2’s in the tubes and closed the action as I headed up the old skidder road.

The flock of turkeys that crossed the road in front of me half a mile before I reached the pull off had my spirits high, secure in the knowledge that the cold morning had game on the move. The skidder road worked across the slope, climbing gently for the first hundred yards, then turned aggressively upslope. I kept to a grouse hunter’s pace, walking a few steps then stopping, hopeful that any nearby biddie might get nervous and fly.

I worked to the top of the ridge and ogled the terrain on its back side. It was much the same as my route up, mixed older trees and a lot of younger growth, but not the kind that screams birds. Deciding to head back down and try another old road or two, I walked down a bit north of the skidder trail, still thinking there might be a bird in the neighborhood. The wind had not yet risen, so the woods were quiet, my own footfalls dampened by the wet leaves. I scarcely heard him before I saw him, right in front of me thirty yards downhill; a couple hundred pounds of black bear!

I stopped in my tracks and tightened my grip on the double, while he ambled past quartering downhill, seemingly as interested in putting some distance between us as I was. I could not be certain whether he stopped or kept going downhill in silence, so I kept glancing to the north as I worked my way southerly and down to the road.

My plan had been to hunt high, recalling my friend John’s tale of multiple flushes recently way up the mountain near his Catskill cabin. I was fifty miles away from there on State Forest land, but had figured that the grouse might have found a preferred food source closer to the peaks. My chance encounter had me rethinking that plan in earnest.

I ended up in a cover several miles away and several hundred feet lower in elevation, where I’d flushed some birds the previous season, but it wasn’t in the cards this day.

I was wearing the new Garmin Forerunner watch I’d received yesterday for the first time this morning, and I checked out it’s display of my heart rate when I got home. The display features a nice little graph that showed the rate going up as I’d climbed the ridge, then beginning to drop gently as I walked around on the level top and began to descend. The high peak for the morning, 150 beats per minute, jumped right up there after the graph showed that initial decline, right on time for that visit with my unexpected companion. That peak was very isolated on that little graph, just a moment in time.

The last day of our reluctant Indian Summer is at hand, one last afternoon of warmth and beauty to enjoy the outdoors before winter weather comes calling.

I walked the banks of the wide Delaware yesterday afternoon, soaking in the sunshine and marveling at the simple, spare beauty of the November landscape. It was windless, and the river’s expanse reflected the reddish glow of the dying vegetation along its bank as the sun neared the ridgetop to the west: simply beautiful.

I had hoped the river’s rainbows would provide some sport, but it was not to be. A few boats passed, but I was the only wading angler, the lone walker on this hauntingly gorgeous afternoon. A time for reflection, a time to savor the simplest gifts of the angling lifestyle: time on the water, solitude, and the last blush of the gentle season along the rivers of my heart. I will walk again today, for I cannot stay away.

I am resigned; I know there will be no last chance encounter with rising trout, no memorable battle with some heavily muscled finned warrior. This last week has proven it is not to be. Though my heart longed for just one more epic battle, a few hours of delicate dueling with some leviathan sipping tiny flies in the film, I would not trade the quiet time I have had on these rivers. Fishing is after all about much more than fish.

Amid the quiet of the lowering sun, and the song of the bright water I saw one titanic rise and my heart leapt: a fountain in the fast water, with spray lifting two feet above the roiled surface. I peppered the area with casts, but there was no repeat performance. A salute I think, a wave goodbye rather than an invitation to engage; and the fisherman in me misread the sign.

One last day of bright sunshine upon bright water. I believe I will tie a fly to take along…