My favorite film of the past several years has been Chasing The Taper, and that describes the activity that has been occupying my time in recent weeks.

I decided I would like to find a special seven foot four weight rod to fish with the late Ed Shenk’s classic Hardy Featherweight fly reel. I decided on the seven foot length as an homage to The Master, my late friend and mentor, with a nod to the practical challenges of the Catskill rivers dear to my heart. Ed was the master and chief proponent of the short fly rod, often preferring rods between five and six feet long. He did build and fish some seven footers, though if he was here to see me put his reel into the seat of a lovely seven foot bamboo rod I would expect him to tell me it “isn’t a bad rod for one that’s a foot too long”.

Ed got me interested in shorter rods thirty years ago, so much so that I built a 6 1/2 foot three weight for our first day of fishing on the Letort; my first and only self-made graphite rod. I accumulated a number of shorties over the years, and fished them regularly in the Cumberland Valley. Fishing the larger Catskill rivers, particularly in the fine and far off style I choose to practice, rather demands a longer rod for versatility and ease of presentation. A seven foot four weight has been a favored rod of mine for many years, and a special taper, a rod that makes it easy to fish at distance, would honor Ed’s short rod tradition and allow me to fish in my own style on my new home waters.

Rods of this nomenclature are designed and made as small stream rods, and most excel at making casts of ten to thirty-five feet in tight quarters. They are a great pleasure to fish, lovely and intimate in appearance when well executed in split bamboo. Many such rods will reach comfortably to forty-five feet, but run out of gas beyond that range. Thus my search for a unique and capable taper has consumed a good deal of my attention.

I have worried a few of my rod making friends, chiefly Tom Smithwick, who has been kind enough to continue my education in rod tapers. I know of no man more qualified. With the threat of Coronavirus still preventing me from travel and general human contact, I am unable to cast a variety of rods, the one sure way to find my sword to Valhalla. To make the best of this situation, I am working hard to learn to be able to look at the graph of a fly rod taper and equate that to what I feel in my hand when I cast such a rod.

The best way to do that would be to have the rods and graphs side by side, but that is a luxury I do not have. I have cast quite a number of bamboo fly rods in my lifetime, though some of those encounters were brief and long ago. My best efforts have been aimed squarely at a couple of the rods I own and fish frequently: my Jim Downes Garrison 206, my Guba/Zietak Payne 102H, and my venerable Thomas Dirigo. I have studied these tapers with an eye toward seeing the flex of each rod as I have cast it, and I hope that I have made some progress, begun to learn how to interpret those rod tapers from paper. I have a couple of strong possibilities, and I am hopeful that the Shenk Tribute Rod project will find its way to fruition.

I can picture the day if I sit back and close my eyes: it is hot, but a gentle breeze keeps me comfortable as I stalk across the eddy at a snail’s pace. Stealth is necessary, for pushing waves toward the bank with the occasional dimple ends the game. Ten minutes, fifteen, and I reach a casting position fifty feet out. My eyes scan the lie, and then the current between, watching closely each bit of detritus the surface carries. Seeing an odd little wiggle in the path of a leaf fragment a foot out from the lie I slowly shift position: three steps upstream, one step in, enough I hope that the slack in my leader will counteract that tricky little current. I pull another twenty-five feet of line from the reel and make a cast fifteen feet downstream of the lie, get the feel of the rod, see how the tippet falls with the angle of the breeze. I’m ready.

Stripping another five feet of line I raise the little rod, false cast once, and deliver. The line and leader turn over softly, low to the water, and the fly blips gently two feet upstream from the lie and begins it’s drift. As it crosses into a shadow there is a brief murmur on the surface and I strip to tighten and raise the rod in one motion… and then it is the boil, the song of the Master’s Hardy and that lithe wand of cane bent terribly. Salute my friend!

I love to experiment with flies! I am never satisfied, for neither are some of the trout I encounter. I have dozens of patterns that have been proven effective, and there are certain ones that I have come to rely upon for the most difficult, selective fish. As long as I chance to encounter a rising trout that refuses everything I offer, I will continue to seek the answer to nature’s riddle.

Honestly, proving a new pattern can take several seasons. Certainly new flies will be fished, and more often than not they will catch trout. In that scenario, what I have is another capable fly, but the questions that drive me have not been answered. Is this fly better than the others? Will this pattern take the trout that refuses those others. To prove a pattern, or a design, means those questions must be answered, and that means that I have to encounter the right situation: the trout that keeps eating an insect that I can identify, yet refuses to eat the existing patterns I tie to match that hatch.

During the past two seasons I have paid particular attention to improving the translucency of my dry flies, anything but a new idea. This morning I visited the blog of an English angler and author, Robert Smith. A friend had shared one of Rob Smith’s articles with me a couple of months ago, and Mr. Smith later graciously joined one of our Catskill Fly Tyers Guild Zoom meetings. His blog, The Sliding Stream (www.theslidingstream.net), offered an interesting article on a British angling classic: J.W. Dunne’s “Sunshine and the Dry Fly”. Smith discussed Dunne’s efforts to maximize translucency more than a century ago. His article inspired me to tie a few flies in furtherance of an idea I have kicked around for quite a while.

Dunne came to the conclusion that translucency could be improved by painting his hook shanks white and tying his fly bodies with special, very delicate silks. Daiichi makes a dry fly hook in a “Crystal” finish, a mirrorlike silver, and I have had some of them for years. I have used them sparingly, and thought idly about tying dubbed silk bodies on them, but I hadn’t done it until this morning.

To take best advantage of these materials and Mr. Dunne’s premise, there is one missing ingredient: I would like to have some very fine white silk tying thread. I used dun colored 14/0 thread for the Hendrickson, and pale yellow 12/0 for the Yellow Dun Sulfur below. The next step will be to try some of the white 14/0 I use for tricos, assuming I can’t find some silk.

As Rob Smith noted in his piece, sunlight is necessary for the magic to happen, something that can be rare in the British Isles I understand. We are pretty lucky in that regard here in the Catskills, and I believe that the silk dubbing improves translucency even when daylight is more subdued. Assuming you don’t use too much wax and pressure in the application, the dubbing has a loft that wrapped tying silk doesn’t. The fibers will trap air bubbles and those bubbles will reflect the available light. Time will tell.

I hope I will get the chance to prove the new Hendrickson variation during this season’s hatch. The Hendricksons bring out as many anglers as trout, so there are usually opportunities to fish to plenty of heavily pressured and ultra selective wild trout. Having a better, more natural looking fly, ought to make the difference for some of those brownies!

The sun is blinding me once again, bearing down through my little window and glaring on my fingers as I write. I welcome that sunshine heartily, though I’d love to have a little curtain to shade my eyes. Yes, another day of sunshine and warm weather: salvation from the ceaseless grip of winter!

I have spent the past three days on the rivers, and my spirit has been lifted by the experience. Indeed I carried a rod and reel, and plied the waters with sunken soft hackles, what passes for fishing during the off season. It isn’t fly fishing to me, not in the honest meaning of the term that is, though it is as close as I can get right now. Fly fishing necessitates the use of the dry fly, is predicated upon there being rising trout, and should best be practiced with a lithe split bamboo fly rod.

Not that I mean to insult anyone who thinks that fishing with nymphs and streamers and what not is the be all and end all of sport. To each his own; though I see too many who have a bad day if they are not catching some predetermined number of trout on their chosen gear. I count every day I am blessed to spend along trout rivers as a good day, and I hate to see others missing out on those good feelings.

There was a time when I was more of an all around fly angler I guess, at least when dictated by circumstances. I was always happy to cut off a weighted whatever and rebuild my leader for fishing a dry fly with the slightest provocation. I fished streamers quite a bit down in the limestone country, for I fished all through the year, and likewise nymphs, or more likely shrimp and cressbugs, would spend a lot of time at the end of my line. I studied those primary trout foods, thought about them and imitated them, often fishing new patterns to prove their effectiveness; but I lived for May and the sulfur hatch!

If I had wanted to go out this week and pound the bottom of the rivers I probably would have taken a few trout. I simply don’t care to practice that kind of hard core nymph fishing anymore. I was a student of Joe Humphreys and I know what it takes to get the job done. Effective nymph fishing means carrying a box full of split shot and constantly changing the weight on your leader to be certain your fly is bouncing along naturally, right along the bottom. It means turning over rocks and checking to see what nymphs are there, which ones are most abundant, and then matching them closely with an artificial fly. Serious concentration is required every second you have a fly in the water too. I mean, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.

I enjoy fly casting, the way it becomes an art to place your fly in a terribly difficult lie, gently and naturally, and get it to drift right down to Mr. Trout like the mayflies he’s been sipping. There’s a poetry in that, a beauty and delicacy that I have always appreciated. I started out self taught, and got some excellent help along the way from some of the best in the business, but achieving that art requires a whole lot of practice and determination. You have to go out and welcome the challenges you encounter, to keep trying to make the casts you cannot, until one day you find that you can make them.

I am glad that I embraced that early on. I put down some great fish, and I put a fortune in dry flies in every kind of bush and vine and tree that grows along trout streams. I used to break snagged flies off from my casting position, never wading over and scaring the fish if there was still a chance to catch it. That meant re-building the leader and tying on a new fly every time, before I got to try that cast again, but I was OK with that. Fly fishing teaches you patience. There were many times I went through that little ritual two or three times for one trout, and I didn’t always get him, not by any means. Those things still happen once in awhile, as I continue to challenge myself on the river. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

How many things have been sold to fishermen to “make it easy to catch trout”? Man I’d love to have a penny for each of them! The best of it isn’t easy. It’s not supposed to be easy. Fly fishing is supposed to be fulfilling, contemplative, pleasurable; it’s supposed to rescue us from all of the crap that life throws at us, and it can and will if we let it. Challenge yourself, immerse yourself in the experience and learn, grow and smile. Laugh at your foibles, its good for you, and its always a good day!

I felt the excitement as I pulled the old waders over my feet; I was finally going to walk a river bank again, test the warming water with a fly. Nearly three months have passed since I felt that excitement, the same feeling I get every time I go fishing. Certainly that feeling is part of why I go, even now, when I really don’t expect to catch a trout; there is always the possibility.

The sun had quickly warmed the air, though the wind rose before I could put my jacket on and reminded me it was early March. I had prepared for the weather, and as soon as I got that old Windwall over my shoulders I felt pretty comfy. I pulled the wader suspenders up, pulled a sun gaiter over my head and re-adjusted my shades; then I reached for the rod case. I had planned to fish bamboo, wanting to begin the season properly, but the wind forecast for fifteen miles per hour caused me to consider the open water of my destination and choose the Thomas & Thomas graphite instead. I have spent too many days on parts of the Delaware River system where the wind laughed at the forecast and blew just as hard as it pleased, and yes, it is March. It turned out to be a better day, with far more periods of extended calm and sunshine than winds.

My hike helped me feel the past three months indoors. It wasn’t that long, about six tenths of a mile, but between sloshing through melting snow and clambering up and down questionable river banks it gave me the exercise I craved. The river is low, a good part of the reason that Tuesday’s sunshine resulted in a nine degree jump in water temperature, so I waded in slowly, drawing upon memory to try to decipher the places an awakening trout might seek to hunt if he was so inclined.

I knotted a Hen & Hare’s Ear to my leader and started to cast and swing the fly, across and downstream, through the deeper water bathed in sunlight. The water shallowed as I worked down the pool, and I changed to a smaller fly, though one still tied with the hidden life concept the H&E began last autumn.

I offered this fly on the swing too, the slow yet ceaseless current drawing it through all of the water I hoped might conceal a hungry brown. Once it paused, with a welcome rubbery feel that was gone as soon as it began. Bringing the fly to hand I found the familiar green glob on the hook bend: not a trout after all.

I was standing for a time, looking across the river for some evidence of life when a stonefly passed in the air. Looking harder I eventually spied a couple, appearing as little puffballs out there on the glittering surface, and stared after them; wanting so badly to see a dimple where one of those little stones had fluttered, though I knew it was not to be.

Once I had seen the stoneflies I changed again, hoping that a small unweighted soft hackle might raise something from the uneven rocky bottom in the tail of the pool: look at me, I’m a helpless little insect quivering here, I cannot fly! This ruse failed utterly as well, for in truth there did not seem to be a trout out there, not one awakened by the rapid rise in water temperature. Too soon.

I sat down on a log and let the warmth soak in a bit. I struggled with the wader pocket to free the little fly box hidden there, the wish box, the one secreted away, hiding it’s stash of tiny dry flies, midges, olives and stones. The black CDC stonefly looked proper there, it’s hook point pricked lightly into the cork as I passed the warmest moments of the afternoon. Wishful thinking, though more than that: a thank you to the day, a simple salute to the spring that awaits!

My thoughts wandered back in time, back to warm March afternoons on Big Spring. The stones were a real beginning there, and they would bring the wild rainbows to the surface, intrigued by their fluttering, and tempted to release their caution and divulge their hides down there along the weed beds. The little feeding frenzies were generally brief, though at times intense! As soon as I saw the first ones, little puffballs fluttering on the water, I would hastily rework my leader and tie on one of my CDC stones: time to hunt!

My first Catskill winter I saw a number of those same little black stoneflies on the West Branch Delaware, on sunny, calm afternoons in March. They drifted along the surface, wings buzzing furiously and begging a trout to rise for a snack. Just as I had back on Big Spring I hurried to rig a dry fly, but there was no rise forthcoming. Here it seems they are far more of a tease for the angler than the trout.

Yet I still find myself thinking back, and tying on a dry fly; just in case. I remember those brief flurries of rises on the gin clear currents of the limestoners; and the rewards they sometimes offered when an angler’s expediency and presentation became in a moment entwined.

The warming trend appears to be official now, with temperatures forecast to be in the fifties for four straight days next week. Fishing seems more likely than at any time since mid December’s violent descent into winter, though waiting is still required before we get there.

I had a visit yesterday, when my friend John decided to take a drive along Route 17 so we could stand outside and shiver while we talked for awhile, socially distanced. He brought me some flies he had tied recently, some intricately ribbed soft hackles, Weemoc Adams that would make creator Mike Valla blush, and these lovely Quill Gordons that made my smile widen. We both appreciate the history of the Catskills and have studied the original flies of Theodore Gordon, patron saint of American dry fly angling, and we have both experimented with Gordon’s original single clump wing design.

I love the contrast between the classic and modernized versions depicted in the opening photo. The late morning sunlight comes straight to my bench through a small, high window and it lit the classic pattern beautifully. The modern style with synthetic fibers for it’s wing simply explodes with light! I think this provides a perfect model for a discussion of traditional versus synthetic materials and flies, and how they perform in various fishing situations.

The natural lighting along a trout stream varies continuously throughout the day, and lighting should be considered when choosing the fly you present. The color, translucency and barring of the traditional wood duck gives a lovely impression of life and movement, particularly when well lighted. The synthetic really pops in bright light, and it could be too bright to suit a wary trout rising in flat water in full sunlight. Back in the shade however, or on a dark day, that fly may be your best choice, its startling light reflections tempered by the conditions, yet providing enough flashes to mimic a moving natural.

The mood of the fish you are casting to is another vital component in the fly selection puzzle. In his groundbreaking opus Selectivity, author Matthew Supinski defined three stages of trout behavior that result in variable types and levels of selectivity toward our flies: Aggressive/Active, Selective/Reflective and Passive/Dormant. An aggressive feeder, a fish actively rising and taking insects during a hatch or spinner fall may require a lifelike imitation, but not necessarily a higher level of attraction. I feel more comfortable staring with a subtle fly tied with traditional materials like John’s wood duck winged Quill Gordon, particularly if the area is well lighted. If the traditional fly isn’t accepted, then I will begin to consider something more attractive, either a CDC dun or cripple with more movement, or a brighter synthetic enhanced pattern such as John’s modernized Quill.

Supinski’s Selective/Reflective trout is well known to Catskill anglers. This behavior often results from heavy fishing pressure, and/or a diverse and abundant food supply. Catskill trout have both. When I feel certain that this situation prevails I’ll tend to start with a low floating CDC pattern, a movement fly, and I will make the effort to capture a natural to be sure I match the form, size and color of the insect with my fly. I’ll let the lighting conditions determine whether I go for a lot of sparkle or little to none. If the natural approach fails, I will eventually offer a brighter fly to bring more attractiveness to my presentation.

The Passive/Dormant trout is a tough one. I relate this behavior to a lot of my summer fishing, when there are not a lot of flies about and the water is warmer and slower with less dissolved oxygen. I love to hunt trout during those long summer days. Terrestrials can be my favorite flies, and I tie a lot of patterns that combine subtlety with attraction: think sparkle and brightness, but not from a spotlight. I messaged a friend about my Baby Cricket patterns this morning, and that fly is a good example of what I’m talking about.

The Baby is my own smaller modified version of Ed Shenk’s classic Letort Cricket. I use a peacock herl chenille body, tied by spinning the herl in a dubbing loop, fold black Antron yarn for the underwing, and tie my wing and head with black deer or elk hair just like Ed’s original. The herl gives off some subtle reflections as the fibers move a bit in the current, and the black Antron reflects light, though quietly. I confess I have not taken any nine pound browns on the Baby Cricket like Ed Shenk and Ed Koch did on the original Letort Cricket, though I did get one that was better than five!

If you have not read Selectivity, I highly recommend that you get a copy. Read it several times, as there is a lot to be learned within its pages. Matt is a brilliant angler and writer and he put a lot of his considerable knowledge and passion into that book.

I have been sitting here at my bench thinking about the week to come, and the balance between warming water and snowmelt. There is still plenty of the stuff on the ground down here in Crooked Eddy and there’s more up in the higher elevations where our rivers are born. The more sun we get the more it will warm the rivers, but the more sun the more snowmelt. There may well be a point in which the negative effect outweighs the positive.

I am resigned to the fact that I’ll be working my flies past a few passive/dormant trout at best, though still hopeful that the warming trend will activate their feeding urge before snowmelt brings high, cold, off-color water and shuts them down again. While my angler’s soul may be begging for a rising trout, I know that plea will remain unanswered. I’ll have to present something with the right combination of movement and attraction and hope a few of my casts will bump off one of the rocks that has a trout behind it. I’ve got an idea…

Yesterday’s sunshine has been forgotten, and our landscape clings to its snow and ice. Yet another cold snap will be ushered in today, with temperatures dropping through the twenties where they will stay for a few days. I had hoped to fish yesterday, when the afternoon sunshine raised the air to forty degrees. Instead I listened to the ballgame on the radio and watched the river gage to see if that sunlight would warm the water to a fishable temperature. I listened to the entire game. There is light snow flying about as I write.

The cold snap will continue through the weekend, but there is hope for the following week, and enough warmer air and sunshine to bring about fishable conditions.

I’ve busied myself with some reading, Hewitt’s rewritten version of “Telling on The Trout”, browsing cane rods and classic British reels and spending some time just thinking about spring. I plan to get back to filling a pill bottle for a friend today, though I want to bring my tying desk back to order first. A fly tyer’s station tends to acquire objects as flies are produced. Mine has scattered materials, notebooks, mail, a hat for when the sun appears and blinds me through the small window above the desk. I like to see the curly maple table, smiling underneath all of that clutter.

When I was getting this little house up to par before the full fledged move, I searched first for some sort of affordable antique desk. I learned something about antique dealers in the process: they don’t seem to keep regular hours. It took several trips to catch even those with published hours “in” so that I could browse. I found nothing, then decided to build my own fly tying desk. I found a local hardwood mill and drove up early one summer morning to see what they had available. That’s when the curly maple caught my eye. They glued and planed a large and beautiful top for me, leaving me to square it up by cutting the ends, build four hardwood legs, sand vigorously, and apply my antique maple stain and several coats of polyurethane. Curly maple has been my favorite wood since I first laid eyes on it!

There are too many feathers and furs and hooks and hair stored around my desk, one of the problems of passing thirty years as a fly tyer. Of course there are still boxes of items left over from the fly shop, materials I carried but don’t regularly use in my own flies, particularly now that the majority of my creations are dry flies. I store them, give some away when I have the chance. I still find it hard to pass a fly shop without stopping in, browsing, and adding something to my store of materials. My walls are filled with pictures and shadowboxed flies, shelves with books and magazines, some with memories attached; the trappings of a life outdoors.

I came upon another old fishing log yesterday, perhaps the first I ever kept…

October 18, 1991 Gunpowder Falls: Beautiful day! 75 degrees F. Fished with Pap’s bamboo rod for the first time! Four brown trout on an Elk Hair Caddis #18. 4 to 5 inches, riffles and runs. One brook trout on a Blue Winged Olive #18 10″, riffles. One brown trout (the olive again) 12″, riffles. Reading the entry I am back there, feeling the sunshine on my face and the grin as that gorgeous wild brookie puts a good bend in that old H-I!

July 12, 1992 Letort Spring Run – Barnyard & Bonny Brook, 5 to 10 AM, Muggy & hot! Only one riser seen in a castable lie – he was taken. A few others were heard but not seen. Saw one 5-7 lbs. at old concrete @ Stone House in Barnyard. German brown trout, #16 Letort Cricket, 18″. Oh I remember that morning, my first big trout landed from the hallowed Letort! There used to be a big deadfall tree right in the middle of the Barnyard Pool, clustered with watercress and odd clumps of water weeds trapped among the snags, and I saw the rise, a tiny, brief little ring on the surface just at the edge where the current swirled and dove beneath the clustered weeds and branches. There was a tiny whirlpool there, and my fly danced slowly around it just long enough for the trout to take it! He was fully beneath the weeds and the tree, and my rod doubled over when I struck him! I was proud when I turned him in my net, dark and beautiful.

Back then I would travel from Maryland in darkness, timing my arrival in the meadows for first light. The huge, legendary Letort browns would still be out feeding as the sky gradually lightened in the southeast. How many times I was crouched in the tall grass, motionless and watching, when a big vee wake came streaking fifty feet downstream! On those days I’d get a glimpse of two or more feet of brown trout as they rushed past over top of the weeds, my heart pounding. Those were the trout The Master would catch, fifty years on the Letort telling him where they would be foraging before wicked daylight sent them fleeing for sanctuary. Where I fished with my eyes, he fished with knowledge and instincts.

I appreciate that even more now, as after nearly thirty years on these Catskill rivers I sometimes pull it off: knowing where a trout will rise, and knowing what he will take and when before he reveals himself.

The rain flirts with us, and disaster, at least for my hopes for an afternoon on the river. Any significant rainfall will bring rapid snowmelt and flooding. If we can get through the day we will avoid the floods for now, with freezing temperatures predicted by sunset, along with an overnight low of eleven degrees. Imagine me, praying for a hard freeze.

There are thirty days to endure before the Opening Day of trout season, New York’s last Opening Day it seems. New regulations will take effect creating a year round season, something many of us are not all that happy about. I would like to do some fishing during these next thirty days, for it has been far too long since I walked along a river.

My dry fly season began on March 27th last year. I was out on the Mainstem doing my winter thing, and the sun warmed the air and water just enough to awaken a handful of blue winged olive mayflies. I saw a couple of pop up rises in open water, one here, one there, and then a trout actually began rising where the still frigid current roiled over and around a fallen tree. I watched the little olives dancing down on the roll of current as I built my leader out to dry fly capabilities, and every once in awhile one of them disappeared in a bubble. After several casts, a few just to get back the feel of the right subtle check to the rod that puts some slack in the tippet, my size 20 CDC sparkle dun disappeared in one of those bubbles too. There was never another foot long brown trout so appreciated and so lauded with praise as that one: a rising trout taken on a dry fly a good three weeks before I had any right to expect it!

I was so jonesed I started fishing seriously the following week: April 5th, 45 degree water and a few flies but no rises; April 6th the magic 50 degrees, what looked to be Quill Gordons, and no rises; April 7th sunny and 67 with the water at 50, a few little olives and caddis and…no rises! The next day I dropped the boat in and floated solo on a cloudy windy day, finally finding a couple of fish rising half heartedly at the last stop, after four o’clock. I got one hookup, but the fly pulled free. Once again an early spring simply teased me until the rising and catching phase of fishing started in the third week of April.

Over all the years I fished the Catskills as a visitor there seemed to be a pretty regular pattern. Finding mayflies and rising trout in the third week of April is what I have come to know as a normal spring. An early season hatch or a late one deviates from that norm by roughly one week. My two retirement years have followed the pattern, with the good fishing starting during that third week, even though I was free to get out there earlier and did.

I guess the point of this is that the thirty day wait is truly, honestly something like fifty days long for the dry fly fisherman. Then again, most of us just want to get out on the river and go fishing; particularly during a long, cold winter like this one. That is why I hope the snow melts slowly and recharges the mountain springs and fills the reservoirs; what’s good for the trout is good for the angler in the long run.

Let’s face the fact that high, cold, muddy water isn’t conducive to any kind of fly fishing. If I have to sit inside for another couple of weeks and knaw on an old cork rod grip, so be it.

I have talked recently with one of my good friends, and we are very hopeful that he will get a chance to come up and fish this year. Memory fails me a bit, but I don’t believe we have fished together for more than four years. Of course the pandemic still dictates the majority of both our lives, so we’ll need more than some fair winds to make that happen. I have started a pill bottle for him to promote a little good mojo in that direction. Old guys have a lot of empty pill bottles lying around and they make perfect “fly boxes”. I filled a few of them up for friends last year, even though we didn’t exactly get a chance to fish together. There were at least a couple of chances to fish apart.

Old fish poles, tomato stakes, them old wooden poles… they have been called many things by the modern fly fishers. Like so many in our society today, they are obsessed with technology. Why study the old masters, why learn the traditions when one can pull up some app on their phone to tell them where to catch a fish? They miss so much of what makes fly fishing a lifelong passion!

Certainly, I began this journey with a graphite fly rod, though the history and the traditions of the game enthralled me from the outset. That history, and the people who made it, drew me first to Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley, the pivotal site of the second great revolution in American fly fishing. Following that history along the highway north, I came at last to the Catskill Mountains and stepped into the hallowed waters of the Beaverkill. Along the way I read, groundbreaking works by current anglers, thinkers and experimenters, and always the classic tomes by those who came before us; the teachings of the dry fly.

After a few years of fishing, split bamboo entered my world when my uncle handed me my late grandfather’s fly rod. I fished it with reverence and an appreciation of my own humble history. More than twenty-five years ago I made a new friend, Tom Smithwick, and acquired a beautiful little bamboo rod that he had designed and made with his own hands. That rod truly awakened me to the magic of bamboo.

Ed Shenk had already opened my eyes to the pleasure of fishing short fly rods, and Tom’s amazing craftsmanship taught me what care and tradition could produce. The beautiful little rod was crafted in one piece, as lithe and light as the quicksilver streams I trod with it. It was designed for a four weight fly line, so I spooled one half of a double taper Cortland line upon my smallest CFO reel for a perfect balance.

Tom’s masterpiece was not limited to close quarters work. On the meadows of the Falling Spring I made pinpoint casts and battled wild browns and rainbows much larger than my mountain trout, and learned the power of the magical golden grass that rod makers call Tonkin cane.

As my interest grew I found a young rod maker in eastern Pennsylvania, travelled to meet him and wrote a feature for the newspaper about his journey in discovering the craft. I was talking about that meeting at the Fly Fishers Club of Harrisburg when my companion mentioned another young rod maker right back home in our town of Chambersburg. Meeting Wyatt Dietrich drew me deeper into my quest for cane, as his youthful enthusiasm was equaled only by the skill and craftsmanship displayed in his gorgeous, deeply flamed fly rods. I began to long for an all around dry fly rod, one I could fish on the classic Catskill rivers, as well as our limestone springs.

Wyatt and I met on one of the Falling Spring’s meadows, an open area perfect for casting. He brought several rods for me to cast, his Dream Catchers, and one 7 1/2 foot 5 weight stole my heart. The taper he told me was taken from an old F.E. Thomas rod, one of the classic makers from the Golden Age, and he agreed to make one just for me. I chose a special reel seat hand made here in the Catskills, my own little mojo to make the rod at home here as well as in the water meadows. That rod has visited all of my favorite waters. It has landed the largest wild trout I have ever been blessed to cast a dry fly to, and my two largest Catskill browns since retiring here beside the rivers of my heart.

Eventually the ghosts of the past called me and I let some vintage rods seduce me. Whether one of those accompanies me, a Dream Catcher, or one of Dennis Menscer’s masterful wands, I feel the magic and the history each time I walk along the rivers of my heart, a treasure born of the lovely reed in my left hand.

I long ago heard the siren call of the dry fly, and there is no better, more perfect way to offer it to the shy trout than with some lithe rapier of cane!

The Fly Fishers Club of Harrisburg is one of the oldest and most unique angling clubs in the United States, begun by Charles Fox and Vincent Marinaro with a luncheon in the winter of 1947. A dinner banquet was included the following year, attended by Fox and Marinaro and an estimable group of fly fishers from the region and elsewhere including Edward Ringwood Hewitt, George Harvey and Alfred W. Miller, aka Sparse Grey Hackle. The club became noteworthy for the papers presented by various members at the annual luncheon, as these men proved to be some of our nation’s most forward thinking anglers.

In 1997, the club published the papers from the first half century in a book entitled Limestone Legends, that year embarking upon its second half century. During my years in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley I was a regular attendee at the dinner banquets, though I had always been interested in the smaller gatherings for the luncheons. Having fished the limestone springs albeit daily for six years, and having written a weekly outdoor column for the Chambersburg newspaper for four, I stated my desire to present a paper myself. I was warmly received and offered Selective Trout and the Spark of Life to the luncheon gathering on April 2, 1999.

Since those days, and with more than two decades of additional experience in chasing and deceiving selective trout, or not, I find myself more firmly entrenched in my own theories as shared in that paper. I would like to share it now with any who choose to visit this blog and read a bit. Perhaps it will inspire thoughts and ideas and lead some of you to observe and experiment.

I have been a fortunate angler. I have enjoyed the privilege of learning much of what I know of this divine avocation on one of Nature’s grandest stages; the limestone springs of our Cumberland Valley.

These waters have been an inspiring classroom, their intricate currents, astounding bounty of trout foods, and sleek, shy wild trout have offered an amazing mixture of beauty, challenge, thrill and bafflement! These trout are truly wild, as wary as any the fisher might find, yet they are also schooled in the ways of man: the looming predator with is skinny sticks.

I have been blessed with the knowledge of many of our sport’s finest anglers. Hundreds have freely given their words, all through the great literature of fly fishing. Fewer in number, but having even greater impact, are those with whom I have shared time on bright waters, and precious moments in conversation in lesser environs. Ed Shenk, Joe Humphreys and Gary LaFontaine are chief among these, and to them I offer my sincere thanks for sharing their insights and friendship.

Selectivity: Classic and Modern

What is a selective trout? By the classic, and purely scientific definition, he is a creature acting at the peak of his marvelously adapted instincts. He feeds on that specific stage of one specific aquatic organism which is most abundant during a discreet interval of time, and which, through a combination of it’s behavior and the existing stream conditions, requires the least expenditure of energy to capture.

The primary demonstration of classic selective feeding that anglers are apt to encounter, occurs during an emergence of aquatic insects. A superb example: an emergence of baetis mayflies experienced last winter on a Pennsylvania limestoner.

Emerging in a riffle, where it diffused into a flat pool, caused many of the tiny flies to struggle to cast off their nymphal shucks. The trout of the pool found these struggling, half emerged nymphs the most easily available fodder. Various duns, both hackled and otherwise were refused, until a CDC emerger of my own design was offered, changing the tide abruptly.

I caught wild browns readily for close to an hour, then found the fly had lost favor. Scrutinizing the surface, I found primarily drowned, yet fully emerged duns scattered in the film. A change to a CDC comparadun brought several more trout to hand. Classic selective feeding; met, observed and mastered!

I believe that many of our fisheries have evolved another form of selective feeding behavior, which I shall refer to as modern selectivity. If you angle the hallowed waters of the Letort and Falling Spring, I feel assured you have born witness to this modern selectivity, whether you have considered it as a phenomena or not.

I define modern selectivity as a behavioral response, and I believe it is a learned response created by the trout’s marvelous adaptive abilities and the ever increasing angling pressure found upon our catch and release waters.

How many times have you observed trout feeding ever so selectively on a specific natural which is anything but abundant at that point in time? Perhaps you have encountered some of the Letort’s curious sippers; fish who take only three naturals in an hour’s time. A prime example comes to mind.

The scene is Centre County’s Spring Creek, three weeks into the sulfur hatch on that stream, and a lovely procession of duns floats through a large, flat pool; a picture book hatch. The trout take a natural only occasionally, with no rhythm or regularity. Three anglers combine to take one small trout during two hours of intense and careful fishing.

After trying thirteen distinctly different sulfur patterns representing various life stages and shades of color, all to no avail, I contented myself with close observation of the scene before me. Perhaps one or two of every few hundred duns exhibited movement, a slight tremor of the legs and wings, and only those were taken!

I do not make this assertion based upon casual observations. I watched dozens of duns drift exactly over the lie of a particular trout with no response whatsoever; nary an inspection rise was revealed. I observed several different trout from a distance of a few feet, and noted the identical behavior for each individual. I believe this was indeed a learned response, induced by three weeks of nightly, heavy fishing pressure.

Few anglers of experience would dispute the notion that that we educate our catch-and-release trout with poor casting, unduly heavy lines and leaders, and poorly tied flies. But think for a moment of our wildlife’s wonderful natural ability for adaptation – do we not also educate them to our better presentations, flies and finer tackle?

In five years of intense fishing on the Falling Spring, I have seen the trout become more difficult to deceive. I have had to continually adapt my tackle, flies and techniques to take these fish consistently. Gentlemen, I believe in this phenomenon of modern selectivity because I have lived it!

An Approach, Perchance A Solution

As I alluded to in my opening statements, my theories and approach to fly design have been shaped in no small way by my association with three of our finest anglers and writers. My own inquiring nature has led me to explore the topic further, and the pursuit has been the seed of great joy for me.

If asked to describe my approach to fly design, I would synthesize it’s essence with the phrase, the heart of imitation and the soul of impressionism. I firmly believe that consistent success on wild, yet educated trout, can only be achieved with due attention to producing patterns that are good imitations of the natural food organisms. Yet imitation alone is not enough.

To consistently fool difficult trout, our flies must give a strong impression of life! Wary, heavily pressured trout see far too many common, yet well tied imitations. While some take them at times, many have learned to be more selective. Life, more simply movement, is the key to triggering the more reticent, modernly selective trout to take a fly.

The traditional approach to tying lively flies has involved the use of soft, natural materials: marabou, various aftershaft feathers, ostrich herl and soft hackles are standards in this regard. More recently, cul-de-canard feathers have triggered a small revolution in tying. CDC feathers move, and offer natural flotation and wonderful translucence, due to their ability to capture thousands of tiny air bubbles within their matrix of fibers.

Bugginess, that wonderfully spiky, disheveled appearance derived from dubbing with hare’s mask or squirrel furs is successful because the tiny guard hairs and bits of underfur move, not because these flies appear nondescript!

Today we are blessed with innovation from many quarters. Synthetic materials offer new and remarkable properties to enhance our fly patterns. Some tiers have gone the route of making all synthetic imitations, while others have used only dry fly hackle as a concession to tradition in their synthetic based patterns. I have found my needs best served by combining the attributes of both natural and synthetic materials to create my original trout flies.

I developed an early affinity for blending dubbing furs, due primarily to my attempts to match the subtle coloration of naturals without buying every shade of dubbing ever marketed. Meeting Gary LaFontaine increased my interest in Antron, and I began to incorporate some of the material in most of my dubbing blends. Our conversations caused me to think more about light reflection, and I realized that tiny glints of light, and streams of air bubbles emanating from a drifting fly created the impression of movement and thus life.

When I first saw Lite Brite in a fly shop in the early 1990’s, I immediately seized it and incorporated a small amount into various nymph blends. Multiblending was born! Blending Antron and Lite Brite with a base of fur of natural or dyed squirrel gave me the ultimate nymphs. My flies were buggy with natural mottling, thanks to the short barred guard hairs of the squirrel, and the thin Antron and Lite Brite fibers both moved and reflected light!

Observing the wonderful translucence created by the combination of fur and Antron made me delve further into this aspect of blending. When I set out to create a better, more realistic imitation of the ubiquitous Gammarus scuds of the limestone springs, I sought to replicate both the clear exoskeleton and the colored internals of the natural with a dubbing blend.

The blend derived utilized three materials, and is so clustered with air bubbles when wetted that it perfectly duplicates the effect of the natural’s olivish underbody, viewed through it’s clear exoskeleton. Imitation achieved, with a strong impression of life, and strong properties of attraction! Mark’s Limestone Shrimp has become my most productive and reliable fly for the limestone springs.

As I continue my personal inquiry into solving the puzzle of modern selectivity, I concentrate my efforts toward replicating both the appearance and movement of the natural. CDC has been invaluable when working up improved dry flies, cripples and emergers. It is a material best suited to scruffiness and disarray! That is to say it is most effective when not clipped just so.

While natural furs predominate in my dubbing blends, it is rare that they don’t include a little Antron or similar synthetic; something to add some sparkle, collect a few air bubbles, or quiver a little as the fly drifts by.

Ed Shenk’s influence is felt every time I form a dubbing loop, and I use the technique frequently in my tying. Furs, feathers, synthetics: all can be utilized to great advantage with a dubbing loop technique. The key is the fact that the fibers of whatever material you use are anchored to the hook on one end, and free to move with the subtleties of the currents on the other.

My thousands of hours of on-stream observations and experiences have convinced me that this approach, utilizing both natural and synthetic materials to produce lifelike and lively imitations, is a key to the future of angling in the face of modern selectivity. A second avenue exists to dealing with this phenomenon, that of modifying our tackle and techniques of angling.

Clearly, despite great strides over the past two decades, there are solid limitations inherent in our tackle. We fish today with lighter and more buoyant lines than a decade ago. Four weight rods are common on our Eastern streams, replacing the sixes once though ideal. Two and three weight outfits have become increasingly common among serious fly fishers, as the need for improved presentations has evolved. Orvis’ One Weight, considered an affectation at it’s introduction, has been joined by an ought weight today, but there is very little frontier left in that direction.

The same hold true for fly lines, the gentlest tapers available today being near the minimum needed to present long leaders, long tippets and a fly. 6X tippet is routine for most anglers today, even for larger flies. Five years ago I sold very little 7x in my fly shop. Today it is a constant seller, and 8X gathers no dust. A new player in the tackle arena has introduced 10X tippet material for 1999, but is it 10X in truth? By the existing standard of 0.001″ difference in diameter per “X” it is not. Measuring 0.0027″ it is only 3 ten thousandths thinner than 8X – another frontier exhausted. We must connect the fly to the leader with something.

If we accept that our tackle has reached the practical limit of refinement, only our angling techniques offer hope for advancement. Fly casting is a lifelong pursuit, and challenging oneself to improve is requisite. The process, once a reasonable level of skill has been achieved, is a slow one, though certainly worthwhile. The tactics of approach and wading offer some room for improvement, and patience and streamside observation may be the best teachers of these lessons.

When all is considered, creativity at the tying bench may indeed be our best avenue for advancing the art of fly fishing into the future. Our goal is simply the adaptation of our practiced art of deception to match the marvelous capacity for adaptation inherent in our finned adversaries.

I awakened to four inches of fresh snow, the beginning of a new week and a new weekly total. That brings us to about a foot accumulated over the past week, causing me to don knee boots to wade over to my drift boat to dig it out and free the tarpaulin from it’s sheath of ice. There is a lot of the stuff in my yard, and it has demonstrated staying power with the sustained cold.

The Postal Service is having their fun with me again: promising my packets of fly tying materials, even showing my long awaited silk on its tracking to be expected yesterday, and then failing to deliver. Perhaps tomorrow.

There are some new colors of the silk that lets me craft beautifully translucent flies, a couple of Charlie Collins’ gorgeous dry fly capes, and an assortment of hooks and threads, all headed here from points west and east. I would love to see a mass landing tomorrow afternoon, as these treasures would give me the spark to get my fly tying going once again. Some tiny hooks have found their way into my vise this past week, leaving as a dozen tricos, a few Shenk Doubles and half a dozen little rusty spinners. Such have been the fruits of my summer dreaming…

I hesitate to mention the forecast, lest I somehow jinx the possibility of a little respite. There’s snow tomorrow you see, though the daily highs could begin a brief warming trend for this last week of February, and it could be enough to get my legs back into waders, my feet into boots. We will see what develops.

I came upon an old fishing journal yesterday while sorting through my bookcases. My fishing library grows a bit each winter, thanks to the used book dealers, and it becomes necessary to do some moving and rearranging. The hunting titles here in my tying room have dwindled, as more have been moved to the living room case to make room for the fishing tomes.

That old journal contained my thoughts and notations from my first trip to the lovely Deerfield River in the Massachusetts Berkshires, the hills from which our clan flowed. The Deerfield was my grandfather’s river. Born in the mountains near Savoy, Al had fly fished the various brooks that fed the great river, as well as the Deerfield itself. He laid the footsteps along the water, the tracks that I would eventually follow.

I never had the chance to fish with my grandfather, though his last bamboo fly rod was handed down to me as a bridge to that part of the family history. I wanted to take that rod back home, to angle the Deerfield with Pap’s fly rod, and catch a trout to complete the crossing.

I had planned the trip with the help of a customer from my fly shop. Joe hailed from the Berkshires and still travelled back to visit and fish the river from his home in Hagerstown, Maryland. He put me in touch with his friend Paul who lived further east in Massachusetts and angled the Deerfield regularly. We met there on Labor Day weekend 1998, below Fife Brook Dam, and I rigged Pap’s 9 foot Horrocks-Ibbotson fly rod with a big Medalist reel and one of the Royal Coachmen dry flies I had tied for the occasion; my grandfather’s favorite fly. My journal entries for the trip read as follows:

September 6, 1998

This lovely afternoon I stood at last in Alfred’s river, the Deerfield. I knotted a size 16 Royal Coachman to the tippet and cast it upon the bright waters with his rod. The fishing was difficult after the water receded from the day’s release, and I rose only two, landing a beautiful fourteen inch bow on the rod with a size 18 BWO CDC comparadun.

Thursday morning and the sun is with us again! I am late this morning, as a fine New England cold has blurred my head and cost me sleep: my reward for hard fishing through Labor Day’s downpour; with both rain jackets in the car.

Backlighted by the window, I fumbled through tying three little 22 dries, which I hope might entice the reticent Fife Brook trout. Sparkle yarn and dun CDC, so simple really, yet a task to tie when you cannot see. I’ve carried a portable light on every trip but this one, and never needed it until now.

My quandary is whether to fish the Deerfield this morning or explore some smaller streams, leaving the great river until afternoon.

I tried a lovely stretch of open water on the Deerfield, casting a cricket along likely bankside lies. No trout were encountered, and the wind soon rose with a fury. As it blew my hauled line back at me, I surrendered to the obvious, and drove up and over the mountain to Adams.

At dinner last evening, Fred and Marilyn Moran invited me to use their tying bench at their Points North Outfitters fly shop. Their hospitality was welcomed, as I fashioned five size 20 olive ESP’s. I was directed to a lovely tumbling little brook, the South Branch of the Hoosic along Route 8, and spent the afternoon raising browns and brookies to my Letort Cricket and Fox Squirrel Special. I landed ten to thirteen inches, loving every moment of it!

The Deerfield has been a harsh taskmaster. She has tried my patience with her recalcitrant trout. They have followed no rhyme or reason, one responding to one fly, the next to another.

Last evening, Saturday, I returned to the river after spending the day fishing some smaller brooks near Windsor. I found a stretch to myself , somewhere above Florida Bridge, and angled for an hour or so. Once again the habitat looked wonderful, and not a single trout showed himself. I was tired and weary with this confounded cold, and let my mind lapse momentarily. I started back toward town then panicked, realizing I had not taken down my rod and put it in the car. A return and frantic search yielded nothing, and at last darkness and rain overtook my efforts. An additional search on Sunday proved fruitless as well. Perhaps it was left behind for a reason. Perhaps my subconscious left the rod and reel behind that Alfred’s spirit might have its use to angle eternity.

Sunday, my last morning’s fishing of the trip. I awoke late, having turned off the alarm at five, then drifting off for an hour and a half. The clouded sky seemed appropriate for my clouded head, and I grabbed coffee and donuts as I hastened to the river.

The sun burned through the clearing sky as I donned waders and boots, deciding my course would be upstream to the second pool.

The pool lay in shadow as I entered it, and at first betrayed no activity. I took a moment simply to savor the beauty before me, dwelling upon the fact that my Deerfield oddysey was coming to a close. Stringing the four weight, my five being in the hands of another, I noticed the first quiet rise. Cashing my bets, I knotted one of my size 20 LaFontaine Emergents to the long Mirage tippet.

My efforts were in vain, as the few occasionally rising trout ignored my flies. Confounded drag! Long casts across too many variable currents made good floats problematic with the experimental leader system I have been using. I dug into my vest for the Spring Creek line and Harvey leader I hoped would make the difference. Re-rigged, my drifts improved, and at last I raised a fish! The rainbow tugged and ran, and I enjoyed every moment of him, such interludes being far too spare on this journey.

After catching my “one fish” for the morning, I embarked upon a mission to miss more strikes than I have had at any outing on this river. I asked the gods to grant me just one big fish, a fish to take the fly and run strong and free, a fish to pin my memories upon! And the gods obliged. On my next cast upstream, a cast to open water searching, not covering a rise, a fish took the fly. He pulled hard, much harder than any trout I had tasted on this river, and he started away upstream, strong, the rod throbbing as he moved, the line slipping grudgingly through my fingers.

In the short span of time before his run took the last of the slack line from my hands, fate caused me to look down, down to see the fly line tangled in the tub of floatant dangling from my vest. Frantic fingers tried for microseconds to undo the tangle…and then he was gone.

And so ended my longed for search for my grandfather’s ghost upon the mighty Deerfield, the trout river of dreams. When I was very young, I recall my grandfather going north on fishing trips, and I recall the great rewards of those trips when he returned. This was back in the days before styrofoam coolers, and he carried a large round, galvanized tub. It was filled with huge rainbow trout in layers separated by ice and newspaper.

The family legend has it that Pap once spent six hours on a rock in the middle of the river, caught by the fast rising water when the Fife Brook power dam started generating early. The Deerfield is paved with rounded cobblestones, large ones and small ones, and all as slippery as eels! The tricky wading was a major factor in my making those long casts that proved the undoing of my drag-free drifts when I did find a few rising trout. River flows rise quickly from 125 cfs “fishing flow” to somewhere between 800 and 1,200 cfs during the daily generation period.

I found my grandfather’s spirit as I had hoped, made some new friends, and developed a fondness and a respect for Alfred’s river. I even added my own small hard luck story to the family legend. That was a heck of a trout that headed north with my fly before my tippet succumbed to the knot the coiled fly line tied round my floatant.