I found the East Branch free of ice just now, running clear through Hancock and into Crooked Eddy, and I saw something else I did not expect. A solitary fly fisher stood in the frigid water beside the riffles, swinging a fly down through the deepening flow.

It was a sunny twenty-nine degrees when I left the house, and the river gage just upriver from that stoic figure reads thirty-three as I write this. I would say that, to express that fellow’s chances of catching a trout, one would be most accurate to delve into the negative numbers. Is this a sign of desperation? I think not.

I could not recognize anything familiar at my distance, nor did the truck parked nearby stir any remembrance. Might he be a local? Perhaps, though I have seen anglers travel here in all seasons.

It might be he is no more expectant of a catch then I would be, but simply an angler who feels the need to say farewell to the river on this bright, ice-free day.

We will have snow tonight and more tomorrow, so this may well be the last day this year will allow a man to stand in the moving current and cast a fly, to bid farewell to bright water and it’s magic until springtime.

I too have waded these rivers beneath winter skies. If the Red Gods choose to offer a milder season, I will search for the warmest water on a day blessed with sunshine. Our tailwaters may even surrender a trout when water temperature rises to 37 or 38 degrees. I know that the possibility exists on that kind of day, though I certainly know the difference between possibility and likelihood. I choose to wander rivers on many days when the best I will carry from the river will be contentment; appreciation for a few hours of solitude in one of my favorite places.

We are closing in upon the end of another year, though perhaps just two thirds through the breadth of another Catskill winter. Nature has provided a show this week, the landscape going quickly from white to dampened green amid a wink of sunshine, and back to white. Now too, the whiteness is diminished for the moment, soon threatened to return.

The Mother has brought water to the rivers once more, and for that I am eternally grateful, with hope the ice was stopped short of the sediment and the gravel.

The cold still reigns, the memories of bright moments with sunshine and warmer air still fresh as I seek the warmth of fleece and down. The trifling with tackle has begun. It stirs memories as it always does…

I made up a fresh batch of bamboo polish the other day. I have nursed a capful of the stuff my friend Dave provided for decades, and now I have perhaps a lifetime supply! The new batch was tested on my old Orvis 99, bringing a warm brown glow back to cane nearly as old as I am.

Winter days are scattered still at this season: a few hours of reading, a handful spent daydreaming memories, a quarter-dozen flies tied, perhaps a rod taken from it’s tube for cleaning, or maybe just to feel my fingers encircle it’s cork for a long moment. The tackle room was, adjusted; a new bamboo bookcase added after due consideration of location and the impact upon my crowded space. There are books upon it’s shelves, though not all that will be carefully determined to reside there. I am still a full week away from my annual countdown, the time when anticipation is allowed to formally begin.

Passing a Catskill winter, I work through many moods between November’s sense of loss and March’s feverish wont and anticipation. There are no hours to lose in the rod shop this winter, the advance of arthritis robbing me of the spark of making a second rod. No, more hours must be passed in the embrace of memory. Sixty years under the spell of waters, and still, I cannot exist without their magic!

One of the few fishable hatches I encountered during the 2025 season was the unique bright yellow March Brown mayflies that I had first witnessed six years ago. Those unnaturally bright hued flies could be best described as safety yellow and, since it was the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock just down the road in Bethel, NY, I took to calling it the Woodstock March Brown.

Since some of those psychedelic mayflies survived last year’s devastating drought and frigid, low flow winter, I have some hope that they might appear again when May rolls around. That hope made them a candidate for imitation, and it was only a matter of time before my new transitional dun design caught up with these Hendrix inspired bugs.

Though the pale, dirty yellow, faded wing critters that seem to have replaced our traditional big, beautiful caramel colored Catskill March Browns are also smaller than those formerly abundant flies, the Woodstocks must be eating better, as they remain a hearty size 10! I set to work yesterday crafting a trio of the new patterns.

Wood duck flank tails and the wrapped pheasant tail abdomen are common to this new series of transitional duns. I chose fine gold wire for the rib, brilliant yellow silk dubbing for the thorax and a CDC puff wing with dark brown between fore and aft brighter yellow feathers. Legs are added with a few fibers of brown back feathers from a Hungarian Partridge.

I have used multiple colors of CDC for decades to mimic heavily mottled wings for mayflies like the March Browns and Green Drakes, finding it very effective. I will be anxious to try this one if the Woodstock bugs grace us with an appearance in 2026 as the brilliant psychedelic yellow color has proven to be a trigger.

We saw a bit of additional snow on Saturday night, perhaps two inches here in the Eddy, with hope the higher elevations received more. Last week’s predicted inch was three inches deep here, while friends on one of the mountains sheltering the West Branch reported seven inches. Later this week we are being teased with the promise of a couple of days in the forties, so there is hope for some high altitude melting and some sorely needed water in the rivers.

A warmup would be most welcome, as this is already shaping up to be a very cold winter, here in mid-December. Reservoir releases are fairly low, Pepacton at 74.6 cfs and Cannonsville at 149 though the latter was in the 300 cfs range a few days ago. All our rivers have ice along their edges and bank to bank through their slower reaches. Most gaging stations are iced, though Lordville on the mainstem is clear and reading a very low 753 cfs and a water temperature of 31.6 degrees Fahrenheit. A good bump in flows would be beneficial. Dare we hope for sunshine?

Early December, and the temperatures are flirting with zero! A degree or two above or below the mark, depending upon just where you are in the region, lows like this usually have a lot to do with elevation. We are not too high here at Crooked Eddy, just a few comfortable feet above river level, and I have one degree below zero right now, some five minutes after sunrise.

I took my first river walk of the season yesterday afternoon, finding the East Branch Delaware iced bank to bank at the eddy, though flowing beneath the railroad bridge and down past Fireman’s Park. I just checked the brand new USGS Hancock Gage (installed this summer) and water temperature was flatlined at the freezing mark. Flows are low again on all our rivers, something we anglers very much need to change.

If our hatches are going to get the chance to recover, we need a little warmup and some significant rain, soon!

I look at that photo, and I think about the inevitable changes in rivers. The trout is lying on river grass with current flowing through it, and that’s because I took that shot on one of three large grass islands that used to create some interesting fishing up at Stilesville on the West Branch Delaware. The lower island was just opposite the small DEC access area there, while the upper island lay opposite Laurel Bank Farm. We are talking something more than 21 years ago, in June.

Rains had muddied most of the Catskill rivers overnight, and the upper West Branch remained clear and perfectly wadable. There were a few caddisflies about, Psilotreta, the Dark Blue Sedge, and I had the pattern. I stalked an early morning sipping rise along the edge of one of the channels between those grass islands and took that twenty-inch brown on my slate gray X-Caddis. That would be the last time I fished those productive grass islands.

That September, while I was up north again and fishing several rivers, a fellow named Hurricane Ivan came calling on the last day of my trip. When he passed through Deposit, New York, he took those three big, beautiful grass islands with him. He did offer something in return, filling the deep, bouldery wild trout habitat that stretched from mid-river to the westerly bank with pea gravel, making featureless shallows where once giants dwelt.

Mother Nature seemed geared toward violent changes in those years, with three one-hundred-year floods and a five- hundred-year flood coming in the course of two years. Now the changes are subtler. Warmer, drier summers and colder low flow winters are not doing our Catskill rivers any favors, so I hope the tide turns. We have some truly wonderful fly fishing up here, not the shabby put and take mess that so many of our Eastern states offer, but highly challenging fishing for real trophy sized wild trout. The best of dry fly fishing continues here on the waters where it began in America. I for one, would like our next generation, and the generation after that one to be able to say that too!

It has been one of those days in May, long hours spent sitting on river banks, feeling the sun bake the ache from my neck as I scan the water. The big Drakes have not appeared, and it is well into the afternoon.

Shadows have gathered tight to the far bank already, though it will be more than an hour before the sun drops behind the western ridgeline. Still, there are no flies. This is Nature’s way, and years of experience has proven it so. A day may seem perfect, ideal for a good hatch and rise of trout, yet something in the air says, no. Dozens of similar days have passed with joy, casting to wary risers at distance, placing the big duns on the current softly and watching them drift into those sweet bulges in the surface. What ingredient is missing? What special electricity makes life erupt one day, yet it’s twin fall silent?

Walking down river, I pick a familiar dimple in the grass and sit quietly until the sun passes over that ridge. Another hour passes there without any sign of life, and I rise to begin the long, slow walk back. All along the way I stop and gaze hard at the surface, dissecting each nuance in the current for some telltale variation which I do not see.

At last, I find myself seated below the little riffle and, amid my quiet reverie, I notice the shadows gathered there where the trees bundle close to the water, as evening comes wandering down the river valley.

Rising from the bank for the last time, I take a few steps upstream along the river’s edge, stopping to stare hard at the fan of current near the far bank. There is more light there, where the trees do not shade the water. There! It is so subtle I am not really sure I have seen it, a small, gentle ring. A wink, then nothing. I see nothing drifting on the surface, yet soon I see that tiny ring once more.

I have to hold the spinner pattern up to poke the tippet’s end through the eye, there where the light in the sky still glimmers to the south. With the knot fixed, I begin to stalk upstream, searching for the right angle to make my offering. One place will provide back cast clearance beneath the trees and allow my forward cast to shoot fully across the river. I find it as the shadows deepen.

Clouds have gathered, but there is still enough illumination to catch the sparkle of those wide spent wings as the fly settles at the top of the fan. A size 12 spinner offers some advantages. Memory does not recall how many casts were made, though the result of my last one lives forever!

That tiny, gentle ring replaces the silvery glint of evening light on those wings, and there is a brief pause before the shaft of split bamboo becomes a straining arch against the boil of water just across the river. My old Hardy ratchets loudly in the evening calm as the day becomes one of those bright memories, filled with magic!

Just as an update for those interested in fly tying. I made a few tying videos about 5 years ago that were included in certain blog posts. I am no film maker, and don’t own a video camera per se. These were intended to show just how I tie some of the original patterns that I have written about here over the years. These were shot on my 35mm Nikon SLR, so there is no zoom, music or special effects, just an intro to the fly and then a closeup so you can see the tying.

After all of these years, I decided to go ahead and publish them on YouTube. They can be found by searching “Mark Sturtevant fly tying” should any new readers wish to see them. When checking these out, I found there are several guys on YT with the same name, but none appear to be fly tyers so it shouldn’t be too confusing.

I do not expect to set up a special YouTube channel, and I won’t be asking anyone to subscribe. Non-commercial all the way.

It is but the fifth of December, early in the Catskills’ natural onslaught of winter, and it is two degrees here in Crooked Eddy. It was just last week that I wandered the river as the temperature flirted with sixty degrees. Oh, what have we done to reap Nature’s disdain?

Perhaps today I will reorganize my tackle room, vacuum the dust from the heat registers and make room for the small bamboo bookcase said to be arriving next week. My angling library has grown, and though I make periodic donations to the Hancock library, I have been woefully short on shelf space for several years.

It is not new books that stack my shelves. No, my tastes run to tales of the Golden Age, stories of and by those who made much of the history of these Catskill Mountains, and these volumes deserve a place of reverence.

Such frigid cold makes this a good day to ponder, blend a bit of fur and wind the silk to fashion a new pattern, stimulate the hope that the early spring warmth of the New Year will see mayflies struggling in the film as the new sun warms their wing muscles. Hope is paramount when the morning flirts with zero!

I truly hope that Nature will work her magic, and our mayflies will once again appear in plenty on the rivers of my heart. I would miss the challenges of designing new imitations nearly as much as I would stalking a fine trout subtly rising to a drifting dun!

The first winter snowstorm has come to the Catskill Mountains and, in it’s passing, it has taken my hope for further angling during this last month of the year.

My season of fly tying and reading has begun, and there are the enameled quill bodies for three Hendricksons hanging here on my drying rack. Ah those Hendricksons! I tie them each year, and likely during each month of winter, though if those stored in myriad fly and storage boxes should be counted, they likely outnumber all the days I shall be allotted to spend upon bright waters.

These three will receive their wood duck wing, a thorax of my A.I. Hendrickson dubbing blend, and a barred rusty dun hackle from one of Charlie Collins beautiful roosters. Before that though, three more quill bodies will join them in waiting, half a dozen being such a perfect number!

I’ve been blending dubbing lately, my traditional as well as A.I. Hendrickson supplies having been depleted during a season when the tying of those favored flies was far more therapeutic than practical.

When it comes to dry flies, I have last year’s entire store of Gordon Quills and Blue Quills, as well as most of the olives still safe and unruffled in their boxes, for I encountered no hatches of these early season stalwarts whatsoever. Nature may truly perform the miraculous, and I begin the passage of these long months of winter hoping for nothing less.

Might winter grant some brief reprieve along the way, a day or two of unseasonable warmth and sunshine when the spirit soars and stiff legs find their way to the snowy banks of the river? We shall see…

So here we are in December already, month number two of the Catskill Winter of 2025. The first snowstorm of the season is stalking us from the west, and I am here dreaming of fishing…

The little streamer fly pictured above is an old pattern of mine, one I have not tied for a good many seasons. Chances are I still have an old one or two, stashed somewhere in one of a hundred fly boxes, where it would take longer for me to find them than it did to tie a few new ones. I don’t fish streamers much anymore, the dry fly having fully captured my heart and mind, except as an unusual respite from winter.

JA was talking about a new pattern he had devised, one a West Point cadet had used last month to catch a bunch of hungry rainbows. I laughed when he told me of that young man’s banner day, repeating the truth here in the Delaware system that “rainbows don’t hit streamers”. He told me he thought his fly would be a fine choice for my winter swinging, though he has conveniently forgotten to send me a photo or a recipe for it’s construction. Pondering the chances that the weather will cooperate any time this month got me daydreaming about the old Pearl & Squirrel.

Ah, the Falling Spring and her bridges! None of them were large, and that last stone arch was smallest of all! The size of the cover does not command the size of the trout though.

I had crafted that simple little streamer for her shallow waters and the dace minnows who swam there. A tuft of grizzly marabou, braided pearlescent Poly Flash for the body, crowned with a long wing of gray squirrel tail and bearded with a touch of red marabou, the fly was simple and effective. It was vital that the squirrel tail came from my own hunting! For that imbued the flies with a certain mystical power. The spring creek trout respected that power, and they attacked my little dace minnow when swum nearby.

It was an evening long ago when I was abroad on the stream hoping for some sign of the sulfur hatch that once enthralled all who angled the limestone country. After ’94 the flies were scarce, and none appeared that evening, so I had cut back my tippet and knotted a size 10 Pearl & Squirrel for my last moments on the stream. Near the edge of dusk, I cast my fly across the inlet to the arch and let it swing downstream into darkness… twitch… twitch… twitch…

The short rod shuddered, the water thrashed wildly in the bole of the channel, and I found myself engaged in a vicious fight! Whatever leviathan had engulfed my Pearl & Squirrel didn’t wish to give it back, nor did he wish to come out from under that arch! Nearly the entire exchange evolved amid those close quarters. A few times he would streak downstream and I would check him, knowing that all manner of rocks, logs and roots waited there to grant him freedom. Thrice I turned him just abreast of the outlet, where he boiled and thrashed again beneath the darkness of the bridge.

I know that the magic of my patient .22 harvest of that gray squirrel granted me victory that evening, leading the great trout upstream into the open stream channel at dusk, and into my net. The brown was nearly two feet long, wide flanked and heavy, and my hand trembled as I twisted the small fly free of his jaw.

If I close my eyes, I can still feel the rush of that moment, feel my hands shaking in the cold spring water and the chill of evening.

Nature winked at our Catskill Mountains just yesterday. With a pair of winter storms working their frigid ways across the country, our temperature soared to fifty-eight degrees for the afternoon despite mostly dark and dampish conditions. I knew it was coming, and how could I fail to have faith in such a forecast? There was no question that I would wander a favorite reach of river to celebrate this day.

It was fishing, but then again it wasn’t. Not that excited “I’m going to catch some” kind of fishing, not that springtime sort of energy, but still; fishing.

I truly had no expectations of catching a trout, not even one of seeing a trout to be honest, but I was going to take this single day and get something beneficial out of it nevertheless.

Today will be twenty degrees colder than yesterday, and the thirties look to be the norm for a long run of days. If nothing else, that fueled my desire to spend my time along bright water.

My soul sought another moment of solitude, my legs one more walk against currents, and my spirit the spark of another chance to dabble in the game which enthralls the angler. I found all of that, and more.

The Kiley bamboo cast smoothly and far with little effort, as I followed each cast down and across the clear gray mirror of the river. Flows are better now, still low, but improved over the last weeks of the dry fly season. The rain received had come on the edge of the warmer air and the river gages showed rising temperatures through the night. Though my flies touched nothing save the jutting river rocks, there were sporadic signs of life.

I saw two or three rises clearly during the afternoon, strong rises, though singular and far beyond casting range. There were a few glimpses of nervous water as well, and I drifted a soft hackled fly through those areas a time or two. Whatever attracted those signs of life, my flies failed to imitate, but I still felt that little charge for a couple of casts.

I appreciated the reprieve from winter, even though just a handful of fishless hours, they were spent where I wanted doing what I needed.