Bright Waters Catskill

We took a couple of short walks yesterday, brief visits to a couple of places along the riversides. I carried binoculars, not a fly rod, bundled up against the harsh cold wind. Rivers have risen once more, and I scanned the likely currents I hoped to see some signs of life, there were none.

It is twenty-one well frosted degrees here in Crooked Eddy, and the changeover has been complete. West and East Delaware reservoirs are spilling once more, and river waters that had warmed to sixty unexpected April degrees have tumbled down to forty.

It seems the pair of bamboo rods chosen for my first forays shall remain in their tubes a little longer.

A few more days to gain some strength and stability lost amid the turmoil of winter; a few more hours to tie another dozen flies augmenting my already burgeoning supply, and wait.

Winter whispered a little reminder after dawn, just in case we have forgotten is still in charge.

I find the thermometer dropping down below freezing is a gift. River flows had been far too warm for the middle of April after several eighty-degree days, so Nature’s little adjustment is welcome. I won’t be convinced that a more normal season of rainfall is due for the Catskills until I actually see it, feel it, and wade in cold, seasonal flows in it.

I would like to see perfect temperatures and good levels as May closes out and welcomes mid-June on the Beaver Kill, and I want to watch the capacities keep flirting with the 95% mark as the reservoirs reflect the early summer sun on a still morning. I want to thrill us a long, glorious season, the kind I know a Catskill Summer, with highs in the mid-seventies and cool mornings where the mist raises the hairs on my arms at daylight.

It seems like a long, dim tunnel is coming to it’s end, and there is just a glimmer ahead, with something bright and cool and wonderful.

The chill of the river penetrates despite the layers of fleece beneath my waders. I have a sense of tingling, every nerve, as I watch the soft kiss of his neb touches the surface, while the rings emanate outward. One foot glides above the cobble then nestles gently back down. The fifteen minutes I take to close the distance to fifty feet seems more than an hour. That neb and it’s rings continue, but at long intervals rather than the regular beats of a confident feeding trout on a steady hatch.

I cannot say that I have clearly seen a winged dun meet that neb, so I have knotted a flush lying pattern with a low CDC crown. The first back casts feel stiff, but the smooth power of the vintage bamboo and the line begins to flow, feeling familiar, and then the cast is away…

Sunday morning, and the third week of April begins. A chill has returned to the Catskills, snow showers lurk amid the weather forecast, and a too light rain is dripping on my roof.

We traveled to the Catskill Museum yesterday to tie a few flies for the Fly Tyers Rendezvous, the annual gathering held each spring by the Catskill Fly Tyers Guild. I saw some friends, proving I am still around, but I noted a much smaller group this year than memory recalls. It was a beautiful day, and I expected to see the Beaver Kill dotted with anglers as we drove along the Quickway, but their numbers proved also much reduced from the norm. Spring comes gradually, even after a good string of days that were downright summerlike.

I am still lingering, still wont to venture out to bright water. My hands may not feel the old strength, but for the grasp of a cork handled wand of split bamboo, yes! Time is my healer, and time is ever patient, so mine must match its duration of patience which my own.

I am just a bit closer each day. I still find signs though I remain short of my goal. I felt the tiredness yesterday afternoon, sitting there in the Wulff Gallery with eight dry flies tied before me.

If Nature graces with good hatches this season, the first comers I expect to debut this week. April’s third week I have known as a rare creature, a normal spring in these Catskill Mountains, no more often or no less than an early or late one. In truth, the difference amounts to a week, a brief time, yet to a winter bound angler who breathes not unless standing amid the dappled sunlight upon the river’s flow it seems an eternity.

It took me three tries, winding both tag ends of the 4X tippet material around the standing line, then catching as I pulled that blood knot smoothly tight: finger retraining after several months. A good sound knot is paramount, for we all know if its not.

The arthritis offers pain, stiffness particularly when cold, and the carpal tunnel robs the sensitivity, making it hard to feel that 4X, 5X, worse than anything finer. When thirty-five years has been a passion, there is hope a full supply of patience when things complicate the essential, like tying knots. The trout often shed their patience. No, truly that isn’t what I believe they are doing, they use theirs differently.

A big wild trout is an older wild trout, they may have been caught a time or two, more likely they have escaped from being caught perhaps quite a good many times. Breaking tippets is the tough way to escape. I think they prefer to escape from being caught by avoiding people and their flies, nets and all our paraphernalia. I think patience goes a lot into that. Patience to study everything of, about or near what they hope is a bug that catches their attention, before they choose to take it.

They remain patient, but even after they take that first bite, they just hold back before they take another. You or I see that first rise and we want to make a cast. Yea, we know it might be better to wait, but we saw that one and there might not be another, and while the line is already in the air while we are still convincing ourselves to be patient… Oh, we already hurried out that cast. How many times when that scenario played out that we never saw a second rise in that location, either to our fly or a live bug?

One rise doesn’t tell enough. Depending upon the location and conditions, that one rise hasn’t even told us that a trout is or has been anywhere nearby. Things splash into the water, fall into from overhead trees, blown in by the wind, etc.

If we are looking right at the event when it happens, chances are better we will see a better picture and be able to decide whether this was a fish’s rise or some other disturbance. If not, maybe not. One rise that tells us a fish took something from or near the surface, but it doesn’t tell us if that fish is stationary or moving, much less in which direction. Consider these facts and patience seems more important doesn’t it?

Years of time spent upon rivers in pursuit of trout will expand your patience, but it night also weaken your will to employ it. Whether you think of the works of the Red Gods, fishermen’s luck, etc. there are days when things fall to our favor and days when they fall on our head. Seems like which choices, decisions and moves turn out like golden on the best days, while the same choices, decisions and moves turn to crap on bad days.

When I recognize one of those other days, I try to think about the way I have been fishing and make the effort to change the decisions which guide my fishing. If I have been patient and methodical and reaping nothing, I will work harder to react to things quickly rather than analyzing everything before I make a cast. Fish a different type of water, cover more water or less, doing the opposite of what I have been doing without results.

Sometimes I just stop after the Red Gods have whooshed a big gust to send a dead tree branch crashing down on top of the big brownie I had been stalking twenty minutes to get into position to make the perfect cast to, and just blurt out a big loud, lusty laugh at myself and them!

Another morning, and the cusp of a very warm string of days begins. Alas, this is another doctor day, in fact the post-op checkup to see if the surgical nurse is pleased with my healing. I am hoping this will be the last hurdle, that the following days will be nothing more than the familiar dance with weather and the Red Gods, culminating that first, longed, cherished cast!

Forty-one days I have lost, stripped away, with all of the preamble I count toward spring. I have not set foot upon a river since January 13th, a single breath captured amid a long, frigid winter.

If I close my eyes I catch the vision. Scanning the horizon I note the first hint of movement. Straining for several minutes those clues morph into wings. Five, ten minutes later I can see them clearly, twos and threes dance down the rippled surface along the head of the run, lifting free and gaining flight. My hand trails in the current and I notice the warmth, the life it brings, until that final act, a flash of defiance where one beautiful pair of wings no longer bob and flutter!

Seven and a half feet of flamed bamboo flexes in my hand as a part of me, the soft curl of dusky line points to a new wing bobbing amid those same currents…

I wait, until I am bathed in the light and warmth of the air, and my soul joins with the spirits of the river gods once more.

What can I say, for I pushed through the film and perched myself at last upon the surface! Many people have played a part, my Cathy most of all, who handled the stress and worry while taking care of all of my needs, loving, nursing, and cheering for me to find a way to move forward. A certain fly fisherman newly met, played a major role. It is good here upon the surface, wings drying, upon the cusp of first flight.

With clear eyes seeing the Catskills before me, I am surrounded by the classic pre-spring pattern. The Beaver Kill flows at a wadable level, with it’s water temperatures rocking through the forties, teasing on the warmer days as it closes in toward the magic range which awakens the primary aquatic life, returns their world to the final days of the long sleep on the colder nights. All Delaware reservoirs are spilling, but light rain seems in the offing, leading their tailwater rivers to seek equilibrium and warming, clearing flows. Will the rivers be ready before I can meet them?

At last, I feel the urgency to take down my vest and work through its fly trays and pockets, readying my tackle for the spring. I can see the path through the riverbank, where it has been overgrown and strewn with the winter’s litter cluttered where water meets land. Body and spirit will be healed.

Now the decisions shall be addressed. Easing into the cast, shall my typical eight-footer get the nod? Leonard’s ACM has been scratching about my head all through this long winter, though the fringes of my thoughts have been thinking a seven-and-a-half? My namesake, the Thomas & Thomas Hendrickson, even the Winston? The sun is promised today, should not be the decision made outdoors on the grass?

Too many newly tied winter flies still hover here in pill bottles. They must be apportioned into the Wheatley boxes, and memory refreshened which nooks cradle Gordons Quills, Blue Quills or Blue-Winged Olives. Spring is nearly on upon us!

My wading staff will be cleaned and checked, for it’s steadiness helps my legs regain the feel of gravel and stone beneath my feet, as legs strengthen. Leaders, tippets and the reel themselves must be oiled and readied.

Winter coats shall be stowed, finally, and light insulateds, fleece and the rain jacket brought forth ready.

It is not yet daylight and my mind is reeling! So much to do, so many tasks usually apportioned over many weeks seem suddenly immediate. First though, I must stop and take a full breath of the new air.

Morning comes slowly, rising before three o’clock. A month of cobwebs begin to gradually clear of my brain. What to do fist? Breathe…

Twenty-four hours from now the waiting will end, but my thoughts and feelings remain a jumble. Just now I am doing my best to concentrate on the future: bright water, the light washing the riverscape, enlivening the somber colors and textures as the first hint of springtime is betrayed. In the distance I catch the first faint of spray of bubbles, a trout has taken a grayish dun amid the turmoil of the riffling currents…

My life has been on hiatus for more than a month, scrambling to put pressing matters in order, trying to not thinking of that first blush of spring dawning without me on a favorite reach of water. My tackle has yet to be readied for the new season, the new patterns are not fully ordered in the proper fly box. The season’s opening rod remains undecided as the reel will accompany it, and no thought of replacing last year’s old leader and tippet. If I was suddenly freed before a favorite pool at the perfect level, clear, and hosting a flotilla of Gordon Quills bobbing off the riffle upstream I would be completely unprepared.

The Beaver Kill has dropped into the upper range of wadable flows once more, though the water hovers near forty degrees. A warming trend should begin on Thursday. The first teasers, little stoneflies, a few tiny black caddis, or maybe the first scouts, could show themselves by the weekend. For me, even in the best situation, I will consider myself lucky to spend a bit of time enjoying that afternoon warmth in my porch chair. I would find myself very grateful to find myself in that porch chair.

If I make it to my porch chair, then I can begin to stock that fly box of new dries, sort through the vest that has languished since the beginning of last summer, decide upon the first fly rod and reel and put the new leader and tippet on the freshly cleaned line. In that porch chair I can dare, and plan and prepare for the glory of a new season.

Should the weather continue in a favorable trend, spring will likely flirt with spring and anglers next week. Save untold devilment on the part of the Red Gods, the third week of April should be the actual commencement of the new dry fly season. That is as about as close to a normal spring, that rare season that seems to occur once or twice a decade, that we get to experience in these Catskill Mountains.

It is a cold, damp, dreary April day in the Catskills, a very typical early spring day this time of year. Reservoirs are spilling in the Delaware watershed and the rivers are high and rising, and I am smiling. I cannot help but send my wishes to the Red Gods to maintain the status quo, for no matter the conditions might improve, I will not be along any of my favorite reaches of riverbank when Day Zero arrives on Monday.

As years flow downstream and seasons pass into memory, I find each spring, each dry fly season, and even each hour along bright water to become more precious. Those of us who can count our time along rivers in decades are quite aware of the unmistakable truth: there are fewer of those precious moments ahead than lie before.

There is a simple black aluminum fly box that has been filling with new patterns during these months of winter. New ideas, fresh thinking, flies I cannot wait to cast upon these Catskill rivers are waiting there. Despite the questions brought of droughts and hard winters, the magic and promise of the season just ahead sparkles. The promise lies just out of reach, still unattainable.

I cannot help myself from checking river gages and weather patterns. This year, the emergence of the season does not rule my fate. Other than the capriciousness of the Red Gods rule.

I saw the familiar pattern once more, the Beaver Kill dropped to kiss that 1,000 cfs threshold which fills my hand with a favorite six weight rod with a Gordon’s Quill knotted fast! Turning to the temperature page I saw the year’s first flirtation, passing the mid-forties. Yesterday’s rain and the river is rising again, and a cold day and night and those temperatures will retreat. I have danced to that tune for seven spring seasons. The grand difference is that I dictated my own terms for those seven years, able to venture forth and assessing the water flowing past my legs.

I find myself wishing for Nature and the Red Gods to delay that precious beginning of the dry fly season as much as possible.

A read through a favorite book, nor the tying of just a few more Hendrickson duns cannot quell the longing for bright water now, as March winds slowly into April.

I feel at ease at this time, sitting on a riverbank, watching the seasons from pass from winter unto spring, seeing it with my eyes and straining each speck of matter bobbing down the currents – is that at last a mayfly? Moving from my easy chair to my desk and back has no cure for my restlessness.

I wound my fingers around that grip and a smile crossed my face. I wasn’t standing at last in one of the rivers of my heart, though not within a hundred yards from bright waters, just standing in the yard, a double tapered line strung through those guides for the first time in months. The breeze held a chill despite the sunshine, but the motions of those first casts warmed the blood in that left arm, and the smile remained.

There was a question in the corner of my mind since I wrote the last words of my January column for the Catskill Fly Tyers Guild’s Gazette: just how would my Leonard 66ACM cast with a six-weight line? Feeling better a little every day, I decided to seek the answer.

I placed an LRH wound with a DT5 line in my right pocket and a Princess bearing a DT6 line in the left, and out to the lawn to see what that lithe shaft of vintage bamboo could tell me. The Red Gods as I lofted the first cast, pushing that cold breeze right in my face, felt just like old friends.

The five-weight felt familiar, and very capable to flex the rod cleanly. I tossed a few casts to limber up the house shuttered winter muscles and then traded reels. The Princess bore the same make and model of line, one of the 406 double taper lines. My Leonard rods are well acquainted with the 406 DT lines, performing better than any lines I have tried on all of them. Number six rolled out a longer cast in the face of that breeze, with no trace as over loading the ACM.

The legend of the Leonard ACM rods describes a special-order taper, designed to the desires of championship caster Authur C. Mills, with a heavier butt and a lighter tip. That lighter feel in the tip is clearly telegraphed to my hand, but its quickened enough to handle either line weight. With either line, the rod performs best with a light touch.

The true test to determine which line is my top choice will need time to get the rod on the river. Spending a day fishing through all of the changes the trout and those Red Gods have to challenge me will make that choice crystal clear!

I set to work this morning, one with a clear task ahead. I tied a dozen flies, particular patterns for that special little preparedness fly box for the beginning of the dry fly season. I know my season will not begin when I hoped and anticipated, for if that would be true, I would already have been out wandering a river.

Of course, Nature and her Red Gods will determine when that first hint of the angler’s season shall debut, as it has ever been and shall ever be. My own dealings apart with life I accept that my angling season shall be later than Nature’s caprices decree for the whole group of Catskill anglers. I do hope fervently that my season shall begin, and I have concentrated toward my own preparations, something I can control.

The preparedness box will not be stocked with Gordon’s Quills and Hendricksons, for there are some hundreds of patterns waiting in a pair of Wheatleys. No, this one will include the flies I do not expect to need.

The first half dozen tied this morning have been the summer’s delights, the ants: color black, size 18, split the group half standard and winged. Why? An early April pod of sizeable trout sipping something I could not see, refusing every fly of the season during the forty-five or so minutes they fed busily. I found the answer, sitting fifty yards away on a boulder mulling my failure, when one of their number landed upon my ear!

A pair of early black stoneflies came from the vise next. Ever valuable on my more southerly waters for decades, I have yet to see a Catskill trout take a one, not even when they are buzzing furiously half an inch above the surface. March’s water is far too cold! The day I find myself with not one of those stoneflies in my vest will certainly be the day when every Catskill trout I encounter will finally crave them, and be damned the thermometer!

There have various seasons when I have found good brown trout ignoring Hendricksons to take the nearly invisible tiny black caddis drifting surreptitiously down the current. I have neither seen a bona fide take to one of those tiny black caddis since my retirement, so a few patterns are another necessity in that preparedness box.

My old friend and mentor, Ed Shenk taught me to always carry a few sulfur mayflies every month of the year I visited the hallowed Letort. Such things can happen, and will say the Red Gods if the angler marches forth unprepared. Perhaps I should place a pair of sulfurs in that box too, no matter many miles I am distant from the fair Letort.

Spring lies so near, and yet so very far away! I have done my best to take the reins, dealt with my present situation, and worked toward a future upon bright water as soon as possible. Time will tell…

So, while I keep my mind focused, I have been reading through an old book on terrestrials, one I had never heard before. I found myself thinking about a class of bugs I honestly never paid much attention to. The more common flies don’t get attention when trout fishing is the subject, and it is easy to ignore several species: houseflies, deer flies and horse flies and their relatives. I decided to do something about that empty compartment in my terrestrial box.

What made me decide to come up with a new general bug to prospect with, whenever I notice any of those naturals? I recalled an unusual day just a couple of seasons ago. I slipped gently into the river one afternoon and found some unexpected hard rises. There were no aquatic insects hatching causing this serious feeding, so I immediately moved to offer some terrestrials. I went through several ace in the hole patterns with none of them interesting even an inspection rise.

Eventually, I succeeded to capture something from the drift. It looked that it might be a bee or Yellow Jacket, but it seemed to stuck together in some other material. I thought looked to be part of a nest. Some pretty strong gusty winds were blowing periodically, so it seemed to me that a nest in a tree may have been disturbed and coming apart. I was stumped to come up a dry fly to look and act enough like what I was seeing floating down to those trout. The event stopped after half an hour and all feeding ceased. That was my first bees in nest hatch, my first in 35 years and likely my last, but it did get me thinking.

Reading that old book made up my mind to design a general-purpose fly. The concept was a fly that could be used as a horsefly, deer fly or a housefly by tying it in a couple of sizes. I wanted something so that a change of color and the addition of a rib would imitate a bee or Yellow Jacket. I decided it to call the Trout Bug.

This pattern will be added to a small, early terrestrial box that will be tucked into my vest when I first fill it up for the beginning of the season. I want these always there. The first half-dozen of Trout Bugs were tied on classic dry fly size 12 hooks, a nice middle of the road size bug. I don’t want to carry of several sizes of these – I want a decent size two-winged some kind of a terrestrial fly that suggests a nice impromptu meal. The Trout Bug fits that bill.

Come summer, and I hope to spend a lot of long wonderful summers along the rivers of my heart, when I find some fine old brownie who isn’t impressed with my usual dry du jour, I will take a shot with one of those Trout Bugs. I think that might just turn the tide my way!

Just enough, glistening, frosted with white to bring the reminder that spring remains but a hope. Heady days, teased while imprisoned I watched, filling my lungs in the warmth air while the sun brought life in my bones, yet naught save watching and dreaming. My soul wishes to rush, embrace the season headlong, but the time is not mine.

My fate is in other hands, my plans belong to others, and my freedom and control has been stripped from me. At best, if the season shrinks for now, I will benefit. Lest I not miss a moment when it comes in due time.

I retreat in decades of golden moments in a blessed angling life.

I am wading the fringes of the West Branch, haunting the riverbank forsaken by the crowds. While the others search in vain for rises in mid-river, I alone find them, delicate, shy, sipping in the shallows, drawn to the smaller, ruddy duns, in the traces between the tossed slabs of rock… wolves!

The rain increases and the river rises steadily. I am working along the edge of a favorite bend, wading carefully lest the heavy flow takes me feet away from me. I am casting a big Isonychia, and the fly must all but touch the vegetation to draw a strike. When I probe successfully the in-between, I am rewarded: the lithe wand bucks with life and power as another brown departs from the edge and dives into the tumult of the rising water!

A morning, decades from the past, and I stalk the meadows of the limestone springs. Ed Shenk has shared the secret to his White Minnow, and I have crafted each from my vice in strict conformance to his instruction.

The seven-foot rod works in such close turns, and the line reaches to place the minnow just so, such that it slips beneath the surface that the current rushes beneath a dark little cavern. Twitched once, then twice, and the rod is alive and nearly taken from my grasp! A tense duel, unseen, until leviathan reveals in the light of day. Subdued, the fly slips easily and I, hands trembling, I guide him back into the silver froth!

Shall a new morning greet me at riverside?