I set to work this morning, one with a clear task ahead. I tied a dozen flies, particular patterns for that special little preparedness fly box for the beginning of the dry fly season. I know my season will not begin when I hoped and anticipated, for if that would be true, I would already have been out wandering a river.

Of course, Nature and her Red Gods will determine when that first hint of the angler’s season shall debut, as it has ever been and shall ever be. My own dealings apart with life I accept that my angling season shall be later than Nature’s caprices decree for the whole group of Catskill anglers. I do hope fervently that my season shall begin, and I have concentrated toward my own preparations, something I can control.

The preparedness box will not be stocked with Gordon’s Quills and Hendricksons, for there are some hundreds of patterns waiting in a pair of Wheatleys. No, this one will include the flies I do not expect to need.

The first half dozen tied this morning have been the summer’s delights, the ants: color black, size 18, split the group half standard and winged. Why? An early April pod of sizeable trout sipping something I could not see, refusing every fly of the season during the forty-five or so minutes they fed busily. I found the answer, sitting fifty yards away on a boulder mulling my failure, when one of their number landed upon my ear!

A pair of early black stoneflies came from the vise next. Ever valuable on my more southerly waters for decades, I have yet to see a Catskill trout take a one, not even when they are buzzing furiously half an inch above the surface. March’s water is far too cold! The day I find myself with not one of those stoneflies in my vest will certainly be the day when every Catskill trout I encounter will finally crave them, and be damned the thermometer!

There have various seasons when I have found good brown trout ignoring Hendricksons to take the nearly invisible tiny black caddis drifting surreptitiously down the current. I have neither seen a bona fide take to one of those tiny black caddis since my retirement, so a few patterns are another necessity in that preparedness box.

My old friend and mentor, Ed Shenk taught me to always carry a few sulfur mayflies every month of the year I visited the hallowed Letort. Such things can happen, and will say the Red Gods if the angler marches forth unprepared. Perhaps I should place a pair of sulfurs in that box too, no matter many miles I am distant from the fair Letort.

Spring lies so near, and yet so very far away! I have done my best to take the reins, dealt with my present situation, and worked toward a future upon bright water as soon as possible. Time will tell…

So, while I keep my mind focused, I have been reading through an old book on terrestrials, one I had never heard before. I found myself thinking about a class of bugs I honestly never paid much attention to. The more common flies don’t get attention when trout fishing is the subject, and it is easy to ignore several species: houseflies, deer flies and horse flies and their relatives. I decided to do something about that empty compartment in my terrestrial box.

What made me decide to come up with a new general bug to prospect with, whenever I notice any of those naturals? I recalled an unusual day just a couple of seasons ago. I slipped gently into the river one afternoon and found some unexpected hard rises. There were no aquatic insects hatching causing this serious feeding, so I immediately moved to offer some terrestrials. I went through several ace in the hole patterns with none of them interesting even an inspection rise.

Eventually, I succeeded to capture something from the drift. It looked that it might be a bee or Yellow Jacket, but it seemed to stuck together in some other material. I thought looked to be part of a nest. Some pretty strong gusty winds were blowing periodically, so it seemed to me that a nest in a tree may have been disturbed and coming apart. I was stumped to come up a dry fly to look and act enough like what I was seeing floating down to those trout. The event stopped after half an hour and all feeding ceased. That was my first bees in nest hatch, my first in 35 years and likely my last, but it did get me thinking.

Reading that old book made up my mind to design a general-purpose fly. The concept was a fly that could be used as a horsefly, deer fly or a housefly by tying it in a couple of sizes. I wanted something so that a change of color and the addition of a rib would imitate a bee or Yellow Jacket. I decided it to call the Trout Bug.

This pattern will be added to a small, early terrestrial box that will be tucked into my vest when I first fill it up for the beginning of the season. I want these always there. The first half-dozen of Trout Bugs were tied on classic dry fly size 12 hooks, a nice middle of the road size bug. I don’t want to carry of several sizes of these – I want a decent size two-winged some kind of a terrestrial fly that suggests a nice impromptu meal. The Trout Bug fits that bill.

Come summer, and I hope to spend a lot of long wonderful summers along the rivers of my heart, when I find some fine old brownie who isn’t impressed with my usual dry du jour, I will take a shot with one of those Trout Bugs. I think that might just turn the tide my way!

Just enough, glistening, frosted with white to bring the reminder that spring remains but a hope. Heady days, teased while imprisoned I watched, filling my lungs in the warmth air while the sun brought life in my bones, yet naught save watching and dreaming. My soul wishes to rush, embrace the season headlong, but the time is not mine.

My fate is in other hands, my plans belong to others, and my freedom and control has been stripped from me. At best, if the season shrinks for now, I will benefit. Lest I not miss a moment when it comes in due time.

I retreat in decades of golden moments in a blessed angling life.

I am wading the fringes of the West Branch, haunting the riverbank forsaken by the crowds. While the others search in vain for rises in mid-river, I alone find them, delicate, shy, sipping in the shallows, drawn to the smaller, ruddy duns, in the traces between the tossed slabs of rock… wolves!

The rain increases and the river rises steadily. I am working along the edge of a favorite bend, wading carefully lest the heavy flow takes me feet away from me. I am casting a big Isonychia, and the fly must all but touch the vegetation to draw a strike. When I probe successfully the in-between, I am rewarded: the lithe wand bucks with life and power as another brown departs from the edge and dives into the tumult of the rising water!

A morning, decades from the past, and I stalk the meadows of the limestone springs. Ed Shenk has shared the secret to his White Minnow, and I have crafted each from my vice in strict conformance to his instruction.

The seven-foot rod works in such close turns, and the line reaches to place the minnow just so, such that it slips beneath the surface that the current rushes beneath a dark little cavern. Twitched once, then twice, and the rod is alive and nearly taken from my grasp! A tense duel, unseen, until leviathan reveals in the light of day. Subdued, the fly slips easily and I, hands trembling, I guide him back into the silver froth!

Shall a new morning greet me at riverside?

Another milestone has arrived, and yet time still seems to be spiraling. Snow is a promise, and yet just hours from a warm sunlit morning. Turmoil in the heavens, turmoil here in earth.

The Beaver Kill has a fine freshet, to clean it’s gravel free from the old and welcome the new. Shall new life wriggling between those stones seek the sun when April dawns?

I began to fill a fly box tasked for winter’s new crop of patterns, but I soon lost my steam, the task left unfinished. Concentration evades me.

The rods are still cased, and none have dallied in the hand, no polish has buffed the luster behind all the years since untold casts have launched a hope and a prayer. Time stands, circling…

I wish to think forward, to plan for that first cast when a soft ring elicits a quickening in my heart rate, yet the mire pulls me down, prevents my spirit to rise to the light.

Waiting…

I can hear that line over and over, Tom Petty’s signature whine… Yea, it’s hard indeed.

I sat out on the porch yesterday afternoon, once the sun came through the clouds: eighty-four degrees there in my old chair; March in the Catskills. I almost tasted a cold, crisp Cold Snap rolling down my tongue, but that has to wait too. I simply sat there, feeling what felt like an early summer afternoon, watching the whisps of clouds glide over the top of Point Mountain.

I can’t quite to make the usual plans that I would be plotting daily as we are coasting toward mid-March. There are too many pressing things that I have to try to get done.

I’d simply dream back into one of these unseasonably warm days in March, wandering along Big Spring, back before things got so damned complicated. There was a time when I’d stalk along those meadows, watching every inch of the bottom, a shine beside a weed edge, evidence that a big rainbow was lurking…

Of course, the take obviously wasn’t a guarantee, not even with the three-weight I would have along on a winter’s day. One of those insane fish would go berserk if you did get a little hook in his jaw! That shallow, clear water you would just watch those ripping flashes of all those colors and a boiling furrow in the water as it streaked away. They always knew where the next weed bed was, even if the one they wanted was seventy yards away… yea, the one with a cluster of big chunks of limestone in the middle of a big ball of weeds. A trout measured in pounds on a size 20 hook and a 6X tippet, and a prayer!

I thought it was complicated back then, but it wasn’t turned out that way. Funny how your perspective changes.

Back in Crooked Eddy, and that is a comfortable situation. I was just a couple of days away, as one counts the days, but in another sense I was very a long way from home. Lost for a time.

I met a lot of new people, too many I still have a hard time to sort them out and put the names on the faces, but they were very important to me, even some which passed through in a whirlwind. So thank you very from the bottom of my heart dear ladies and gentlemen.

Here has dawned the thirtieth day of my annual countdown, the last few turns along the path to a new dry fly season. Winter is fighting in and out while the new glimpses of spring tries to make a few inroads, between with a few warm, sunny days. There is still snow in front of my doorway, but there is finally some open water flowing along the rivers of my heart.

In a normal year, that last thirty days bring a fair number of soft days which draw me out on the rivers, previews, moments of wandering bright water and testing with a few flies cast and swung and getting to know the feel of the best half of the year. Two thousand twenty-six is going to be different, and there will be some serious challenges to meet along that lost stretch of the road.

I’ve been there before, though there are some new turns along the road. I don’t know anything about the mysteries that I will have to work my way around along the darker turns. I won’t be able to get my boots in even one step in shallow water, and I won’t be able to make even one early cast to prospect the currents, but my heart will wanting that caress of bright waters. I’ll keep that spirit, that dream of closing my hand, squeezing the cork and sending that first cast toward a soft subtle dimple in the surface.

Those dries, today, were Isonychia, Century Duns and a 100-Year Dun on big size 10 hooks. They were fashioned with a hope that I see those big claret-colored mayflies come early June. They have been spotty these last few years, as have many of our mayflies.

The sunshine drew me outside, though I knew it’s shining warmth was a lie. The air still hovers below freezing, though it feels a bit warmer walking in the direct sunlight. Saturday’s thaw was short lived, and I recorded all of seven and a half degrees this morning after sunrise.

I enjoyed my riverwalk, hailing the bald eagle soaring down along the strip of open water along the east bank of the East Branch. I doubt he had found anything fishy along that shoreline, with most of the river still silent under a cap of ice and snow. The snow and ice we have been warned of for the morning won’t make tomorrow’s hunt any better for him, but Wednesday afternoon is boasting of 49 degrees and sunshine, with Thursday just about as warm and bringing nearly three quarters of an inch of rain. The combination just might be enough to break the ice’s hold on our Catskill rivers.

It’s tough to try to hold onto expectations for March, for a few days of mild, sunny weather can tease you into believing spring has sprung, then be followed by snow driven by thirty mile per hour winds.

I look at March as a take what Mother Nature gives you kind of situation. I know I won’t find any dry fly fishing, but there can be a run or two of really nice days when it simply feels great to get out on the water. I can wander riverbanks and swing a Copper Fox, take a slim chance on running into a big, hungry brown.

The slow swing, bumping rocks along the river bottom is an easy way to get my casting muscles into shape. It is comfortable fishing, devoid of any serious expectations. Trout don’t feed much when the water is in the thirty something degree range, but there is always a chance to find one down there poking around because it’s his day.

I’ll take one of my old Orvis’s, or the Steve Kiley eight-footer with a heavy six or seven line. If there’s a stronger flow, a clear intermediate will get the nod, while low flows call for the floater. I don’t need a vest, just a bit of a chest pack, a small box of flies and a spool of 3X tippet. There often aren’t a lot of those days, so I enjoy one when it comes, saving the cold blustery days for drift boat chores, etc.

The ghost in my laptop just popped a tiny snowflake onto the bottom corner of my screen, with a message I don’t want to see: “3 in. of snow Tuesday”. I’d rather that system pass quickly through overnight and let Wednesday’s warmup arrive a day early!

Just maybe I’ll wrap a few Red Quill bodies and then rustle up a Cold Snap while I let their hard lacquered coating dry. Sounds like a plan…

At last, the punishment of February lies behind us; though Nature and her Red Gods have their tongues thrust deeply into their cheeks. It is twenty-six degrees with snow falling here in Crooked Eddy.

Driving back from Flyfest in yesterday afternoon’s bright sunshine, I read fifty-seven degrees on my old Jeep’s thermometer. Driving into town with the windows rolled down was exquisite: kids running along Front Street in shorts and tee shirts, snowmelt everywhere. Everyone felt the release, that sense of freedom with the outdoors at last beginning to be unlocked!

Yes, there is hope once again, despite the falling snow. Thirty-six days lie between this moment and the beginning of the new dry fly season.

Last year I was freed from my icy prison on the tenth of March, walking in sunshine and swinging flies upon the hallowed Beaver Kill. Another week had passed before those slow arcs of swinging fly line found resistance and the season’s first brace of wild trout came to hand.

The dry fly season flirted shyly and teased for another month, until at last my Maxwell Leonard settled a Dark Red Quill 100-Year Dun upon the surface to be taken by a beautiful brown of twenty inches!

March’s first few days are bound to revisit winter memories, though warmer and wetter days are ahead. Perhaps the great thaw will open the rivers, and they will clear and fall to wadable levels before too many more days have passed behind. It is time to stretch my aching indoor muscles, to build back some strength and flexibility sacrificed to January and February’s deep freeze; for fishing is coming!

Betrayed once more! Just yesterday I pinned my hopes to our local forecast, with but three inches of snow throughout the ten-day prediction. I awakened this morning to watch the Weather Channel pounding their contrary view and, checking the local just now, I see eleven more inches across that ten-day span!

It seems I shall have nothing save dreams and memories to cling to as cruel February winds into March.

Once winter has nearly beaten down my spirit, I often watch some short fishing or fly tying video as I take my breakfast, and yesterday I watched two of Davie McFail’s. He was tying a couple of patterns using CDC fibers for body dubbing, something I had not done for a good many years. Back on Falling Spring, I had tied a personal version of the classic Usual dry fly. I dubbed the fly’s body with pale yellow CDC fibers, using the original snowshoe rabbit’s foot hair for the tail and wing. I also tied some of these using pale dun CDC for the wing.

Both of these flies worked very well on the wild and heavily pressured Falling Spring trout, particularly in the short, sparkling riffled areas of that limestone stream.

I had learned of the Usual and it’s history from one of Fran Betters’ books, and really learned to appreciate the pattern on an early Catskill trip. I had selected a few size 16 Usual’s from the bin’s at Dette Flies upon Mary’s recommendation and taken some lovely Catskill trout on them almost immediately. For some reason though, that classic, rumpled every fly fell out of my tying regime and my boxes over the years.

Yesterday’s wandering thoughts recalled those moments, and I decided that a CDC dubbed body would be ideal for a few of my CDC soft hackles. A mixture of sulfurs and olives took shape quickly. I plan to tie some more of these as I do my best to let good thoughts of sunshine and bright water stave off this frontal assault of winter blues!

The power chords erupt from the depths of my memory, and I can clearly hear the voice of the late Ozzy Osbourne: Lying snowblind in the sun…

Snow is falling once more in the Catskill Mountains. My brain needs to balance between the Weather Channel’s warnings of “a big nor’easter”, and the much more tractable local forecast amounting to maybe three inches across eight of the next ten days which bear snowflakes in their headers. I want to believe that local story, but I can still hear Ozzy’s wail.

I have had enough of winter!

Baseball begins today, and I welcome the distraction; and Flyfest comes around next Saturday, maybe even an evening out listening to Nate Gross’ incomparable blues guitar. All of these are sorely needed to set my mind free from indoor temperatures in the fifties and this ever enduring white landscape!

Right now, I have to get myself through the morning. Perhaps I will plan out what I’ll tie at Flyfest this year, set aside the materials I’ll need to stock my travel kit. I am leaning toward some of the new patterns I’ve been working on, maybe some old, old ones like the soft hackle dry flies… Terrestrials might inject a little warmth into the spirits of my fellow anglers and fly tyers…

Right now I just have to get through another week, for beyond Flyfest and the blues lies March! Yes, yes, it will still feature cold winds, perhaps more snow and ice, but it is finite and ends in springtime!

I get myself going each March, getting my boat ready, fussing with the tackle I plan for the opening salvos of the new season, and actually wandering riverbanks, wading those rivers, and casting a fly. I know I will begin to see tiny black caddis and early stoneflies and I will dream I can see the ring of a rise once more! Once in the past seven years my first dry fly trout of the season was actually landed in March, so miracles can truly happen, not just appear in waking dreams!

Forty-five days remain; but thirty-one shall be in March!