Fishing is picking up, though the catching still lags, so I hedged my bet this morning. Getting ready for the day ahead, I took the Leonard 66 ACM from the rod rack. I untied the leather laces of the deerskin reel pouch that holds my vintage Hardy LRH, the reel that simply belongs to the ACM. I was certain that the line had been cleaned and slickened before I put it in that pouch, but I ran it through a pad of USL just to be sure, to be as ready as I could be. That rod has a spirit in it you see, at least one, perhaps more.

I do not know the history of the rod, but I know that it has a great and special power, mojo some of us call it. The rod came to me at Summerfest in 2025, through a gentleman dealer in classic tackle who I have known for a while. Paul is a friend of Wyatt Dietrich, the Chambersburg, Pennsylvania bamboo rodmaker who made my first custom rod. Paul was the source for the taper Wyatt followed for my rod, so he and I had a connection well before we ever met. I do not know whom he bought the rod from, nor anything about that person, though I know that this rod has powerful spirits of it’s past angler or anglers within. It is truly more than simply a bamboo fly rod; it is a magic talisman.

A split bamboo rod is a living thing, and it holds some essence of those who wield it.

The Leonard Model 66 ACM rod was not a catalogued rod, made only on special order for a specific customer. I wonder who that customer might have been some 55 years ago, for now we have a connection, though I will likely never know his name.

I felt the power of this 66 ACM rod on the first day I ventured on the water, the Beaver Kill River back in April. I had nearly lost my life in March, and by the third week of April I was not truly ready to take my place upon these bright waters for the beginning of the dry fly season.

My doctor told me that I should decide when I was ready, but warned me not to do any “work”. “Do nothing that would work up a sweat”, he said. A regular, full day upon these rivers is work in that sense of physical activity, so I had waited through the month of worry, and then the surgery, and on into the recovery. When I could no longer stand to be apart from these Catskill rivers, my Cathy drove me to the Beaver Kill, set up a lawn chair on the riverbank where she could watch my progress and run to my rescue if I faltered, and let me fish for a couple of hours.

In my weakened hand that day was the very same Leonard 66 ACM fly rod. I waded gingerly into the shallow edge of the fast water there and tied a Quill Gordon 100-Year Dun to my leader. There were flies on the water, and fish rising, but there was one single rise that caught my eye. I was certain that was a good trout, but he did not rise again.

Perhaps an hour later, once the rod returned some strength and control to me, I saw a swirl below a rock, right where I had seen that good trout. The ACM and I laid that Quill Gordon right on target and, when I saw the take and raised the rod, a big old trout went berserk. After two runs downriver, deep into my backing and with myriad tense moments, I was finally able to bring that trout to my net: twenty-one inches of broad-sided wild rainbow trout.

That moment, and that fish, was my salvation.

During one of my best Catskill summers, the ACM showed me it’s power again. During one pivotal day wielding that rod, I landed three exceptional wild brown trout, a pair each measured at twenty-four inches long, and a third barely an inch shorter. The magic, the strong spirit and power in that rod is very real.

My fishing had finally slowed down at the end of summer, and I had been searching for a sign that the good autumn days I used to enjoy on the Beaver Kill would return. We have enjoyed a summer with more normal rainfall after the prolonged droughts and heavy ice accumulation over the winters in 2024 and 2025, and it has been three years since I found wild trout returning to my home pools during autumn.

I found a few mayflies and a few rising trout this week, but I had not caught any of them, thus I called once again upon the mojo of the 66 ACM.

I walked into the river before Noon, finding the pool quiet. I set about tying a new tippet to my leader, and while I busied myself with that, I saw a rise just where I had fished to a riser for a barren hour on Monday. By the time I had the tippet and a size 20 olive tied on, the Red Gods bid me good day, raising the wind from nothing to ripple the entire surface of the pool, putting my old friend down.

I stalked further into the pool, getting in position should the winds lie down and that trout resume his rising, and waited.

The blow lessened after fifteen minutes and gradually the river’s surface began to calm. Sure enough, I saw a swirl and unhooked my fly from the frame of the stripping guide, stripping enough line from the reel. When the trout rose again, I made three or four casts, walking my fly across the current as the flirting breeze still obscured the exact bubble line he fed along. On my last cast, he came for my fly. The Leonard rose to meet him and the effect was a shot of lighting, a big silvery trout leaping into the air and charging away toward the boulder field nearby.

The spirits and I kept him on the reel, played him well, and kept the frail tippet away from all of those ragged edged boulders. At last, I led him into the net: a beautiful, broad-sided wild rainbow measuring twenty-one inches long.

My mind flashed back to April on another pool more than a mile and a half upriver. Could that possibly be the same trout that magic rod had delivered to my hands back then?

No other trout would rise throughout the day, and there would be no more little olive mayflies after our encounter. The river returned to the calm, serene, glassy vista as when I arrived. I cannot shake the belief that this fish was meant for me, the wielder of this living fly rod, this Leonard 66 ACM.

My spirit lives in that rod too now.

A fine mist permeates the air as I wade out into a broad pool. No rain was forecast, but I am glad to have worn my old SST jacket to keep that mist at it’s distance. The pool is quiet, so I stop just a few steps into it’s edge and wait.

My eyes are straining, but I cannot find evidence of insect life. The time, the season, this chilly misty weather, all insist this is the time.

First, it appears simply a crease in the film, out there along the far bank, but long experience leads me to begin a slow, measured approach. Getting closer, that crease has repeated once or twice, and now it seems somewhat further from the bank. Still, it could be a rogue current thread, twisting between the jumbled rocks of the riverbed, emerging fitfully, for a river is in itself alive.

The river has risen slowly, and my approach must stop short of my ideal casting range, but I set my feet and wait to see if my suspicions prove true. At last, that spirit of a crease in the flm does indeed wander out from the riverbank, punctuated with the tiniest wink of light and a ring the size of a half dollar.

Larger rivers often demand our maximum casting efforts, but this game screams for delicacy. Those two ends do not necessarily meet. The delicacy is paramount here, and yes, this infrequent delicate little excuse for a rise tries to tell me that it emanates from a fingerling, but I know better.

For a moment of time, the movements cease, and I extricate myself out of deeper water and reposition. I find a perch closer to the bank, but further upstream, the cast requiring a bit more distance, but allowing a longer more downstream drift. Once in what seems a long while, that quiver of movement precedes another half dollar ring.

Failing from my second point of attack, I extricate myself again from the depth that threatens the dry pockets of my vest and reposition again. When that ring appears again, I force my tense muscles to relax and flick the rod more gently, feed the slack line perfectly through my line hand and watch the tiny fly drop on the goal, a barely visible thread of current, and watch it ride…

The ring finally envelopes my fly, and, though it seems my slight pause is correct, I raise the rod smoothly and feel nothing.

The game degrades from that apex, my offering various different flies, and the fish simply demurs to rise to any of them. Still though, he sips something invisible every now and then, just to assure me that he has won.

Before I go, I see a lone rise amid faster water, and I make the long walk of shame. Stalking to deal with the quick, jumbled currents, I make the one cast that lands perfectly and the trout meets the fly amid the spray!

Another dance, this one lasting but a moment. This trout is big and he knows exactly where he is. The lovely little classic reel affixed to my Friendship Rod screams violently, as he dives into the rocks and hangs my fly in the bottom, debris. Retrieved, it bears a wisp of water weed, a consolation prize?

Yes, I am still smiling.

So, I rigged up the old Kiley rod, married it to a vintage Hardy Princess, and started my walk along the river’s edge. I believe they will be very happy together.

There was a little rain still lingering among the slopes of the Catskills, the soft, almost misty kind, but I didn’t see any signs of life on that wide expanse of the pool. I was headed to determine if the fast water, the heavier stuff, had enough depth to hide a trout. The rain was still around you see, but it failed to do much for our rivers throughout this long, nor-easter weekend.

Stopping to watch one of the better stretches, I looked back down over the pool once that misty rain had stopped, and there it was: a soft, twinkling rise!

I took my time of course, walking the stones along the edges, and slowing to a crawl once it was time to work into the pool proper. One doesn’t want to blow an opportunity one has waited for three years to meet. I watched that rise, stopping every slow, gliding step. I didn’t see anything where the trout met the air, though I had marked a handful of whitish mayflies – the summer Cahills, and a few discrete significantly smaller drab mayflies – the olives. The Cross Special has done some good work this season, and it had already been tied on, so…

The float appeared perfect, down gently with the leader and tippet to my side, plenty of distance between the fish’s bailiwick and the leader butt and that fly line. Two casts, three… nothing. So, stop and watch a moment. Still cannot see anything on that surface when he takes something; an emerger? The CDC cripple? No. The olive, it’s always the olives…

The tippet is checked, 5.5X in deference to the clarity of the water, and the little olive T.P. Dun is offered. Multiple drifts… nothing. He’s moving, and he’s not alone! Work on the one though… not having it.

A smaller, darker olive ignored. A winged ant, also ignored and he stops for a time, so I look at the insects showing. Eventually, a few larger mayflies are spotted and tagged as isonychia. A size 14 Pale Isonychia 100-Year Dun is offered to the next riser after he lunges half out of the water after something. That’s definitely a trout, 18, 20… silvery, a bow? Whatever it is they are taking, they are not my dry flies.

They are getting skittish from casting. That first one is down. What are they eating? It’s always the little olives this time of year, always…

Whatever they wanted seems to have stopped, so I withdraw, head back upriver. I find one rising at the head of the run, see a few more of the big mayflies and offer the isonychia, and he ceases rising and vanishes. I walk a long stretch beside the faster water and decide that it’s flow is too thin. All of the measurable rain has fallen east of the Catskills it seems.

Coming back downriver I see one ring when I get close, right there where that first fish rose earlier. I stalk in again and repeat. No sale. The others have not started up again (and they will not). I am smiling though, perhaps with a somewhat crooked little smile, but a smile indeed. They have arrived…

The last threads of the weekend’s nor’easter are passing through our Catskills, leaving us flat clouds and not nearly as much rain as we’d liked. Cool, dampish, the kind of day not promising to make an angler feel comfortable, though the kind of day which should look good to a trout.

I have spent a couple of days doing autumn tasks, painting my porch, ordering the new tarp to cover the drift boat, keeping my mind away from the water. A few thoughts have strayed to the imminent opening day of our grouse season.

Dreary, damp, unsettled weather; but the rivers are calling me. I cannot walk away once a whisper of hope remains for this stalled dry fly season.

I am thinking of one of my older, less glamorous rods, those I think of as my off-season rods. There’s an Orvis 99 very nearly as old as I am, and the original, back when I was still plotting the break toward retirement, that Steve Kiley rod that will throw wet flies, winter’s small streamers, yet with a simple adjustment to it’s leader transforms itself into a lovely dry fly rod. Sometimes the rod regulates the mindset. A classic dry fly rod insists that I fish a proper dry, whether any flies deploy or not. The off-season rods don’t make such demands, allowing me to try to find a trout in questionable water with a soft hackle, before considering the rigorous approach pure dry fly water demands. There are still favorite reaches that have not proven trout have returned there, once waters have cooled.

I recall an afternoon when I fished the Kiley with an autumn searching pattern, convinced that my dry fly season was completed. I caught a hand size smallmouth bass and felt that end was assured, so when I watched a tiny little blip beside an emergent boulder, I simply smiled that they were more of the same. Moments later though I watched a significant bulge in the flat surface of that low water run and the kiss unmistakably made by a sizeable trout!

The change to the leader was quick and sure, for I saw a few tiny olives drifting there. With leader lengthened and tippet lightened, I secured a size twenty comparadun and studied the currents for the one pitch this scenario would allow.

Perfectly aimed with controlled slack and a gentle touchdown, that little fly drifted right downstream to destiny! The brown gave me a terrific battle, maneuvering him away from sharp edged rocks and snags, and at last into my net. A gorgeous twenty-two inch wild brownie brought a smile to my face, while shaking hands removed the fly. Dry fly season over be damned!

Sometimes that change of attitude, the relaxation which envelopes me when I shed my expectations can alter the fates I believe.

A quiet day before the season’s first nor’easter brings discord. I am leaning to a four weight rod this morning; perhaps my Sweetgrass pentagonal will fit the bill. The rod’s russet-colored silks against it’s lovely blond cane speaks to autumn, and it has fewer days than some along the turns of this frenetic summer.

I have the reach of water foremost in my thoughts just now, one I know as intimately as any. Fishing has been quiet there too. I have wandered the wide riffles and flats of the Delaware, but the signs of feeding trout have diminished as the month advances. September’s moods…

There are other favored bends, other rivers who are calling, and I have stopped and, inquired, but there are no answers yet.

There is no hook in the vise today, for there are more flies in my light, summer vest than upon the water. My mood is thankful for a bounteous summer, yet harboring wistful thoughts of the gifts might offer as autumn wraps me in her brilliant colors. With the mountainsides aflame and the calm waters reflecting that glory, a fish has a great deal to compete with.

Each day when I feel the afternoon sun upon my shoulders, I know that moment could be the last. Winter here descends as she wishes, ignoring the calendar, but just yet there is still time. I long to feel that warmth, clutch the cork again and feel the cane taught and throbbing with the life of the river!

Our forecast tells us that summer will pass down the river today under cool, overcast skies. My long rod, eight-and-a-half feet of five strip bamboo, is ready and waiting. I just cleaned and dressed the number five line which adorns a vintage Hardy St. George, most suitable for the task. Though I have flies aplenty, perhaps I will still tie a few fresh ones, something to bring a touch of angler’s luck, for summer will be gone tonight.

Autumn is waiting, and this dry fly season has it’s days numbered as it turns.

There is hope for October though, for there are often warm, bright days amid the mountainsides aflame, with bright wild trout sipping the last winged flies that will flutter about until spring. The rush of spring and summer fishing has faded, so October days have a fine opportunity to fix themselves in our memories, often with the assistance of a single, special fish!

Nature’s palette of flies can be varied on a given day, one reach of river. Insects of the land, borne upon autumn winds may cause the angler to grab for his summer fly box for ants, beetles or even larger fare. The tall wings of an isonychia mayfly might be spotted on the afternoon drift, and evening casters could thrill to a hatch of huge October Caddis, rushing to change their leaders from the finest tippets they fished to near invisible olives until dusk. Adaptation and observation will best serve the angler’s needs.

The trout are moving at this time and finding them on one reach today will not guarantee a top spot for tomorrow. A dose of luck is good in any season!

Sitting here and pondering whether that, if I tied a few size 22 olives on one of those “big eye” dry fly hooks, might I be able to see it well enough to tie it onto a slender tippet on the water…

I have reached the age where the deconstruction of time has limited my tableau of tackle and tactics, becoming one of those guys who fishes nothing smaller than a size 20 fly regardless the size, or the lack of size the naturals before me display. Granted, there is a respected school of thought among practitioners of this art that presentation can overcome such trivialities as feeding a size 14 neon yellow “sulfur” to a trout dutifully inspecting every size 24 dark hued olive mayfly passing his station to determine if there are the proper number of grayish bands apparent on his six legs before opening his mouth. While I count as presentation of the fly paramount, I also count as equally vital the quality of the imitation as to the naturals being fed upon.

So, shall I forego the opportunities provided by the smallest aquatic insects to limit failures? I shall not.

I have always expounded the belief that presentation and imitation go hand in hand, neither taking an overall priority in the catching of wild trout. I will qualify that, as I am a product of the Eastern United States where the vast majority of America’s population resides, and fly fishes if they are so inclined. I was struck very early on in my journey to fall completely in love with difficult trout: large, wild, well-fed, trout gifted with great experience in the meanderings of human beings armed with sticks and a great deal of varied concoctions of fur, feathers, hair, plastics, and assorted sparkly things, all bearing fishhooks. Who I am, who I have become as an angler has formed my thoughts, opinions and beliefs.

So, I embrace this season of transition in my own best operative mode. I will not spend ten minutes failing to thread my tippet through the eye of a hook that I cannot see. I shall look to other flies of the season, all of whom are not miniscule, if not invisible to me. A size 18 winged ant can be threaded onto my chosen tippet, given my abilities, and has a good chance at tempting a fine, old brown trout settled off to the side of those youngsters smacking down 24 olives. His even larger cousin hidden back along the eddy eyeing a slender thread of current off apart from the main flow, might still relish a Grizzly Beetle, or a drowned isonychia dun or spinner, should a fine imitation might happen by.

I do also maintain a good supply of those old, trusty size 20 olives, the ones with the bright, sparkly gray wings that I can track as they drift in and out of the shade at sixty feet. They have become quite a staple.

Light rain is tapping on the metal roof, and I am soothed by the sound. Here in these pre-dawn hours, it’s promise feeds hope for freshened flows as summer comes to it’s quiet finale.

A Catskill Summer is a long glide, a parade of bright, beautiful days carried upon crystalline waters. Upon it’s ending, the ride slows and so the fishing, giving time to appreciate countless days of grace these mountains have bestowed.

Here, at the end of this wonderful ride, the days offer a preview of autumn. The air cools, and the rains have more permanence than those summer showers. The trout have grown scarce, forsaking their regular haunts, and an angler knows that long days may extend his time where his soul is gentled, though likely that the hours expended will not build new memories of his triumphs. These times are for reflection and thanks.

I tried to sit down here this morning, hoping to tie a pair of pale isonychia 100-Year Duns to copy the mayflies that I see at times come September. With forty-four degrees after daybreak, and both windows having been open all night, I couldn’t quite sit in this room long enough to do it!

The morning certainly felt like fall, but a full week remains in summer. I sat outside on the porch just now, under clear blue skies and a bright sun, and savored my last Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy, a perfect summer beverage indeed. Toasting summer is well deserved, for my fishing has been exceptional.

Things have slowed down now, and I have changed my game plan, started checking the Beaver Kill since it’s flows and water temperatures have been hospitable to trout once more. I spent several hours and reconnoitered three pools along the lower river, and I could not report any real evidence that a single trout lives within miles of there. It simply isn’t time yet.

The deal is, the lower river cannot sustain trout most summers. There are sanctuary areas that the wild trout must migrate to for survival during the terribly low water and eighty degree and higher temperatures we saw during 2024 and 2025. Ethical anglers don’t go anywhere near these sanctuaries, waiting until the rains and cooler weather comes as autumn nears and then looking for the trout to return to the river at large. Sadly, those past two years were so tough, with the droughts continuing through the summers, autumns and the winters, I feel certain that a large number of those trout did not survive. I found little in the way of fishing in the lower river these past two years, and I missed the spring this year, so I am searching and hoping that Nature has rebounded and will smile once more on our Big Beaver Kill.

I know, many think of the Beaver Kill as a stocked fishery and always full of trout, and of course the upper miles from Junction Pool down through Cooks Falls are heavily planted by New York State. This is the river where the postcards are taken, the miles with the famous named pools, Ferdon’s, Barnhart’s, Hendrickson’s, Cairn’s and the Wagon Tracks. The lower miles, the big water down to the junction with the East Branch of the Delaware, are not stocked for the most part. Wild trout live in these river miles when the water flows and temperatures are suitable, migrating like many of the wild browns and rainbows in the Delaware system. I am a lower river angler, a dry fly, wild trout man – have bamboo rod, will travel, and it hurts to see the two previous years have done to my river.

For now, I search and watch the river gage, hoping to find a taste of the great autumn fishing I enjoyed earlier in my retirement years. In 2019, my first full season in these Catskills, the Beaver Kill excited me in mid-September, thus I always have hope by this time each year. My logs though show that in 2020, 2021 and 2022, my autumn fishing did not begin until October, and in 2023 just three days earlier on September 28th.

Reviewing those logs this morning proved somewhat sobering, at least in regard to my September hopes. Nature works in her own time. She cannot be rushed, particularly by an eager angler anxious to relive his best times on the Beaver Kill’s golden autumn days!

I love to hear the morning rain, particularly in summer whether during it’s earliest days or now as it plays out it’s annual run, for it is the sound of life for our rivers. The last few hours of the 32nd Catskill Gathering are ticking down, as the rod makers will assemble for their last goodbyes. We enjoyed a lovely weekend, so I doubt these raindrops will dampen any spirits after the beautiful days we spent there amid the grounds of the Catskill Fly Fishing Center. Water is of the essence of our bond, and we all know how vital summer rains are.

I think on some of the most poignant memories which I will keep from this year’s Gathering…

John, Tom Mason and I watched and listened as Tom Smithwick told the Gathering of that miraculous fly rod that has been named The Friendship Rod. He told us as the first work done toward a nice eight-foot four weight bamboo fly rod would be revisited over a couple of decades. Each time Tom’s growing knowledge and intuitive magic with tapers developed, and the rod developed with him. He has seen the wide reception of his labors of love. Some have already made their own rods following the Smithwick taper, and nearly thirty have added to their names to the list John has kept in the Catskill Rodmakers’ Workshop at CFFCM. The four of us and our bond of friendship is spreading!

Cane rodmakers are of course a diverse and inventive group, and some have experimented with Tom’s wonderful taper in new directions. I cast two hollowbuilt versions yesterday, one from Muncy Wheby from North Carolina and another from Frank Payne from Rochester, New York. Both were faster due to the hollowing, and quite different from one another, and very fine rods. I still hold the original Smithwick rod as the penultimate, though I would be proud to own and fish either of Muncy’s or Frank’s innovations.

John Shaner told us of two hallowed Catskill rivers, the Beaver Kill and the Willowemoc, and how they helped mold what has become to be known as Catskill rodmaking. He blended his memories of heralded anglers of the past and the Catskill rods close to his heart. John has lived and fished rivers around the country, but his deep fondness for these Catskills shows through!

I could not help but smile, inside and out, as celebrated rodmaker Per Brandin shared his thoughts and memories of special rods and their makers who inspired his life’s work at the bench. When he spoke of how he had fished a few of Everett Garrison’s original rods, he told us that he had never cast a Garrison design which felt like the originals, as something of the man was in them! I had to stifle a cheer at that statement and the depth of feeling he conveyed, my thought’s bubbling up “yes, the magic, the magic that’s in them!”

The rain has nearly ceased, and morning advances. Yes, indeed that magic can be felt in something of my friends Tom Smithwick and John Apgar in my Friendship Rod, and I cherish the magic I feel in the miraculous rods that Dennis Menscer has made for me right here in these Catskills.

When I fish one of my Dream Catcher fly rods crafted by my friend Wyatt Dietrich, I feel the bright smile in his face and the spark in his eyes as we talked about bamboo rods many years ago in Chambersburg! The magic is in the air and rock and soil and these waters, and deeply in the hands and smiles of those who toiled at their benches to craft the keys, the magic wands which connect us to the magic in bright waters!