Rainfall and high water in August, fancy that, so my first August fishing had to wait a day. Solitude and a sense of wonder, as after each substantial rain event I perceive the rivers are renewed.

I chose a more standard morning start time, experience telling me a dawn patrol wasn’t needed for this new water. I carried an old Leonard 50 DF, one of the early Hunt versions, wearing a 3″ St. George and the experience of years. I never really know when I visit a rain-washed river, my hopes are high invariably, but experience tells me to expect nothing. Thus, verily, I found that same.

Four hours of stalking, working some good lies and straining my eyes to dissect every inch of that water, lifeless completely for the first couple of hours. Flows change, and trout with them, and the first evidence led me to suspect the few trout training on an eye with the surface were roaming everywhere, though finding little of interest.

Eventually, I had waded all the way and found myself near the scene of the crimes. I had found that fish in mid-July, felt powerful head shakes that have become his trademark, and bemoaned when he fought to get into the snags and straightened out a not too fine wire dry fly hook. Power, and nothing.

Five days after our rude introduction, I tossed him a Cross Special when I caught a sip to a pale little mayfly. Once more, he insisted to take me to his woodshed, and my leader knot broke when I did my best to stop him. Head Shaker two, beaten angler nothing.

I came knocking on other days, even catching a couple of fine other fish, but Head Shaker failed to show. Had he left the county? Changed his hideout? No answers as July passed on. No answers until the first sojourn of August. So, after half a day of fruitless stalking, I peek around his corner once more…

There seems a quiver of movement, and I freeze and let my tired eyes continue the search, but nothing certain is found. A few casts nearby draw no attention, so I stand and wait. Seventy feet away the surface opens up with a terrible detonation and my heart jumps up in my throat. Should I put my innocent little size 16 dry fly in that? So be it.

I let the long line unroll and set the 100-Year Dun at sixty, flipping the rod tip gently to shake out some slack to extend the drift. As that canted little wing slips into a deeper shadow I lose sight, and then divine intervention urges me to lift the rod and the explosion rocks me! Head Shaker!

He is not close enough to his woodshed this time, and I strip the line heading him in my direction. Miraculously, he keeps on coming until I have forty feet of fly line piled on the water, all the while shaking that big head left then right. He dashes from side to side in front of me, flipping and somersaulting to smash the leader with his tail. All I can do is to react, parry his thrusts, until I start to worry about all of that fly line splayed out on the water.

I cannot take my fingers away from the rod grip while he is thrashing, but my right hand begins to wind. The line is loose on the reel spool, and trouble is coming, but I have no choice. If the line tangles, it is over before it starts.

When he takes a breath between dashes and thrashes, I back up a step or two. Eventually, he tries to go around me when I am backing, but I lead him that way, out into shallower water, clean bottomed shallower water.

In mid-river now I watch him flashing in full sunlight, fighting him with the line controlled in my fingers. All of that slack has all but jammed the reel, so I pull a few turns off the spool in case he runs beyond my precarious tether. The fight will be won or lost hand to hand now.

The thrust with the net brings a deep exhale, as he threatens to leap right out of it! Rod tucked under my arm, I clutch the net with both hands, then pop the fly out. It comes free quite easily. Then the camera, aligning him over the graduated scale… all twenty-five inches of him! Lastly a solemn nod to a noble foe, then slip him back into the cold, clear water. We both feel that release.

It has been showery today, and it appears that theme will find it’s way at least part way through Monday. Driving out of Livingston Manor yesterday at the close of Summerfest, the storm clouds were massing along the southern ridges of the mountains. Despite that long, black line all the way west back to Hancock, the evening proved dry. Our rivers don’t seem to have received enough to be affected, but we’ll still take the gamble on storms overnight and in the morning. I for one am hoping for a fishing day.

There is no doubt that, after spending the day of talking about and thinking about fishing, I nearly threatened to head out today. One of the best things about Summerfest is the talk with like-minded anglers blessed to spend their hours with a bamboo fly rod in their hands and a deep contentment in their hearts!

I’ve been sitting here polishing a lovely old Leonard and dreaming about a long, smooth loop of line sailing gently through the morning air, and the wise old brownie whose waiting for my fly to drift nearby…

A vintage English reel crackles to life in the misty summer air, and the droplets fly from the line as a fine trout accelerates away! This is what is supposed to be, surrounded by the solitude of Nature and folded close to her breast. There’s a good dose of Catskill Summer yet before us, and I plan to relish every moment of it!

For the most part, the prognostication has exceeded the reality.

This western end of the Catskill region has found a little rain, this where a bold TV weatherman revealed his map late yesterday predicting an impossible four and a half inches for Deposit. The Central and Beaver Kill watershed took the brunt, with the river touching the margins of the mildest of flood stages. The East seems similar in scope as seen here in the west. So goes the unpredictability of rainfall in these mountains! There are remainders of storm warnings here, but this as yesterday appears not to be a fishing day.

I wrote last autumn about the most recent turn in my own study and curiosity in the legends and historical tales of Catskill rod making. I researched as best I was able to learn more of one of those icons, the H. L. Leonard Model 66 ACM flyrod. Recently, the gracious owner of an amazing private collection has provided some answers, actual facts not legends, taken from the preserved records of a company that was so tightly woven into the fabric of the craft of fly rod making.

It seems that the Mills company, owners, set about compiling a book containing everything about the making of a Leonard fly rod in the early 1950’s. That book was the magic key to enable Mills to rebuild Leonard after the disastrous fire, and among those pages are the specifications of the mystical Leonard ACM rods, including indeed, an eight-foot 2-piece Model 66 ACM. My hand told me it was real with my first cast, but now my faith has been bolstered by history!

I have recounted my own rebirth as an angler, deliverance sprung from that remarkable staff! May the spirits among the legacy of H. L. Leonard ever shadow these Catskill rivers and watch over we anglers of the noble reed and artificial fly.

We are fortunate that some few among us, caretakers, authors and scribes, have done what they may to ensure the history and traditions of the art of fly fishing and the classically simple and beautiful artifacts of the tackle which allow our entry to the worlds of the mists and bright waters.

Summerfest arrives on Saturday, and it is one of my favorite days of the year. The Catskill Museum welcomes all of us touched by this magical art of fly fishing and wild trout, and may the waters of her fair Willowemoc may recede, and there be good cheer and sunny skies!

The dawn patrol, summer’s primary attack pattern, up and early and relying on that spare, single cup of coffee to clear the cobwebs from my head. Find a little sustenance, and then swallow that daily load of pills. When we reach a certain age, they seem to be a given in these times.

I’m reaching for the Superfine once more, after an adjustment to the backing wound on my little CFO III. Don’t want any jamming when trying to wind a lot of slack fly line up when my attentions are… otherwise directed.

On the river it is chilly and foggy, and the water level is lower than my last trip. Thin flows make any approach more difficult than ever, and I have to get closer than I want to survey the pieces of water I hope will betray some hunting fish.

I find no movement whatsoever, though I have heard a plop once or twice at distance. Visibility remains limited, and I see nothing when I search for the source of those sounds.

I have covered a lot of water as now it is after nine, but still no hunting trout have betrayed themselves. The sun is burning off the fog and the river mist, so I can see at distance, but there is no sign of activity. Casting to cover has been fruitless.

I prospect the shallow riffly tail of what passes for a riffle to see if I can awaken something. Finally, I see one good rise, and the reserve power in this little seven-foot stick sends my Baby Woodland Hopper right to it. It doesn’t drift more than a foot before a nice brown comes up hard and we are off to the races! The oxygenated water here gives him plenty of energy and he runs all over the river before I can wrangle him into the net.

Catching that one gives me some energy too, and I work a favorite bank hard with nothing more to show. Finally, I find a sole sipper, but he proves too wise, ignoring various terrestrials. With the sun working above the mountaintop the first few mayflies of the day appear, so I change and revisit that sipper.

Late in the morning now I am feeling tired. The short rod works you harder than an eight-footer, and three-thirty is still three-thirty.

My sipper bubbles up right beneath my little dun, the water quivers with our anticipation, but he won’t eat it. Clear, ultra low flows, and the trout have been fished over and educated. Hell, I’ve educated him most likely, catching him a week or so earlier this summer.

The forecast swears we are going to get a lot of rain, tonight and again tomorrow, though it seems it will be mostly as thunderstorms. Between tonight and Tuesday we could see more than two inches, and that will reboot the rivers.

I guess I can try to sleep in the morning.

How time flies! Today begins the last week of July, and August will be knocking on the door. Some call August the Dog Days, and indeed, temperatures and drought can justify their complaints, but I recall mornings like the one just pictured. Catskill Summer days with warm but pleasant afternoons, often after a touch of a chill in early mornings and cold water flowing in our tailwaters!

I remember that morning. There were some very small flies, green caddis, the kind of flies we see in bug books, but I for one have rarely encountered. Sure, I have tied some, but after a couple of years of disuse, well, what the hell ever fly box did I put them in? That morning I had to improvise. I took the greenest size 20 olive CDC mayfly I had, clipped off the tails with my pocket scissors and squashed down the dun colored CDC wing until it rode like a down wing. That boo bending sweet brownie told me it was just fine!

I remember a last day years ago when I decided to drive to a favorite spot rather than simply starting the drive back to Pennsylvania. I trundled down the steep bank to find loads of BWO’s on the water, and good trout rising, stealing a couple more hours of great fishing before back home and another week of the work that was slowly killing me.

I can’t tell just which kind of August we might have, but I am hoping it is filled like days like those. It begins with Summerfest, always a good time to trade tales with tackle dealers, run into a friend not seen for a year, and just enjoying the day surrounded by like characters.

I plan to do my best to make each day of the month worth living, to spend my hours in fishing, tying, great music and food, and to take a few minutes on the porch late in the day and enjoy a frosty cold one and just look around at these mountains.

We all have seen them, particular spots, places where everything looks fishy, but there never seems to be any sort of a decent trout within a mile of it. The optimists think there must be the granddaddy of them all down there, but time eventually convinces them that trout just seem to don’t like that spot.

I mean, who knows what is in the mind in a trout?

Over time, you tend to ignore those places. You tell yourself well that place looks sooo good, every Tom, Dick and Harry bombards it with twenty casts, bad casts… so big trout learn to avoid it. Sure, once in a while you stop and throw a perfunctory wild cast there, but after enough fishless years go by and you just don’t bother.

Maybe it was my day, but I have been having a lot of good days lately. I missed out on my spring fishing, was threatened that I might be done period, and I have embraced the blessings offered me when I came through that. I like summer anyway. When it gets more difficult, skinny water, trout at their wariest, rare brief little hatches, that’s my comfort zone.

So yesterday morning I am walking, sneaking along the river’s edge, and I decide to go further and take a shot at an interesting new place, and yea, an old place where there is never a good trout there. The new spot doesn’t pan out. New cover may take time to appeal to a lunker trout I tell myself, so that leaves the old nowhere lie. Perfunctory cast and move on? No, I fish it! I work it like a surgeon taking out your something or other.

Now appreciate the fact that this place has never even threatened to produce anything but an odd foot long trout, and that has been nearby, not really on the lie that draws all of the attention. This has been like that for years! But I keep working, just like everything depends upon it. Nurse, retractor, I’m going in again…

The fly has dissected every foot of this lie, and finally I lose sight of my fly in the glare and see a bit of nervous water that hovers where I think it should be. I tighten up and it sort of drags, then comes away. Weeds? I check the fly and it is clean and in good shape, so I put the perfect cast tight in there and let it drift again… kawhomp!

I am on the line and stripping, the Leonard bowed up in a big, full curve, and the water is splashing all over the place. Those first few seconds are everything when the cover is impenetrable. Now I’ve got him out of it and we are on even ground.

I still don’t think the old fellow knows what hit him, but there he is out of his tree in the middle of the river in the sun light, and his breakfast is tugging on him. We had a good fight, but the net wasn’t something he liked very much. Twenty-three inches of indignant old brown trout was hopping mad one moment, and then sitting there at my feet, released to go ponder just what and how this happened.

Perhaps I just liked his attitude. One of the greatest Catskill fly tyers, a man anglers who have done anything to be able to buy his dry flies, and when they asked Rube Cross “what was so special about your Cross Special” he flatly stated that it was a good fly and he had the materials. No lauded secret trials for just the right shade of fur or hackle, no sir, just the plain truth. You have to admire a man like that.

We learned more about Reuben Cross a couple seasons ago when a new biography was penned by author Richard Lodge, and I am pleased that Mr. Lodge undertook the extensive research required to pen his “The Rise of the Neversinker”. If you haven’t read it, you should.

For some reason, I have never been a fan of the Light Cahill dry fly. Can’t say exactly why, though maybe the fact that the colors never seem to be consistent over various descriptions. I have caught some trout on the fly, but not all that many, nor particularly memorable ones.

Something struck me about Cross’ pale fly though. That beautiful light brassy, grayish hue that is so hard to describe, even here in the Catskills where it had it’s birth and growth: natural dun. Pair the quintessential dry fly hackle with a pale, creamish white fur and the wondrous wood duck flank feather and you have one handsome dry fly to match all of the summer creamy mayflies.

I hope to tie a Cross Special later this afternoon onto my leader and see if I can find a big, old brownie who likes it just as much as I do!

It has been a few years since I have gotten into one of those extended duels with a particular fish, the kind that refuses to be caught. Yes, there was one a couple of seasons ago that did some sort of whiplash move on my tight leader and broke the tip on a lovely old vintage Mills eight-footer, but I won the next time I put a fly in front of him. He was a big old boy, twenty-five inches long, and since he had escaped me just once, we didn’t have the chance to get into a rivalry.

I had a plan this morning, but the forecasts seemed grim: morning thunderstorms, some severe. I mean, we just rode out one last Saturday night that spawned a tornado that visited Hancock and Cadosia. Where I was going to fish takes a long walk in the water to get in and to get out, and I didn’t want to get caught out in the river when a storm whipped over the mountain and drew a bead on me.

I grabbed my little Orvis Superfine rod, a light stick of dynamite, and one my mentor, the great Ed Shenk, really prized among his array of little fly rods. I figured that funky weather could shut down the trout activity, so I picked a closer spot and got on the river a little after seven.

The river was calm, and there had been a little shower before I arrived. There were obvious makings for stormy conditions in the sky, and there was no sign of fish activity. I waded slowly into long casting range of a good spot and waited. Eventually, there was an abrupt explosion out there between some sunken logs. Just once, loud and fast, then nothing. I made a bunch of casts, changed the fly and made some more, all the while figuring that whatever that fish ate it was big and he didn’t need seconds. Seemed I got that right.

Looking down river, I saw some movement and some nervous water where I had an encounter last week. I was on full alert. I stalked that place like I wasn’t even there. No ripples, one achingly, planned step at a time, and I finally eased into the perfect casting position.

Now last week didn’t work out like I planned. I had worked a fish down there that was occasionally sipping whatever he found around some logs and brush piles on the bank. He was moving steadily. I timed my presentation until he took something a couple of feet out away from that bank, and he was all over my fly!

This guy was big, very strong, and determined to take my fly into the middle of any sticks, logs, anything he could wrap me up in. I wasn’t going to let him. I had to put heavy pressure on him, but he kept bulling toward one snag and the next. Finally, I turned him and started him coming my way. Big head shakes, throb, throb, throb… and he didn’t like it so he turned again and the line went slack. I thought I had protected the tippet, and I had. He opened up the hook, a strong Ahrex hook, and he was gone!

The next time I found him working, he vanished when my first cast landed above him. So, these events have created a thing, a rivalry.

Today, I knew the little Superfine could handle that kind of trout. Shenk landed monsters on the Letort and in the West, and Lee Wulff fished Labrador brookies weighing eight pounds on his Superfine rod. The equalizer is the 5X tippet when fishing the dry fly.

I had knotted a Cross Special before I started my stalk, for there were a couple of Cahills around. Late in my approach, I watched my foe happily take one.

By the time I slipped into position, the fish had stopped moving. When I saw some nervous water again, I tried a few casts. No take, and no more visible movement, so I froze and waited. At last, one little Cahill drifted down a thread of current and vanished in a tiny ring. My fly was in the air and perfectly placed on that same thread of current seconds later, then it vanished in another little ring!

No doubt I had the same big old warrior, punching left and right with those same big, heavy head shakes, but he was coming out toward me!

I needed working room, so I started easily backing out toward midriver. When he stopped coming, he started the head shakes again, and I backed some more and started trying to reel up the slack line onto my reel, keeping control with the line to the fish between my fingers. Like the title says: misdirected intentions. Trying to do three things simultaneously doesn’t work out that well.

That big old trout remembered how much he liked it in his wood piles, so he turned and started pulling away, and that natural reaction ruined my plan – I clenched my fingers just a bit too tight on that fly line slipping between them. He felt the pressure increase and pulled harder, so my hand clenched harder too… snap! The tippet didn’t break this time either, so I figured that small dry fly hook had failed just like the heavy hook had done. Wrong again. The knot I tied the tippet to the leader failed and broke.

How many times will I be checking my knots if we get to dance a third time?

Well into the third week of July, I have spent some time this weekend working on my production tying, keeping my boxes full and ready with my summer patterns. Hard to imagine that the first month of summer lies behind me, but there are many wonderful memories!

The season features everything from chunky grasshoppers to the tiniest winged ants, spinners, sulfurs and tricos, and good fishing can keep me busy restocking often fished patterns. I may tie some of these during the winter months, but I still like to ride the anticipation of the next day’s fishing when I grab half-a-dozen hooks, thread and some hackles and go.

With the flies finished, I’m thinking toward the tackle to light my fire tomorrow. Yesterday I was cleaning a DT3 fly line on my old CFO III, and grabbed the tube for Jimmy Downes’ Garrison 206 seven-and-a-half footer. I’ll likely reserve that duo for a few days, after I see what yesterday’s storms wrought. We had a tornado warning posted for Hancock and Deposit, and all along the Quickway corridor southeast. We had a few tense moments, but passed the storm just fine. I hope our neighboring villages can say the same this morning.

I was looking back at a blog post from four years ago, bringing fond thoughts of my four-weight Cumberland Queen. Perhaps tomorrow she will take a walk with me in the wee hours close to dawn…

I might just take her out this morning and cast her with a different line or two. I have that habit with regards to bamboo rods, for it can turn up some surprises, even with a rod that has been more than a decade in my hands. I believe that every fine bamboo fly rod has a perfect line to bring it’s performance to a peak. We just have to bring them together!

My Cumberland Queen very much liked the 406 double tapered number four fly line spooled on my 2-3/4-inch Adams reel. I think the three of us will be very happy tomorrow. Now I should get some of these freshly tied flies out of the fly cups and into the fly boxes in my summer vest…

I just had a nice talk with friend Kevan Best, another Catskill angler who sings the praises of split bamboo fly rods. He lit a few memories mentioning fishing tricos on summer mornings. It has been a number of years ago since I found some good trico fishing here. High water storms or snowmelt runoff can move a lot of the soft silt where our smallest mayflies live, so a reach of stream may have good numbers of flies and fishing one year, nothing on the next.

When it is right in a good reach of one of our tailwaters, it can be special! Thinking quality wild brown trout sipping those size 24’s, and playing trout up there in the teens on 7X tippets and a 3-weight bamboo rod!

This marks nearly eleven months since I completed my first bamboo fly rod, split and planed and finished on August 28th, 2025. Fishing was very, very slow late last summer, I never had the chance to take a log book trout with my creation. Today, amid a very productive summer season, the ARS came of age.

Indeed, this morning’s fishing made this drastically shortened season surpass my total of the log book boys from the entire season of 2025. Even missing my spring while nearly losing my life, this year has been better than last year! Taking three fine brownies this morning, each measuring twenty inches or better was the perfect way to close out a remarkable week.

The star of the day, outside the rod itself, was a heavy bodied, black spotted 23-inch brownie that gave my Lo o bamboo three-piece a true test.

Reflecting the eighty odd hours in the rod shop over eight months required to make this crisp casting 7’9″ hand planed bamboo rod feels well-spent, and taking a beautiful milestone fish sweetens the memory and the joy I felt last August when I first strung up a few different fly lines for my first test casts.

JA and I enjoyed a crisp fifty-four degree morning, a nice break from recent heat, and both found success with rods of our own make and memorable wild Catskill brown trout. It just isn’t better than that!