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.

I do quite a lot of reading this time of year and, though I have a deep affection for titles from the Golden Age of American fly fishing, I do very selectively peruse a few newer works. Some, like Jerry Kustich’s new book discussed in my last post, are written by authors whose writing I know and enjoy. One category I generally do not bother with though are new books about fly tying. I have tended to design my own trout flies for the past three decades, building my knowledge of materials and experience on the water to shape my own creations. Yes, once in a while I will investigate a fly tying book for entertainment value, but many of the “great discoveries” touted by the marketing machine have no interest for me. Man does continue to reinvent the wheel.

This summer, two gentlemen from England were kind enough to give a special online presentation to members of our Catskill Fly Tyers Guild, informing of their rather exhaustive work involving high-definition video and still cameras, primarily on the English chalk streams. Peter Hayes and Don Stazicker impressed with their commitment to their cause, showcasing the great deal of work they put into their 2025 release entitled “The Flies Trout Prefer”. I was interested enough that I bought the book, which has languished here in my hideaway ottoman for the past few months. I started in on it this week, and I admit it is holding my interest.

Their basic premise involves the trout stream insects we describe as emergers or cripples, that is the flies that fail to reach the fully hatched stage and fly off the water, maintaining that such are the insects the trout most often eat. Their assertion is certainly not new, as thousands of us who undertake our fishing as observant anglers speak this same truth. The depth of their investigation and the quality of their photographic evidence impresses, though. I have not progressed to the portion of the book where they present their ideas for fly tying to imitate the imperfect insects they champion, I might agree or disagree with their approach when I see it, but they are very likely to maintain my interest to the end of the book.

I have spent a great deal of my thirty-five years of fly tying and design focused upon capturing an image of life in my trout flies. Those qualities include movement, color, shape, size, silhouette, the effects of light reflection and a fly’s attitude when cast and drifted upon the water. A great deal of my best dry fly patterns sit in the film, with their bodies, legs and wings penetrating the water, in recognition of the trout’s observed preference for flies that are more vulnerable, as Messrs. Hayes and Stazicker describe. I welcome the factual reinforcement of my long-held beliefs, as I expect will many anglers.

A good deal of years ago, I gave a presentation at the luncheon of the Fly Fisher’s Club of Harrisburg, offering my conclusions that our trout were learning from the huge increase in fishing pressure and getting harder to catch. Fisheries scientists at that time would have called that rubbish, though they now admit that trout not only exhibit avoidance behavior and increased selectivity as a result of angling pressure, but that they pass these traits on genetically. My conclusion all those years ago, was that our best chance of keeping up with the development of our quarry was the advancement of fly tying, as well as our individual skills of presentation.

I never stop experimenting, for I know that, as the trout’s familiarity with even the best designed and tied fly patterns grows, the effectiveness of those patterns will inevitably lessen. That fact is a part of the essence of the challenge and the magic of this game!

Do not mistake this post to be a denouncement of classic flies, for it is not. I am not the first to note that classic patterns are often “new” to many of the trout that swim in our favorite fishing waters. Many of today’s new crop of fly fishers pay little attention to classic trout flies. They want the newest, brightest, craziest concoctions they can find at their local fly shop. Fish whatever you wish, but if you want to learn and grow as an angler, observe!

I first met Jerry Kustich in December 2014 after learning of his move to Maryland. My enjoyment of his writing brought us together.

I had just reviewed his 2013 book “Around The Next Bend” when I stopped into Theaux Legardeur’s Backwater Angler fly shop on a visit to the stream that had been my first love as a trout river, Maryland’s Big Gunpowder Falls. I noticed copies of the book displayed conspicuously on a table in the shop, flanked by copies of two previous volumes that I had not had an opportunity to read. Casually opening one of them, I was surprised to see the author’s signature on the title page and asked Theaux how he had managed that. He told me of Jerry’s eastern move and invited me to an upcoming bamboo day, where Jerry would be visiting with a load of Sweetgrass bamboo rods in tow. I kept that appointment and enjoyed the chance to meet and interview Jerry about his partnership with Glenn Brackett and the founding of Sweetgrass Rods. Casting a number of those rods that afternoon made me want to have a Sweetgrass of my own.

We have kept in touch over the years, meeting up at the Catskill Rodmakers Gathering three years ago, and touching base via emails as we did during the Covid lockdown in the summer of 2020. The 8′ four weight Sweetgrass Pent I carry most often during my summer fishing was the result of those Covid conversations, after Jerry agreed to design a special pentagonal rod taper to fit the demands of my summer fishing style.

I was pleased to learn of his writing a fourth and, he says, final book last month, and started in the morning after his package arrived. “Bamboo Days – Memories of an Old Rod Builder” (West River Media, ISBN 978-0-9996155-4-6) is pure Jerry Kustich, brimming with tales both happy and sad from a man who has led a remarkable life. From decades in Idaho and Montana, to pleasant later days on that same Gunpowder Falls and the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay, Jerry has found serenity on rivers, most often with a bamboo fly rod in hand. He shares those feelings and revelations through the stories here. Always deeply touched by the outdoors, and the beauty, mystery and magic of fly fishing, Kustich continues to be a voice for conservation and environmental stewardship.

Like many of us whose souls are tied to bright waters, Jerry has lived to see both troubled times for those special waters and rebirth. He remarks on the latter stages of life, when memories sometimes flow stronger than the rivers that spawned them. Kustich feels the life energy in a shaft of split bamboo as he does in the rivers and the people who make life special, and he shares that with his readers; a beautiful gift!

I should be walking up the side of a mountain just about now, the frosty leaves and the air crackling in the stillness amid the frost. It would have been my first day deer hunting for the season. The joy these days comes from spending time with a good friend, each of us telling of what we saw, or didn’t see, when we gather in the cabin for an extended lunch break. Solo jaunts in the cold no longer measure up.

My best hunting takes place upon bright waters, curling around the bases of these mountains, falling like diamonds from rocky outcrops. It is easy to lose myself in endless hours with tempered bamboo in hand and a feathered hook fresh from the bench before me.

There are many photos like the one above, testimony to the rewards of those hunts, those put forth in waders instead of blaze orange and boot leather. Perhaps the best keepsakes though are the memories of the mystery fish, those never brought before either the camera’s eye or my own. It is one of those fish which haunts me this morning.

It was that time in April, a few years ago now. The long days of fruitless searching for my friends the Hendricksons had ended. The hatch had finally appeared, the water covered with the big tannish duns and the smaller Red Quills, so many that fooling a ravenous trout with feathered hook proved heartbreakingly difficult that day.

Humbled, I had arrived early that next day, with freshly tied patterns and a favorite shaft of bamboo. The hatch was lessened in intensity, though still quite fine, and I had set my mind that the result would be different.

There is an area at the head of the pool where a long run empties. The bottom has been scoured by eons of high flows, leaving great shards of the mountain standing in the depths of the river. One long spire lies lengthwise with the current, and it was there that my gaze was directed. The trout that fed there pushed a lot of water when he chose to rise, though the display was lessened by the currents accelerating around that great fallen spire of stone. I had to have him!

The hatch had progressed before our game began, and the little Red Quills predominated. I had run through my usual battery of flies, teasing line and leader with the rod tip to offer each with a delicate drift, when I reached for one of the special Red Quills with a lively natural dun CDC wing.

I cannot recall how many casts I made, just that, when it seemed that fish’s defenses were impenetrable, the magic take finally occurred. I raised the rod into a terrible arc, the water boiled and the reel screamed as my foe charged downriver nearly emptying my reel of line and backing in that first orgasmic run!

Failing to free himself of the fly, that trout began a series of head shakes, darting left then right, intent upon slugging it out at distance. I stripped line when I could, a foot at a time, afraid that the vibration of reeling might set him to flight once more and strip the last few turns of backing that remained.

We sparred like that, me taking two strips of line and reeling up the slack, once, twice, then giving back more than I had gained before stripping once more. Slowly, I eased the battling trout upstream, gaining back most of the backing, even a turn or two of fly line on the spool. I thought the battle had turned in my favor. Fool!

Suddenly he accelerated, running upstream and across toward the place this had all begun. Reeling feverishly, I somehow kept pace. He sought that great spire, that familiar lie where he had fed with all the energy he had left; more than I could bring to bear with bowed rod and a light tippet.

When he was gone, victory abruptly ripped from my shaking hands, the line simply trailed in the current. Once I had recovered my senses, I ran the end of the tippet through my fingers, feeling the rough texture where that spire had cut my hold on him, and cut out my heart.

I never saw that great fish, not a flash or a leap to reveal the nature of the bolt of lightning I was tethered to. Mystery fish, they grow in the mind to impossible dimensions, and they live forever!

Rain, snow showers and a bit of water in the rivers, such are the things that begin to breed hope for springtime.

I have begun thinking about trout flies and about a change in design from the various transitional stage mayflies I have tied and relied upon for many years. Subtleties, a variation in the attitude of a fly on the water, movement within the fly itself, my guidelines are the same, but I have combined the success of my 100-Year Duns with the imitation of the imperfect mayflies well-schooled wild trout often select from the drift.

Effective flies are often relatively simple, too many parts and materials may defeat the ultimate purpose: to imitate life!

The idea of the 100-Year duns was to highlight the proper attitude of a fully emerged mayfly dun on the surface, something it has done particularly well. Though I often tie them on straight dry fly hooks, the upturned shank of Daiichi’s Darrel Martin’s Dry Fly Hook, model numbers 1220 and 1222 lends itself fully to the design. These unique hooks are the basis for my newest transitional patterns, tied first for the Hendricksons I hope will return to prominence on our Catskill rivers.

I am anxious to enjoy the opportunity to cast this new fly over the most wary and particular wild brown I encounter next spring. It is designed to sit lower in the film at the rear and amidship, with the soft fibers of wood duck, Hungarian Partridge and CDC providing subtle movement in the current and winds. There are other prototypes too, hackled versions with either paired CDC feathers or Trigger Point fibers posted for wings. May the trout be forthcoming with their opinions!

Winter is just now whispering o’er the ridges of these mountains, the first flurries of snow appearing on high. There are many months to experiment here at my vise. The March Browns made something of an appearance upon our drought and ice ravaged rivers this year, and they shall be next in the new procession of patterns…

I don’t know just what possessed me, but I tied a dozen dries this morning. If I made a little pile out of them, that might just be big enough to see!

I had been reading and daydreaming about fishing, and to me that means dry fly fishing. I truly don’t expect to have a chance to use these over the next four months, but perhaps you could call my effort a mission of hope.

Half a dozen of those new flies were Griffiths’ Gnat’s, the old faithful midge pattern, and it would take a lot of thinking to recall the last time I fished midges. I can tell you it wasn’t in the Catskills. It is a little warmer today, though we watched snow blowing around for the past two days, but the water temperatures have continued to drop.

It would be a treat to find a decent trout rising in December, but then again that isn’t very likely to happen. Three weeks of deer season begins Saturday morning and, though I won’t be hunting more than a few of those days, I cannot picture any opportunity for dry fly fishing.

In my seven seasons as a full time Catskill resident angler, the earliest trout I have caught on a dry fly took an olive on the 27th of March. The latest have come during the final week of October. I looked hard for some fishing the first couple of years, out on the tailwaters on many days in January, February and March when the temperatures were above freezing. I did take a couple of fish swinging flies close to the river bottom, but never did I see anything I could even imagine was a rise.

Could it happen in winter? Hell, anything can happen, but I would say that would be about as likely as a flock of wood ducks plucking out their best flank feathers and laying them in a little pile on the bank in front of me.

It was usually March, in most of those years. Yes, there would be a few false starts in February, fueled by the frustration of several weeks of ice, snow, wind and high temperatures which remained well below freezing, but it was not until the end of that short month that I ever expected anything. There were a few seasons when the sun blossomed during those last days of February, warmed the air into the upper forties and brushed the water temperatures with an early stroke of spring, but not many.

My first day off in March would usually find me at Big Spring during those years after the hatchery was shut down. Bright gravel had begun to appear in spots with some velocity to the current, and a few mayflies and stoneflies started to return. During the mornings, I may have tied on one of my Limestone Shrimp, or Ed Shenk’s venerable cressbug if I arrived early, the fervor of breaking free from winter’s grasp getting me up before dawn and pushing me toward bright water. Come ten o’clock though, the 6X tippet was unfurled and an 18 or 20 Blue-winged Olive knotted fast, as the search began for the season’s first celebrated riser!

As the calendar pages turned past the cessation of hatchery pollution, wild rainbows predominated. I caught five, six and seven-inch trout with fat little bellies and parr marks, the initial progeny of hatchery escapees that had begun to spread out along the stream corridor when the pipes flushing pollutants, and millions of midge larva, into The Ditch stopped their flow of effluent. These stream-bred rainbows were electric as they grew, and grow they did! After a few years, a careful angler could stalk the meadows and spot big bows sipping the early olives.

The Little Black Stoneflies thrived as the stream bed cleared wherever the current maintained enough energy to scour, and they provided some wonderful moments of early season dry fly fishing. Olives in the morning, and then stoneflies on the sunny afternoons became the ritual, for as our other limestone springs declined, Big Spring came into its own.

The clarity, confounding spiraling currents and the small size of the insects demanded 6X tippets, and landing one of those rainbows best measured in pounds became a supreme challenge. A twenty-yard run availed the trout of numerous sharp edged limestone rocks and various heavy weed beds, cover they took full advantage of. I ordered a light disc drag Ross reel after one of those first huge bows backlashed the fly line on my CFO when it bolted from my hookset! Any rainbow over a foot long proved to be a serious foe, and the fish of twenty inches and more were truly tackle busters.

It was heaven for a dry fly angler though, once March arrived and opportunities were revealed. The tension heightened with each step as I stalked a rise! The larger bows would sip amid the flat little pools when the olives were hatching, and each approach, each cast had to be perfectly planned and flawlessly executed. Most fish offered one try, a single drift. Chances of landing those effectively hooked proved rather slim. One dash could put them a few feet back underneath a floating weed bed, where it was impossible to extract a fish before it cut the thin tippet or fouled the fly. Bettering my average required a learning curve built of patience in the face of frustration. The experiences were truly sublime!

As the seasons passed, Nature slowly rebuilt the forage base. A few sulfurs and caddisflies appeared in May and June, and these might provide rare opportunities for a patient and observant angler, until the terrestrial fishing began with summer’s heat. In those days, my CDX caddis was a closely guarded pattern, and it would be the fly to tempt an unbelievable rainbow during those halcyon days on Big Spring.

I sit back now and remember those days, epic battles won and lost. The future seemed too bright to believe, and sadly time and man’s folly proved that it was. Government’s do not consent to bow and wear their black eyes, no matter how well earned and well known. Management was their weapon, and they wielded it all too effectively.

Such days shall not come again. Alas, March mornings shall never hold that same thrill…