Glancing out the living room window moments ago, I watched the second season’s first wet flake of snow descend. It is the thirteenth of November with the temperature at freezing, and it is a snowy morning here in Crooked Eddy.

These Catskills have but two seasons: Dry Fly Season and winter. On a given year, they compete for mastery, though I am thankful that the Dry Fly Season usually edges out it’s competition, lasting from six to seven months. Even the best years though will require us to endure five months of winter.

We are not expecting any significant accumulation today, though we did not miss that by much. The village of Hartwick, New York received 12.5 inches of snowfall yesterday and overnight. Hartwick lies fifty miles northeast of Hancock, as the crow flies.

The snow has formed an icy skin on the grass now as it continues to fall. We enjoyed a good deal of rain yesterday, the Beaver Kill cresting around four this morning and just missing 1,500cfs of flow. It had been nearing it’s bones again on my last bright days of wandering there. It is good to see strong flows, and hope gathers that enough water carries through this new winter, barring the ice from another hold on it’s gravel. All would welcome a spring with a strong, fresh crop of new life in those hallowed waters, and in all of our rivers.

My rods are racked now and will stay through the spawning season at a minimum. If this second season offers a few kinder moments, one of them may find it’s way to bright water before spring comes. Each winter has it’s way.

I will spend this second season with good books, thinking up and tying the new flies I’ll dream will take next year’s leviathans, and a few stray hours of tinkering with my tackle when it feels too long and unending.

Ah, the dreaded adjustment…

Each season I dawdle, ignoring the signs, doing everything I can to steal just one more moment in the shimmering light of bright water, and each season I come to, the end… Postponed, though still abrupt, I invariably walk face first into winter. It drains my body and my soul and, for a time I am quite simply, lost.

I am caught now in that seasonal turmoil, trying to find something to grab onto, to pull myself out of the darkness of the spirit.

There is music out there, close at hand, but the white shadow of snow is dangling about that image of a singing guitar in my mind. I busied myself with yard work, read, watched TV and I am losing it. I must take myself out to the woods!

Alas, while clinging to every possible moment of bright autumn, even that last breath, the russet phase has passed, and now only bare trees lined upon bare slopes remain. Yet, there in the mountains I must find the quiet my spirit craves.

A long afternoon, mist, rain and a lively, living fog, a turn due to the warmer water temperature. I had hoped that warming water would be the trigger, the herald of a last glowing moment for the dry fly!

I felt the warmth in the air, despite the mist and fog, and I felt that a phalanx of mayflies would appear at any moment. Alas, it was not to be. There was something, either on the river’s surface or just beneath, trapped in the film, but my aging eyes failed to reveal the answer.

I knew there was life there, for one good trout began to rise in the faster current in front of me. I had tied a trio of my reliable tiny olive duns on size 22 hooks that morning and surprised myself when I was able to tie one of them to my tippet on the water, mist and wafting fog banks be damned. My heart boasted the battle was won!

I was able to see and track the drifts of my tiny offering, though I failed to see whatever it was I had hoped to imitate. I have seen thousands of tiny mayflies over many years in this game, miniscule creatures requiring flies tied upon size 24, 26 and 28 hooks. I have tied them and caught fish on them, but no more.

Might I follow a size 26 olive on well-lit flat water? Perhaps, but with darkened skies and fog hugging the surface intermittently there is no chance. That lone trout was very safe from my best on what I deem to be my last day of the dry fly season of 2026.

In this challenged, forshortened season, I have managed to spend ninety-two days upon the rivers of my heart. My log reports my second most productive season since retirement. Perhaps I worked harder, trying subconsciously to make up for the lost time endured during spring. It has been a wonderful season! In truth, I have appreciated and benefitted for each moment among bright waters, whether the catching matched the glory of the settings and the fishing or not.

Now I have reached that annual juncture when I must force myself to rest my desires for spending my days on rivers. The trout deserve the sanctity of their spawning seasons. I have seen too many about with heavy tackle and subsurface flies, crowding along the riffles. I hope that at least some of them will realize that the trout deserve a rest, a time for procreation without being harried by anglers.

There is much to do as I wrench myself from the water and put up my dry fly rods for winter. My tying bench badly requires reorganization, and tackle needs to be carefully inspected for marred varnish or loosened fasteners. There are fine angling books to be read. Winter is also the prime time to explore some of the ideas for new flies, materials and techniques.

Not a lot of it though. Perhaps a quarter inch might fall to drip and drain downhill, trickle o’er the forest’s floor to some sparkling highland rill, and at last to reach the rivers of my heart. Anything is welcome.

Surprisingly of all has been the result of yesterday’s unseasonable warmth: the river gage reads fifty degrees right now! What shall I do with a rainy November day with fifty-degree water? Do I really have a choice?

My Expedition waders and heavy rain jacket with some fleece beneath, will make my waiting comfortable, and I cannot honestly resist the possibilities. No, certainly there will not be some heavy, magical hatch. At best, a trout or two just might search and find a handful of tiny grayish olive duns under these somber November skies. Waiting nearby, I just may try to tempt them to sample a perfectly placed tiny grayish olive dun, one carefully tied around a hook!

Another hour, a smile amid just one more day ensconced in the magic of bright water! What more could any man ask?

It seems my feet have tamped their own footpad in the sandy soil of the riverbank; waiting with a remnant of hope in my heart that I may once more play the game.

Those clear blue sunny skies have been abandoned me today. A misty rain fills the air above the trickling river, it’s moisture so fine I cannot see it on my waders. Brushing my hand along my thigh though my palm fills with that moisture and the fabric turns dark. I pull my hood up over my hat and strain my eyes once more for signs of life.

I take heart, at least as I may, conjuring many past autumn days like this one, tiny olives drifting nearly invisibly down select threads of current while dimples appear to their undoing.

Nature seems though determined to douse the fires of my hope. First marauding Mergansers invade all of that water I survey, splashing erratically all through the pockets where this autumn has occasionally held a good trout. Later an eagle appeared, curiously harrying a particular stretch of a distant riffle, flying low and diving repeatedly from side to side. I thought the great bird must see a fish down there somewhere, perhaps a spawner tucked just enough beneath the overhang of a rock, determined to worry it out of it’s hide where talons can take hold.

The eagle gave up the game, flew away around the bend, but returned to the same quizzical, harrying behavior. No luck this time either. He flew halfway up my pool and perched above to survey his chances there. Though I always enjoy seeing these regal lords of the sky, I felt better of my chances for a trout when he flew back down river once more.

Three hours of watchful contemplation and my chances diminished by these shows, I had collected enough of the mists to begin a chill when a subtle rise brought me to my feet.

Have you ever watched a trout moving about and feeding in clear, shallow water, your eyes unable to resolve hints of motion into an actual shape? Lacking the flashes from reflected sunlight, they can be remarkably stealthy.

The misty skies also robbed me of spotting the tiny mayflies I assumed they were after. I cannot tell whether there were three I fished for or two, or even more. I enjoyed an hour, easing through the deeper run and working each foot very carefully to assure adhesion, casting and straining to divulge which drifting speck was my dry fly amid the others unidentifiable.

Flat, diffused dim light can be a great equalizer to human eyes trying to solve watery clues, and give the trout a superior advantage with their looking up. I am quite certain that they can see much more detail minus the glare of a shining sun. They certainly had no trouble identifying my tiny fly between the minute food they were seeking!

The month has turned, and yet, warm sunshine still washes the Catskills. Friday has been the first day which felt really cold to me, but the weekend returned to cheerier skies. No rain has fallen, so the rivers’ flows have receded as they have for many days. October’s rainfall missed the average here by a full two inches.

So, what am I to do here in November? Water temperatures continue to decline, though the sun has a chance to warm skinny flows a degree or two. Can I refuse to walk amid bright waters when gifted another handful of lovely days?

Clear skies and bright sun illuminate every stone on the river bottoms, and the trout have remained remarkably shy. I have hunted larger water, but little can I show for the effort, other than the contentment of a long goodbye to the dry fly season. Many fishers miss the benefits of times like these, too eager to catch something.

Some of that comes from youth, insufficient years and hours along bright rivers. I have no claim to youth anymore. By any measure I am an elder statesman of the long rod, and by the benefit of time spent amid these special places, I have learned there is much more to them than a wriggling trout on my palm.

When I operated my small fly shop in the Cumberland Valley, I learned from many conversations with persons from the industry. A crude word to speak of something magic, but to many it has become nothing more than hype and dollars and cents. I did learn that how few days the average fly fisher spends upon rivers or streams actually fishing. That knowledge taught me how blessed I was, for I spent more days on the water during a typical week than the majority spent in a year.

Appreciating a life upon rivers must include time to reflect, and fishing by it’s true nature provides a great deal of such time.

I delight at the colors of the sky, the passing of the clouds, and the feel of the currents tugging at my legs!

I wonder at the delicacy of a tiny mayfly, and at the magical way millions can appear in a wink of time and then vanish just as quickly.

I marvel at how a two-foot-long trout can mark a speck of life passing in a rushing current and glide up to snatch it at the perfect moment.

October wanes, and yet moments of warm sun continue as it’s last half has featured postcard views and gladness!

I know fully that my attempts to extend my dry fly season are running out of time, though I simply cannot stop. Bright sun and low clear water have made an actual trout’s rise an extremely rare gem, and yet I still believe that a chance awaits, if not today, then tomorrow.

My deluded attitude found me along bright water again just yesterday, knowing full well that the waters would be lower and colder, making my chances slip further from reality. I propped the Leonard against a stalk of dried knotweed, sat down on a familiar tuft of grass along the riverbank and watched my world flow gently by.

I waited for a good hour anyway, but indeed a tiny blip of light caught my attention, riveted my gaze to the far bank. A false prophet, a gift from the Red Gods who were plotting once more.

After a time, I blinked my eyes to decipher another message: was that a rise? The light, filtered at last by a few passing clouds was bribing me to believe. Was it or wasn’t it? I watched for a good while, then finally became convinced. This fish was subtle, for evidence he betrayed just a fine crease on the flat surface of the glide. Rising and drawing closer, my higher vantage formed the picture of the slightest tiny ring as that crease repeated.

It took some effort, the river bottom not at all stable there, but I managed an approach to a workable casting position on the lovely still afternoon. Time to pay my money and take my chance… and the Reg Gods answered! A good, firm downstream wind appeared just in time to blow my soft back cast and tiny fly into the back of my vest. Retreat was the only option, while the fish demurred.

Another hour reclining, watching, hoping and yes! At last, a tiny quick wink elsewhere, alas, never repeated nor approached. That ghost wind of course had vanished as soon as I untangled myself and sat down again. This game would repeat twice more, a single wink in a new location, intense study and emotion, and then nothing as another hour passed.

The sun had nearly reached the top of the ridgeline, and I knew that shadow would soon gather at that far riverbank. Looking further upriver, I caught a tiny diamond of light at the corner of my eye and shifted the concentration of my gaze. Twins! Sure enough, there were a pair of trout sipping quietly up along the edge of the riffle, now robbed by it’s bubbling and boisterous character by the ever receding flow.

Rising and making my way across half of the river took some time, while my new friends continued happily, slipping up to sip those tiny olives which were sliding along that flattened but still quick band of current – a bubble and a tail, a bubble and a tail…

Ah, fishing once more, getting the feel of the Leonard that had waited there in it’s tube while his brethren spent time along the river. The pair were a few inches apart left and right, the nearer above the further by perhaps two feet. A cast had to be directed to one or the other though, as that band of current was divided by the peak of a rock between them.

The upper and nearer received my attention, but proved resistant. His companion looked the larger, but offered greater risk of failure. If a gift is offered, it is best to bow one’s head and take it with a smile, and so I fed a few inches more line into my next cast and watched my olive dance down the further lane, knowing that this would likely be my last chance. When I watched him take and raised the rod, I knew I had made the right choice!

I felt his size as he turned and pleasantly ran out into the stronger current and out from behind that dividing rock that had worried me, coaxing a sweet tune from my old LRH. I enjoyed our tug of war, parrying his turns and twists, ever mindful of just how small a size 20 dry fly hook is and allowing the fine old tip of the Leonard to do exactly what it was made to do.

When I slipped the fly from it’s grip, there in the point of his mouth, I admired the full weight of his eighteen inches. Most often, these rainbows caught in the wide Delaware have a torpedo shape, where some of those I have taken in the tributary rivers have a wider profile and were heavier for their length. I wonder might these trout have found their place somewhere in these tributaries and no longer migrate to and from the mainstem? Something to ponder during the long months ahead.

Another gorgeous sunlit afternoon, fishless per the current routine. While a few mayflies showed themselves after two, there wasn’t even anything on the surface of the river that I could mistake for a rise. Brilliant sunshine in the clearest skies over low crystalline water has not been my lucky card for all but one morning of the past week. Yes, custom does predict that result, but I have thrilled on hundreds of days like these, bucking the odds with a cane rod and dry fly, but my own record of sunny success has failed me this October.

All of the signs point to the end of my season. The peak water temps have been in the forties since Saturday, a touch lower each and every day, and this time there was no significant hatch to even try to fuel a bit of hope. Hour after hour with no fish life evident until the river’s false twilight.

Once the sun crested the ridgeline, the light left the water suddenly. Then, a few quick casts once shadow ruled the width of the river, a rise here and there, my size eighteen Cahill proved as effective as stones. They have appeared to be the most abundant mayflies this past week, yet I have not seen even a single specimen being eaten.

In my last moments there, I glimpsed a flash of small grayish wings nearly at my feet, the others having doubtless been on the water invisible to me throughout the brief appearance of a handful of feeding trout.

These days bring so many emotions, for the honest acceptance of the season’s end is always difficult. Part of me still clings to unfulfilled possibilities! Logic and reason convince me that the Red Gods will freely tease me with one last cast, a picture in my mind of one last heavy arc in the golden shaft of bamboo glinting in the last of the light and the melody of a vintage reel emptying into the distance.

I answered the call, waded in and felt the chill immediately. Wore my fleece lined pants and my heavy-duty Expedition waders, but that autumn chill cuts right on through. Water temperature 47 degrees, a temp I have seen too many fishless days in April; standing in a river and praying that the sun can get it to magic 50!

I stood out there for three and a half hours, watching every suspicious boulder, nook and cranny of the river bottom, searching for that simple little white wink that would tell me I was in business. Nothing to cast to, just standing there watching. After an hour or so, I would see a spurious mayfly, and after two there were more of them, enough to admit it was a hatch.

I still couldn’t pick one up to identify it. Some looked like pale small Cahills, sixteens or eighteens, others I took for olives. Every time a submerged leaf would glide up in the current and the breeze and flip over at the surface, my heart jumped rise! But following with my eyes it was clear that a leaf was sitting in the wake and starting to sink once again.

When the sun reached the ridgeline and the shade marched across the pool I withdrew. Wading upstream, I saw a small rise, and then another. Small fish taking a few of those mayflies in the shallow water. Everything there is shallow as the river has continued to drop throughout the week, but up there where the run becomes a pool. Trout? Chubs? Juvenile smallmouth? Could be any of those. It seemed good to know that some kind of fish were taking sustenance from this late October hatch.

I watched for a few moments, as the shade covered nearly the full width of the river. There was quite a flurry of activity at that point, and a couple of those rises looked to be catchable fish. I cast to them, obviously with the wrong fly, and smiled a crooked smile to myself. It didn’t really last more than fifteen minutes, this isolated feeding spree, and there was still nothing down in the deeper water, where I used to catch wild October trout in the twenties back before the droughts and freezes of ’24 and ’25.

I stood a little longer, saw the fast rises subside until there was nothing but a very soft ring here and there in the flat water. Within a couple of minutes, those ceased as well.

I hope those were trout filling their little bellies during that short quarter hour of frenzied feeding, trout that will hunker down for the winter and survive, grow, and help bring back the fishing I remember.

I checked the river gage this morning, and the river reached a peak temperature of 50.0 degrees yesterday at 3:45 PM, the same time as I observed that quick feeding frenzy. The water in that entire long reach was fully shaded by four o’clock, so I expect the water began to cool quickly, thus the short duration of activity.

Next week looks like very much like this week has been, with comfortable days, some colder nights and some more moderate ones, and not a hint of rain. The rivers will continue to fall and get very skinny. Halloween and the first of November might flirt with seventy degrees. All of that means that there might still be a chance for dry fly fishing, but it won’t be easy and it won’t be prolific. I’ll take whatever Mother Nature gives me. Just wish I had been able to size and identify those pale mayflies…

It is a bit warmer this morning, so when the light comes up, I do not expect a blanket of frost. The sun is expected to continue, but the day will be noticeably cooler, even if the wind lies down as predicted.

The week has been beautiful, with brilliant sunshine, the mountainsides aflame, but the scene belies the chill, the truth that standing a few minutes in the current tells. River temperature has hovered in the forties, and yesterday the peak quietly failed to touch fifty degrees.

I found one brief appearance, a single fish cruising and taking something three or four times over perhaps ten minutes time. By the time I recognized the soft rise amid the wind tossed surface with it’s flotilla of leaves, and sent my casts that way, he was already gone. Chasing dreams…

The sun crests the ridgeline early, and as the shade marched across the river I shielded my eyes from the brilliant orb to watch the flow. There were mayflies there, olives, and in good numbers, yet they sailed placidly downstream out of sight until flight lifted them into the air. My suspicion is that there are very few trout in the pool this fall.

I count that an improvement, the river having been ravaged by terrible droughts, continued on through winter’s icy grip, during the previous two years. There were no trout there during those autumns, and no mayflies that I could count.

Thinking, as opposed to feeling, I considered to let yesterday afternoon’s search stand as the final installment, the last moments of a dry fly season cut short in it’s beginning that more than made it up through the glory of summer. Feeling sometimes champions hope and beauty over the cold observation and conclusions of thinking. Hail to the champions!

It is still early, so I have the luxury of time this morning. I will tie a couple of flies that I wanted yesterday. I believe the fly line on that certain vintage LRH is due for a cleaning, and likely a new tippet. I know which rod I will carry, for it is the one I carried first when I glimpsed the spring, the one that brought me to find the fulfillment of hope with beauty to begin this lovely late week in October.

If this is to be the last day of my dry fly season, I will meet it with a smile. I will carry it through the next five months in pursuit of greeting another spring.