Once several decades of familiarity with rivers, an angler learns their heartbeats, their moods. A certain bond develops. I sensed there was a new player in one of my haunts, a new uncatchable trout has taken residence perhaps. But once pondering, it might just as easily that he has been there for some time, growing, biding his time to take mastery.

There are certain lies which linger in the memory, not for catches, but for the lack of them. Everything looks right, and yet, that lie fails to produce. Not just a season mind you, but over many. Thinking back recently, I do recall some evidence. A movement just as a fly has ended it’s drift and a gentle raising of the rod tip swims it away. Not a take, no, not even quite a follow, simply… movement.

There were bits of evidence over time, enough so that a suspicion had formed and then, last week, well, there were those damned fluttering moths. Idly watching one of those cavorting and bouncing down there, and just as I was looking away came the explosion. I’ve got you!

With the game afoot, and obviously I danced my own pattern over and past, twitched and manipulated right then and there, but for nothing. Fishing was good, and he could wait. You cannot put one over on a fish like that with a change of fly or three. No. Time, patience, approach and technique are necessary. He wasn’t going anywhere.

So, we started with the formal courting. A guided, careful approach at every opportunity, considering the conditions, and making a group of casts just so. Failure is very much a part of this game. Fish him too much, target him enough for him to recognize he has been targeted, and he will dissolve in the mists.

And so, when the day had come, I made that bad decision, worked it out in my mind and decided what was best, and it would cost me. Delicacy was needed you see, for the perfect cast, the presentation is paramount in these situations. I felt that a three weight was the answer. The Menscer Three would be sublime: distance, delicacy, accuracy, in straight forward terms, perfection! Ah, but what size of warrior was I up against! Dare I risk perfection? I took down the evil rolled and baked substitute, this manufactured soulless thing, graphite.

At the moment of the first meeting, bamboo bestows it’s grace, subtly, beautifully, and my hand has accustomed to it, to reply upon it seems. In short, that bad decision cost me two very large trout that day, broken at that first moment, our first meeting. But it was not, The One. Perhaps my hand was swiftly seasoned by those bad experiences, or greater distance between us simply allowed an ounce of stretch between us to protect that thin tippet.

I had come knocking, softly early. Careful not to wake the master of his abode, to disturb him with my presence should he not yet be ready to welcome callers. He wasn’t, and I withdrew as quietly.

Hours later in the morning I returned, though there was no visible activity still. Discreet distance, plenty of leader, and just the right fly at the ready, I knocked again…

The take was somewhat bold, not soft nor hard, but confident. Clearly, he what he wanted. The explosion came half a heartbeat later!

He clearly wanted to stay in his living room, I had a necessity to lead him out onto his lawn where we could dance, without the bother of his various implements, and dance we did! That light rod and the diminutive Hardy protested on my end, he cavorting with boils and somersaults, twists and turns and a good measure of brute force expended toward me on his.

In wild places, there are sometimes omens…

Another nice summer morning, early to the river, but not quite the dawn patrol. I heard the eagle’s cry as I began my stalk, and turning, saw his majesty winging upriver and bade him Good Morning. I heard a rise, but my eyes found nothing, so I slowed my hunter’s walk to scan carefully with hope to find another.

Watching the water, the deer’s reflection there drew my gaze upward. She walked the edge of land and water, slowly downstream as I walked up, aware of me, but not worried about my presence in the least.

One event should cause me to pause and consider, and two most certainly made it clear this would be a very special day, and yet while I appreciated the sights and sounds as simple pleasures, I missed the portent.

My eyes caught the second rise, though despite my cast arrived promptly, there was no response. I eased up another few steps and into mid-river and hadn’t needed to wait long. Rise number three required a smooth but swift turn, two back casts and a delivery, so perhaps the rhythm urged my strike to follow too quickly. Nevertheless, I felt him as I pulled the fly away, certain he would not return.

A second miss followed after a time, and now my realization is this could be an irritating day. Still, I remained completely unaware of the omens that welcomed my arrival, and I fished on for a couple of hours, cementing the thought that this may be a fishless day. The third miss certainly proved it.

Convincing myself I might still save the day, I checked my downstream advance near midmorning and worked my way back to the beginning. Remarkably, another hunter was still working the water where I embarrassed myself. The talisman proved it’s magic undiminished, when my small beetle was taken and the battle joined. The Hardy spoke, awakening anyone in earshot that the game was on.

Finally, I drew him into shallow water and finished the game with the net: two feet of brown trout willing to surrender my fly. The elation renewed my spirit, and I fished on with greater care and skill. Still, the morning passed on into afternoon. A few smaller rises were located and covered as the time passed, but no responses were displayed.

When trout rise and searching eyes cannot find the answer, enter the Baby Cricket! That was carved in stone three decades ago. A small rise drew my eye, for where it was, not for it’s own visible merit. I let the ACM have the stage, providing the light touch the rod demands, and the take left no doubt! To the races once more, gaining line then losing it again, the music of the vintage LRH played it’s solos for my ears alone.

Such a day, browns measured twenty-four and now twenty-three, but there was a heavy rise nearby even as I battled him. Once released, the task was to find number three…

Nearing two, I had about decided that his feeding spree had ended, but then a softer rise kept me working the area. Nothing more seen, I backed off as stealthily as I could and waited. I considered turning and heading out, but a murmur spurred me to loft the talisman once more toward a nervous spot of water near the bank… and number three was found!

Halfway through the fight I realized that I was concerned for the 5.5X tippet, the same piece of tippet and fly that battled my last foe; an unduly light tippet for such fish!

In the end, the ACM led him too into the mesh, a heavy brassy flanked, black spotted brownie with that same bedraggled Baby Cricket perfectly in the side of his jaw, another two-footer, a perfect bookend.

Finishing the steaks out on the grill, I felt that sun working it. I checked the thermometer: 99 degrees!

The afternoon to evening sun has a direct shot onto my porch, and that generally ramps up the porch sitting temperature another eight to ten degrees. Clear blue skies, not a breath of wind, and I could feel it getting into the century mark as I plated the last steak and retreated inside. I swear my initially ice-cold beer was warming noticeably while I was drinking it, despite the koozie!

The week looks a return to hot and dry, a good time to find deeper colder water to wade!

Yea, today’s task was to tie myself a supply of the new transitional dries for the summer sulfurs, boxing up a dozen and a half in sizes 16 and 18. I split my production between the CDC Duns and the Century Duns, so I can present the trout both looks. This design was a big part of my winter fly tying, so much so that I was truly excited to meet the spring hatches and give them a thorough trial. Obviously, that didn’t happen, so I hope some heavier sulfur hatches as the meager few I have seen this summer, will give me that chance.

The transitionals are intended to set down into the film, with just the thorax and wings forcing themselves into the air. Compromised hatching mayflies are vulnerable and should be very attractive to our wild, educated and wary browns and rainbows.

I wasn’t overjoyed to have to tie these on diminutive size 18 hooks, for they require more parts and manipulations than most of my usual dries, but they came out fine. The finned and spotted court of judges will of course have the final say.

Tuesday looks to be the hottest day of the week, with the high around 95 degrees. I have bountiful practical experience wading the deeper runs and pools of the 48-degree release water of the West Branch Delaware on such days. An ultralight sun hoody above and some insulation beneath fits the bill!

After a long winter and my stolen spring, the second week of July has been a very good week of fishing. I feel good, feel myself and with the endurance I expect. I finally have proven to myself that I am up to the challenge of a six or seven hour hot summer day wandering rivers.

When I retired early in 2018, I didn’t really know how many years I would have ahead of me. I have faced some unexpected challenges, but I have come through them, and I am enjoying my passions: wild trout, dry flies and classic tackle.

The fishing this past week was just what I enjoy the most: hunting bright waters for big, wild trout. There were a lot of hours put in on various pools and rivers, several miles of walking and a lot of casts. I caught five wild brownies measuring better than that coveted twenty-inch mark, one fully two feet and a couple others that missed that length just a little bit, all of them heavy, wise customers that took every bit of skill I had. Interestingly enough, the two largest took the smallest flies of the group, sizes 17 and 18. In my world, that’s a great week!

A good rain certainly didn’t hurt my luck, though it did give me a zero for the first day of the week. The cloudy, rainy conditions should have been good for fishing, but I found virtually no bugs on the water and no trout rising that day. Better flows followed though, once the rain passed on, refreshing the rivers.

I am hoping that rainy days won’t be too scarce as the summer winds along, and I hope that most of our weather falls in my favored Catskill Summer category.

I hope I see some hatches, and some good ones to match wits with educated, locked in, PhD feeding wild trout. I want to see some evidence that our mayfly and caddis hatches have rebounded after two difficult seasons. I can’t judge anything about that based upon spring, as I wasn’t to be able out there.

When late August and September come around, I want to find some big, beautiful claret bodied mayflies some call the White-Gloved Howdy, so I can walk the wide Delaware River after the rains and cooler weather offer a prelude to fall. That fall, come to think of it, will be welcome to show us just how beautiful and productive fly fishing can be that time of year.

Most of all, I simply wish to savor every moment I can find myself outdoors among the Catskill rivers and their trout, their wildlife, and their anglers for at least as many more years that I have been fortunate to live here. Wandering bright water has been my destiny… may it always flow cold, clean and ever downstream.

The humidity vanished and the day feels comfortable, a beautiful Catskill Summer day! Stalking early, but not quite at dawn today, there was no fog and I was searching for some movement. Very much a contrast to yesterday, when I could see little as I made my entry into the river.

Yesterday threw me a curve and I had to make do without the right fly. The river dealt an honest surprise: moths. These critters were vibrating while spread eagled onto the surface, making the damnedest fish call I have seen on a Catskill river. They appeared to be aquatic, emerging from below, but very few seemed capable of flight. I guessed that chilled fog was responsible. When a moth floated over a serious trout… kaboom!

I had nothing to match these things, not even close, so I dug out the few caddis flies I had in my vest. I took a small brownie, and missed a couple like sized fellows, but that was early before the show began. My Trout Bug took a nice fish early as well, but my best idea was to tie on a size 18 tan CDX caddis and twitch around one of the splash zones after a big boy ate his moth.

I twitched over a number of these guys, but that 18 wasn’t fooling fish busting moths with about a size 14 body and big, wide wings. I tried other flies, figuring excited fish would take a meaty terrestrial, but that wasn’t working either. It was the CDX or nothing.

Why a size 18 caddis? Well, this fly has taken many very large trout, and it doesn’t take a full blown caddis hatch. I am talking about trout well in excess of twenty inches. The fly is so good, I kept it a secret for more than fifteen years, sharing with just two friends who were sworn to secrecy.

So, with nothing to come anywhere near a match, I kept fishing that CDX. One big blast too many perhaps, but I stayed with the program… and it worked. The Leonard laid the little fly out fifty feet, just above the last blast blown in the quiet surface… twitch, twitch…kaboom!

That 55-year-old bamboo rod got a workout! The LRH screams, and then I crank, screams again, I crank again… and eventually twenty-four beautiful inches of wild Catskill brown trout resides in my net!

I spent a long day on the river trying to repeat that with my little caddis, but I guess lightning prefers singular strikes. When I got home, I set out to tie half a dozen flies to imitate those moths. I had no idea if that would be a one-time frenzy, or if I would walk out of the river this afternoon feeling like I was the greatest fly fisherman in the world. Those flies looked great, but Nature has her ways.

There were some moths around. Not as many, and the explosion rises did not come. Some trout ate moths, though usually with a normal riseform. I took a hard fighting 22-inch brownie on my moth pattern. My best brownie of the day was right between that one and yesterday’s, and he took a size 17 Grizzly Beetle after ignoring several casts with the moth. I do wonder if I had had those flies yesterday, when the trout were crazy for them. Maybe some other year in the future I will get to find out, at least if I remember to be certain a few are in one of my summer boxes.

This looks to be a good rainy day. Yesterday’s downpours hammered some of our rivers, while others showed little change. I happened to go out yesterday evening to fill up with gas when a terrific storm cell arrived in Hancock. Driving home I had to keep it at a crawl just to be able to see, but today looks like light rain, the kind that could create a truly nice fishing day.

I have my old friend, my ’77 vintage Thomas & Thomas Hendrickson, sitting against the armoire door ready and waiting. This is a particularly sweet taper, and this rod has their impregnated finish that protects the bamboo better than varnish. This old T&T is a perfect rainy-day wand, though it has been a rod I have turned to often, rain or shine.

I rebuilt the leader on an original Orvis CFO IV reel yesterday, so my tackle is ready to go. My rain jacket is right there in the car, and a long sleeve tee shirt will be just about right beneath it.

I will take some time this morning, its just past six, and tie a few olives to have them handy. I know I have hundreds of them in I don’t know how many fly boxes, but flies you tie the morning before fishing are always good luck!

There, half a dozen fresh from the vise: tiny size 20 T.P. Duns and size 18 100-Year Duns stored in a fly cup to stuff in my vest! Last evenings storms didn’t touch the West Branch, though this morning’s steady rain is adding a bit of additional flow. The expectation is the river will be imminently fishable, and trout, mayflies and old anglers will rejoice at the moisture and the welcome cool, cloudy conditions.

After last week’s threatening heat, a couple of cooler, rainy days will be more than welcome. It would be quite nice to have a couple of them every week or two. How nice the rivers would be!

There is still a little time this morning, a couple of hours to relax and daydream before gearing up and choosing the reach of river I will visit. I can lean back and consider twenty-five years of summers along the West Branch. I can picture when a bright day clouded up, and a misty drizzle appeared. It was my last day of the trip and I could have headed south, but I drove down river to a favorite bend in the river where I found myself alone. Olives were drifting and bobbing upon the currents, and soft rings replaced a number of them.

Size twenties were the dish du jour, at least early in the hatch, and I was catching some beauties. At one point though, my flies lost their favor. I stood and watched phalanxes of the naturals still coming. But hey, I thought, are they just a bit bigger now? Plucked one from the surface and sure enough the later flies were size eighteens! A fly swap put me back in heaven!

The three AM sojourns have taken a toll, and I am taking a forced withdrawal pause this morning. No, I found myself still awake at that hour, but the body needs a rest.

Still, I hate to miss the opportunity: the cool misty air at dawn, the unseen cues, the sounds of water out there cloaked in the cover of the mist. The rewards…

The heat has been oppressive here in the ordinarily pleasant Catskills. Two air conditioners, acquired the past few summers, are working overtime to keep the living room and bedroom tolerable. Barely so. While I hope this is a passing trend rather than a permanent change, our summers have been getting hotter.

There could be some blessed rain within the next few days, but all in the form of thunderstorms. Any rain is sorely needed, but hard, brief downpours produce mostly runoff which doesn’t do much for the vital groundwater which sources our river systems. We will have to wait and see.

I have some surgery to undertake on my promising new Trout Bug fly today. The wings which produce such wonderful visibility have been twisting my leader badly, even after downsizing the flies. I am rather surprised that it has taken so long to dawn upon me that I’m using too much material for those wings, but the three AM morning jump starts seem to have dulled some of my thinking. While I’m at it, I should take a quick inventory of my terrestrial hooks, just in case I should wander over to the fly shop or place an order. Today may be a rest day from fishing, but that makes it a work day for all of the other tasks that keep me out there.

There are always a couple of fly lines to clean, reels to lubricate, and leaders to inspect and return to full length and service. An angler’s work is never done!

Prelude to a heat wave, these pair of mornings to close out June. The air still has it’s chill at this point, the mist seeming to borrow from the cold water to wrap a solo hunter in layers alternating summer’s warm breath and a shiver.

Without movement save the currents, I wait, then prospect a few minutes in case one unseen patrols those currents. The Simroe gets it’s second chance this day. Suddenly a rise is there, and I turn and fire a cast. The shorter rod reacts beautifully, and before I can wonder if that trout is holding to his position, he takes hard and fast.

He fights like he takes, taking to the air and shattering the silence as the LRH protests! The rod bucking, I work against his darting, lunging struggle and a beautiful wild Catskill brownie tries my net on for size. With everything fully awake now, I turn to stalking mode.

I have learned a lesson with the full-size Trout Bug. It doesn’t play well with my standard four-foot 5X tippet. So intent where each cast must touch down, I am oblivious to the twisted snarl. A wide old head slowly peeks above the surface, a big eye staring, and when I tighten there is nothing there: no fish, no fly, no tippet, less five inches with a self-tied knot. I have learned this lesson twice.

I try in vain to bring that head back up, now and again. This memory is for another day.

The sun is up atop the ridge, so a Baby Cricket feels it’s warmth and comes out to play. Painstaking stealth is required, for there have been clues along this reach: movers…

Ted sends the cast tight and my eye follows, once, twice, three times. I glance away toward the sound of a soft plop behind me and turn back to see the water shimmering where my bug had drifted. Quick enough, and there is power thrumming through the bamboo. He darts away and starts the Hardy ratchetting, short bursts first and then a long wail as he heads for the opposite bank. We are up to the task, twenty-three and some extra!

Now for the last day, July is waiting. Still cool, but no sweatshirt this time, though when I slip into today’s deeper pool I feel a cold quiver. Clouds passing accent the dimness of early morning. I stand and wait, watch for signs of life, and that cold soaks right in!

My hand grasps the stealth master, the Menscer 803, light line, hollow built perfection. The crashing rise startles me! What did he eat? I toss my Trout Bug without response. There are no flies visible, so I keep that fly right where it is.

I ease a few steps further upstream, along the edge, then move out into the current. Nothing. The Trout Bug it is. Ten minutes, and I gradually move against the flow. Fifteen minutes perhaps, and it remains quiet. When the second rise comes, I am ready at the clap of his thunder, aerialize the line and send it. The drift is short, and the punching splash and the crater at the surface leaves no doubt.

While that cannonball splash still reverberates, the little St. George is spinning, a smoother, throatier whine. He’s in the air! Running again, and then he turns as I crank as fast as I possibly can. Just as I think I’ve caught up to him, he’s out again, on a low trajectory electric departure. Rainbow!

All I can do is more of the same, keep the lithe flamed sword of bamboo at a low angle, spin away and cranking back. Ah, the blessings of ice cold water!

Time moves on, full sunlight, the breakfast hour passes. I miss little treasures, logs, branches, the assorted cover once collected along the deep side of the pool. On a good morning, at least half of those targets held a fine brown trout, but such cover has largely vanished in high water events. With the long hours of the morning nearly passed, I felt a twinge of hope with a pair of skinny sticks along the edge. The D.W. Menscer three casts amazingly, and allowed the delicate placement of a small beetle.

This brown looped and splashed as I stripped him half across the river, then used his strength in close quarters. We slugged it out, a fine old brownie pushing twenty-three inches.

A fitting close to June. Spring has passed untapped for this angler, for I have held tightly onto life with hope to welcome summer. July brings the season to full bloom. A Catskill angler yes, but one born and tutored along the limestone springs.

It doesn’t seem just a few years ago that tying dozens of tiny dry flies wasn’t a big deal. Age though continues to hammer on my vision, arthritis reduces my hand dexterity, and carpal tunnel syndrome reduces my sense of touch in the fingers which are expected to handle those miniscule fly hooks and bits of feathers. But we adapt.

Over on the West Branch Friday there were a good number of those little guys, duns out there in the passing sunshine, but back in the shade close to the bank are where the trout were eating. Necessity dictates staying back forty to fifty feet, and that is a long way from carefully picking out my little guy and tracking it as it dances to the currents. Things get complicated when the cues those trout offering are subtle and quick. Some of those flashes of light were mouths opening, though others were clearly dorsal fins breaking the surface, screaming at me they were eating nymphs or subsurface emergers.

All of that gets more difficult when one considers that I am a dry fly fisherman. Up high, or down in the film, at least part of that fly has to float to rise to the level of a dry fly, cause that’s how I have my fun: teasing them to the top!

In shallow water, it appears that a given feeding trout will take some duns, and they could be crippled duns, and some emerging nymphs that don’t quite make it to the surface. Life, movement tends to be the trigger with wild trout that have been developed under heavy fishing pressure. I strive to design “life” into every fly I design, every fly I tie, but it stresses the challenges as the fly become smaller.

One of the most useful materials have been varieties of Cul-de-Canard feathers, but small complicates that too. One can’t put much of anything on flies tied on size 20 and smaller, and it does require a certain amount of those wonderful CDC filaments to do what it does.

With worrying about being able to pick up my dry fly at the casting distance conditions require, smaller gets you twice: harder to see and identify as your fake, and harder to use enough material to keep it floating in the film in the first place. Oh, I forgot to mention that the supply of the best CDC has vanished from the market a number of years ago.

Fly fishing is a sublime game though… because of its challenges!

My thermometer speaks: it is 82 degrees here just before five o’clock, yet the rain clouds (I hope!) have turned it into a very comfortable afternoon here in Crooked Eddy. I spent several hours on the West Branch, enjoying and reflecting on the challenge of the summer sulfur hatch.

I carried that lovely old Mill’s Standard today. The rod prefers a four-weight line after it’s eighty years or so on the rivers of this earth, and it is spry and as sweet casting a fly rod as one could ask for. My friend, Catskill Master Rodmaker Dennis Menscer restored that rod a few years ago. When he showed it to me, I had to have it, and hell, it was my birthday anyway.

I slipped into the flow and walked gently across the river. With a release of just about 500 cfs, this is low water in my experience, and those who wish to catch a nice brownie had better move gently. So many fishermen slosh around and scare every trout in the reach before they walk fifty feet.

There were three guys down along the lower part of the riverbank, but the upper area was free. Happily, after my careful approach, a trout rose ahead of me. I adjusted my target spot, careful not to walk straight at him. I should have cut off my Trout Bug and knotted a small sulfur 100-Year Dun, but I cast what I brung. No business, and no more rises.

I had seen a careful little sip back on the bank in the rather spare amount of shade there, considering it wasn’t long past eleven o’clock, and started in that direction. A nice fish in the passing sunlight in front of me stopped me in my tracks, and it didn’t need more than two or three casts to find his attention.

That sweet tempered old vintage bamboo laid my size 18 100-Year Dun without a whisper and he couldn’t resist. Old cane bends brother! It played that fine brownie perfectly, taking it’s time, as older gentlemen expect to do. Laid in my net, he measured nineteen inches, and this older gentleman was quite pleased.

There was a good sulfur hatch during the afternoon, but the fishing proved difficult. I hadn’t planned on tiny size 20 sulfurs this early in the summer, and the low water had them taking in the film, and others dining on rising nymphs. That eventually became the reflecting portion of my afternoon.

It occurred to me that I have fished this pool on the West Branch Delaware River for something on the order of twenty-five years. Back in those traveling days, the Fourth of July holiday was my last Catskill trip for the season. Flows were higher in those days, once the hot weather arrived in earnest, and the cold water required insulation under your waders. It also surrendered millions of sulfur mayflies thanks to that 48-degree river water in July.

Larry ran the fly shop at West Branch Angler back then, and he put me on to the Barking Dog. There was no boat ramp or big riverside parking lot, just a little gravel area enough to park three or four cars and a two-hundred-yard walk through the field to the riverbank. Ninety-nine percent of the fishermen weren’t willing to make that walk back then, particularly in waders in ninety-degree sun. Hard to imagine, but if I encountered another angler in that pool or the run upstream, I was shocked at the crowding. For a guy more than happy to take that walk like I was, it was Shangri-La.

Trout would line up along both riverbanks and rise to those sulfurs, big trout. The real crowds and the drift boats and the riverside parking lot changed all of that. You just don’t see the numbers of the big browns you used to see in that pool. The fishing held up to an astonishing amount of pressure, but low water, bad winters with sub-minimal releases and the unslaked barrage of boat traffic proved too much. Fishermen just loved that old Dog to death.

I recall catching many wild browns in excess of twenty inches, taking several that size on a number of days, for many of my twenty-five years fishin’ the Dog. Two of those browns measured twenty-five inches, both taken on size 18 and 20 sulfur dry flies and bamboo fly rods!

I think back at my homecoming last July fourth. I fished a fifty plus year old Leonard rod amid a zoo of holiday river visitors: kayaks, canoes, drift boats, wading anglers and one beat up aluminum rowboat. Amazingly, the particular reach of the riverbank I wanted to fish was vacant.

I worked a good trout, but he constantly moved side to side, taking a sulfur here and there in a wide path. Of course, he always rose on the other side of that path I cast my fly down. Finally, fighting the glare and my aging eyesight, I tied on a size 20 100-Year Dun. The fish had dropped down after a boat passed, but he rose again after a few minutes. I made a long, long cast, checked the tip and dropped the fly just above him. He took it cleanly on the first cast in his new lie!

That fellow gave me a hell of a ride, spinning my old Hardy LRH and showing me my backing a couple of times. When I lined him up in the measure net, I read twenty-one inches, a beautiful broad-shouldered brownie! Thinking now, I cannot help but wonder if that homecoming was a goodbye. I found a construction site when I drove down the lane to The Dog today. Seems the State is building a huge new gravel parking lot, welcoming more boats and more crowds. They seem to miss the fact that this is supposed to be a trout river, not a circus.