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.

I spent a few hours with friends, angling the West Branch yesterday afternoon. We enjoyed each other’s company, but neither the reported “strong sulfurs” nor the trout cooperated. Even midweek though, there was plenty of pressure. As we took down our bamboo rods, we had to dodge a phalanx of vehicles entering the gravel lot, some not caring if we moved or they ran over us. Attitudes aplenty, a sad picture of modern flyfishermen.

I wanted none of that crowd when dawn broke this morning. My friends had a date with a drift boat, but I craved a quiet summer day of solitude and fishing, and I found it.

I mismanaged my first opportunity. Believing my fly had fallen short of my mark, the rise surprised me. Trying to catch my late recognition, I snatched that fly away too late. To change my luck, I selected a new pattern from a vest pocket fly box filled months ago. My Trout Bug seduced a soft take but the rod bucked quite hard indeed! That brownie nosed the marks just at twenty inches, and my earlier miscue was forgotten.

My joy at finding success with the new pattern, I let myself get too exuberant and inattentive. Four feet of 5X tippet is not ideal for my size 12 terrestrial bug, and I lofted one too many casts it seems. The fly was taken, but twisting in the air had weakened the tippet just at the wrong moment. When I raised the rod, there was nothing there: no fish, no fly, and no tippet save but a four-inch souvenir. Perhaps a size fourteen hook will be more appropriate.

I covered the water, working each haunt until a gaggle of Canadas began to root in some vegetation and putting off any foraging trout. I headed to another pool, pleased to leave the big birds behind.

This day seemed my fishing worked out better when surreptitious takers came to my flies. My last of the day I simply understood that the trout had taken the fly, not clearly seeing it. No wallflower when hooked, this heavy brown proved the value of Vlad Reshenko’s perfectly calibrated spring and pawl drag in my Trutta Perfetta!

Finally in the net, that twenty-two-inch trout was not very happy. The fly was swallowed deep, so I clipped the tippet short and let him keep it rather than risk damaging so fit a warrior.

I had exhausted the morning, and afternoon showed the masses of storm clouds beginning to gather, so I walked slowly just in case I might find another lurker in range of the Sweetgrass Pent. Yes, an interesting quiet summer day…

Summer has arrived! As a bonus, we should have some very badly needed rainfall tomorrow, and a week or more of what I think as Catskill Summer weather. Now yesterday that rain prediction stood at 1.34 inches, but this morning it has dwindled significantly, before arriving, to half an inch. Looks like the pattern which plagued us in the past few years: rain systems passing right on by our Catskill Mountains without even leaving a calling card.

I was thinking about the late, great fly tyer of legend Reuben Cross and his signature dry the Cross Special. His written recipe called for pale marten fur, but that is rather hard to come by. Cross was a woodsman, hunter and fur trapper as many Catskill natives, so he found his materials the natural way. I looked briefly on the web just now and found whole skins on Ebay: all very dark fur with some white on their bellies. You can buy one for something around $67, though I think they were coming from Germany, so shipping and duties could be a real large expense. Cross like the other great fly tyers who formed the Catskill School, were pragmatic, and varied their materials as needed to be able to tie the flies they made their livings from.

When I wanted to tie some Cross Specials a few seasons back, I used some of the white belly fur from a red fox skin, just clipping a little of that fur on the edges where it has the slightest creamy white coloration, and a trace of paler gray. The trout like them, and they look nice to me too. I do appreciate that Nature has her hues, and insects, animals or the other things in Nature are mixes of colors and shades of color. That’s why I mixed the whitest white fox fur and a little of the creamy white fox fur and a touch of the pale gray to prepare my dubbing for a white fly.

We gathered for our June meeting of the Catskill Fly Tyers Guild yesterday and the Cross Special came up. My friend Gary tied one and presented to me, so I offered him one of my CDX caddis. Gary had worked out his body color independently and came up a mostly white shade just as I did. I doubt he got ahold of any pale marten fur either. In the depth of my memory, I seem to recall that marten turn white in winter with snow, which is white. The photos in Cross’s book are black and white as it was published in the thirties, so the fly body appears to be white.

Fly tyers can be funny about color. Some declare fly color doesn’t matter, though I expect most of them carry a number of different ones when they are fishing. Others will go to the ends of the earth to procure every odd material some fly pattern is called for by legend, insisting to match the exact shade. I looked for the box with Gary’s tie to compare colors, but it seems I picked up someone else’s box when I packed up my travel kit yesterday. Three of us sitting nearby had the same boxes. Mine had Gary’s fly and eleven flies I tied during the meeting. Detective work has already begun. In any case, now I will be forced to tie myself some more size 20 CDX Tan Caddis to have them to fish them this week.

I had some good luck with my 100-Year Dun Cross Specials a couple of seasons ago. By September arrives, most of the populace say to themselves that “fall is here”. Catskill anglers know that the sun is hot, the rivers are warm and low, and the beginning of September is the toughest time of the summer.

There was a pleasant exception to that rule in 2024. The water wardens in New York City decided it was a smart decision to try to repair the decades badly leaking Delaware Aqueduct that year, in the middle of a serious drought. Come September, they began to dump the water out of Pepacton Reservoir in high volume. The Big East, the river downstream from the mouth of the Beaver Kill is far too warm for trout in September until significant rains and cooler weather arrive later in the month, but not that September. Good trout were rising and the Cross Specials were working!

I think that summer was a blast from the past, for Pepacton was constructed years before Cannonsville on the West Branch Delaware, and the Delaware River system received the first share of cold water from the East Branch. There were no guides, lodges, hundreds of visiting anglers or any of the business of trout fishing back then. Most trout fishermen didn’t think about the East or West Branches of the Delaware as trout fisheries back then, because they weren’t. Locals like Harry Darbee worked tirelessly to stop the Quickway (Route 17) and the city’s reservoirs, trying to preserve the natural waters of the Catskills. Though they weren’t able to win that fight, they understood that the effect of all that cold water throughout the East Branch and down into the Mainstem was going to be. The locals quietly had some great fishing back in those early years.

I admit I enjoyed the great fishing that September and into October in 2024, but we paid for it when the Delaware reservoirs did not refill during the dry following winter. Very cold weather and extremely low flows in the rivers cause anchor ice which devastates insect populations and trout fry. The price for those few weeks of good late season fishing was very high.

The last I saw published about the Aqueduct Project indicated that their restarting the work would not happen until 2027 at the earliest. I hope the city folks learned not what to do during a drought cycle. But then again, they weren’t smart enough to get it right the first time.

Considering my typical schedule, today was my final fishing day for spring 2026. We’re just shy of summer’s solstice, but I started early, just like a summer morning. I was forearmed for a windy day. Forecasts tell us things like “winds 10 to 20 mph”, but a veteran Catskill angler knows they will blow 25 mph easy, with gusts significantly higher. I didn’t have a wind gage handy, but I will testify some of the gusts made it past 30 mph. Veteran one, forecast nothing.

Days like this one, I tend to carry a graphite rod. I don’t like side gusts cracking a fly against my bamboo rod, maybe putting a hook dig penetrating the varnish, perhaps even the cane itself. The rod I chose is honestly vintage, for it was made 37 years ago.

It’s an Orvis Henry’s Fork model, an 8’6″ for a number five line, and it is honestly more limber than some of my faster bamboo fly rods. I started out fishing the Catskills with the budget model more than thirty years ago. Orvis called the series Rocky Mountain, the same rod blank with simpler, less expensive hardware. Today, I fished the genuine article though.

I pleasantly found myself alone on the river, sunlight but not direct sunlight yet, at least not until the orb made it over the mountain on a cool 55 degree morning. The breezes stirred early enough, swirling the air before that sun came over, leaving one side of the river in shadow, just how I like it.

I was stalking up the opposite riverbank, and spotted a rise. I guessed the trout sampling breakfast was the same one I worked on that location the other day. He rose several times that day, but wouldn’t take. There was another angler then, and he had pushed too much water upriver when he walked. Most fishermen do. What’s the difference? I stalked into range for a long cast gently and took that brownie on my first cast this morning!

That was a good fish, a solid eighteen inch, highly colored fellow with tons of energy, and he put a big smile on my face. Perhaps I’m still shy of summer, but maybe now I’m close enough.

I put in a long day, working more than a half-mile of river. I was maybe half the way along my route when I saw another rise. He was too far for a cast, so I made a slow, stealthy approach and stopped well above he had risen. I started my casts upstream, for I know some of these fish are hunters. There was no hatch, so it was likely that trout wasn’t parked where I saw him rise several minutes ago, so I needed to fish my fly down to that location.

It turned out he had come upstream from the rise area, probably halfway between that spot and where my first cast touched down. When my dry did drift up to his nose a few casts later, he was ready for a meal.

I knew immediately this was a larger fish, and we danced for a good long while. Eventually, he found himself in my net, taken his hard-won breakfast away, and posed for his picture. The measure net told me that he was a bit better than twenty-two inches, one beautiful, mature wild brown.

Sure enough, today might be a little shy of summer, but brother, it was close enough!

Well, home repair and some ridiculous winds cost me a pair of fishing days this week, but I felt fit for duty and would have, could have been out there every day. It seems I am just about back to normal.

I cannot claim that everything is top shelf, for it seems my mojo has been severely depleted. My searching has been turning up very few trout. We all have dry spells, but it is tougher than one of those. My spring was almost completely stolen, and summer doesn’t want to fully arrive. I am not finding bugs, and I am not finding trout. I am certainly not catching many of them.

Since my retirement, I came to be interested in some of the bamboo fly rods of the venerable H. L. Leonard Company. I have learned a few things about their history and their principal rodmakers. Well, early on, just about most of the great bamboo rodmakers seemed to have worked there. That early history defined the legend of the fountainhead of the American craft. There is some later history too, though it hasn’t been taken down by the scribes. In truth, amidst in this literate culture of angling, no one has ever written a book about the H.L. Leonard Rod Company!

A group of devotees and collectors put together a gathering in September 2018, right here at the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum. There were presentations and discussions by historians and including head rodmaker and co-owner Ted Simroe and Bob Taylor. Sadly, I was right here in the Catskills that weekend and never heard a word about it.

Someone set out to video tape Mr. Simroe’s talk, a great idea, but only the first half of his presentation was preserved. I have watched it three times, the last time keeping some written notes to bolster my memory. Ted brought some innovations, new rod tapers and brought significant growth during a time that fiberglass and the new graphite fly rods had eroded the bamboo traditions of our sport. The more of I heard from and about Ted Simroe, the more I became interested in the rods he made under his name after his years at Leonard.

When I was researching a very unique Leonard, a Model 66 ACM, a friend arranged an opportunity to speak with Ted. I truly enjoyed our conversation, and I decided that I would really like to learn more of his rods and perhaps acquire one. Seventy marks quite a milestone, more so to me than it is perhaps to others, to say nothing of how that milestone was framed by the challenges of this past spring. Through Mr. Carmine Lisella, I had the chance to fulfill my desire.

The 7’6″ T.W. Simroe rod pictured above had never been fished until I took it out on the river this week. I was impressed to be sure, for Ted’s fly rod is one of the finest casting instruments I have ever had the pleasure to cast. It is smooth and crisp, and capable of placing my fly exactly where I want it with a whim. Bravo sir!

I enjoyed how beautifully Ted’s rod handled every casting task presented by the day. Of course, the story, the day deserved a pinnacle. A wild brown trout of say two feet or better would be an ideal tribute to rod and rodmaker, but as I said, my mojo has been lacking. I did take a wild brown trout, one that he gave of himself with every bit of energy he possessed. He made me smile. I did not measure that trout, so I cannot relate accurately his physical size, though I would estimate that ten inches would be reasonably correct. That was a very important ten-inch brown trout to me.

Thank you, Ted, for your craft and your place in the history of one of the great companies of the pantheon of our finest fly rod makers. Thank you for our talk, and thank you particularly for rod #834, for it is magic!

It is just past sunrise, and it is 45 degrees here in Crooked Eddy. The second half of June begins, with an unexpected fresh chill in the air, and our rivers have freshened a bit too. Ushering the hot, muggy weather out, some thunderstorms have provided a bit of sorely needed rain. River levels are quickly seeking their former all too low flows, but the combination of storm runoff and yesterday’s cold winds have added some oxygenation.

I have some hope for good fishing as this half of June kicks off. The ten-day forecast includes just one day with an expectation to reach 80 degrees, and as much as an inch of additional rain might just help our rivers and angler’s spirits. I am looking forward to putting some serious time on the water.

I have re-shuffled one of the fly boxes residing in my summer vest and tied some sulfurs and Cross Specials to replace the March Browns and Drakes that filled it. I have filled some rows and compartments with fresh terrestrials in the green primary summer box as well.

I won’t be concerned with reaching the stream by dawn just yet on chilly mornings like this one, nor the stormy one expected tomorrow. Days like these, variable weather days, are perfect to take an easy pace, to spend a morning and a long afternoon watching to see what develops.

I would love to see a surprise, some little olives dancing down the edges of surface currents, or a few deep claret colored Isonychia duns. I have seen little of either of those mayflies over the past couple of seasons.

I’d like to find just a quiver near a well-loved log or rock along a favorite bank, with a surreptitious tiny rise ring when I drift my 100-Year Dun just right!

I have still a couple of hours to think about it; pack my gear, stow the rod, and pull my waders and boots on, and then take the leisurely drive to whichever haunt I settle upon. No schedule, no trying to work out just which hours of the day on which reach of river might bring activity, just taking the day as the river offers it.

Sunrise, and my first cup of coffee is waking me to action. I’ll find some breakfast momentarily, and then that second cup will finish the job. I have packed a special little bamboo rod, waist waders, my tiniest CFO reel, and a single small box of dry flies. A long span of years has passed since I have ventured toward any of the smallest waters for wild brook trout, and the High Catskills are yet an unexplored arena.

It was a pleasant drive on a bright morning, winding higher after leaving the Quickway behind, and I met my friend Chuck on one of those winding mountain roads as he reconnoitered the stream. We had chosen this one with the kind advice of Ed Ostapczuk, Catskill angling sage and author whose fifty years haunting these falls and hollows gives him a treasure trove of knowledge. Ed treasures the High Catskills and the lovely wild char native to these sylvan glides of bright water.

I am yet to get my stream legs, even least my mountain legs, and quickly found the challenges of angling in the thin flows which June provided. It has been nearly twenty years since my last brook trout fishing along Pennsylvania streams, and though I enjoyed the tiny six-foot perfect bamboo rod Tom Smithwick made for me two years ago, I erred in assembling the right leader. The 14 to 16-foot leaders I fish on our tailwaters have no place here, and the short leader I had put hastily together proved lacking a proper taper. My presentation suffered.

A dumped dry fly upon inches of water fools no wild trout, and I didn’t. I did enjoy the company and the scenery. Scrambling up the rocky banks, we took a break after a while to hike back to our cars and enjoy our sandwiches. I chose to head down from the heights and try the lone upper public access on the Neversink, while Chuck decided to stay with the highlands where he found success later in the afternoon. My luck failed to improve, as the lone public access and parking near Claryville was mobbed beyond capacity, with fishing impossible.

I drove on down and homeward, while my friend enjoyed the charms of our lone native trout.

I hope our Catskill Summer will feature greater gifts of rainfall than these past few, and we will enjoy another chance to visit the High Catskills with better flows! I’ll be sure to fashion a couple of short dry fly leaders which suit these environs, and tie half a dozen Fox Squirrel fur dries that fit perfectly here. We would love to find the day these bountiful caddis cases release their occupants to the profit of beautiful and hardy little trout, the true natives of these historic Catskill rivers!

I know it’s only early June, though considering so few days this stolen season has allowed me the caress of bright water, forgive me to have lost some sense of timing.

It is hot. The flows barely dampen the toes of my boots, and rain? Well, that seems another broken promise. I simply could not suffer a few more hours under that bright sun baking the stones beneath my feet.

Six o’clock, and the Leonard and I are stalking…

Whom might I find first off, but a single rise in the middle of the river. Visual recon betrayed a lone Drake drifting out there. These past two weeks, there have been a few, but the trout of my acquaintance have been cruising shallow water, busting those big wiggling nymphs just beneath the surface when one gets close enough. I have not seen a dun, cripple, or anything even partially on the surface been taken; not mine nor Nature’s. I guess the trout miss the good old days as much as I.

I tied on a smaller 100-Year Drake, size Ten, 1X Long, and I continued the stalk. I enjoyed the coolness of the morning mist, the soft relief from the closeness of the air in town and, every once in a while, I saw a lone drake drifting.

I was scrutinizing one particular reach, searching for any movement which might betray a trout up and looking, and there it was – a slow, soft rise where a drake had been drifting! I was too close to my shore, so I had to close inches at a time, easing upstream and angling away. God, it seemed like an hour to get in position, moving without a trace.

Finally, I had enough space for a back cast, and I made my first pitch, a few feet upstream where the rise had been, for I know searchers usually move. The second cast was more tense, as I set it down two or three further above where I had seen the natural disappear, and there he was, that big head gliding barely from the water to the air, opening his mouth, and softly sucking my fly in…

The spring was coiled too tight. In my soul I know how slowly a big wild brownie can take a drifting dun, it takes time, a moment in real time, but eons in the psyche of an angler starved of that magic. Too tight, and that spring tripped early. I snatched that fly right out of his mouth. I felt him, and he felt me and vanished.