Ah, what a year it was for wet flies and trout

On Wednesday, Nov. 4, I was prepared to leap from the bed at first light, drive 75 miles to Phoenicia, N.Y., and get in a couple of days of fishing on the Esopus Creek, which has an extended season through the end of the month.

Brown trout run up from the Ashokan Reservoir to spawn, and it can be an exciting time. Last year I caught a female brown that was clearly ready to get down, and as I noted at the time, playing it was like hooking a leg of lamb.

Except that legs of lamb don’t dive under rocks and swim in circles.

But my back lodged a formal protest, and there was no leaping out of bed. “Stagger” would be a better verb.

So let us revisit the Year in Fly-Fishing.

March: Unable to bear up under the relentless excitement of the professional basketball and hockey seasons, which were then winding down, I began haunting the West Branch of the Farmington River, in both Massachusetts and Connecticut, looking for places where the ice and snow had cleared out enough to fish. (These are year-round areas.) I was able to confirm that snow and ice are cold and slippery. 

April: Unable to bear up under the relentless excitement of the close of the basketball and hockey season, I started wetting a line wherever I could. Which was nowhere, because it stayed cold.

May: Dizzy from the incredible excitement of the NBA and NHL playoffs, I began fishing in earnest, concentrating on the Blackberry River, which fishes very well early in the season — especially in the squirrelly sections upstream of Beckley Furnace. I also discovered exciting items streamside, such as: an old boot; a deer skull (with antlers), picked clean; a Penguin paperback of “Lady Chatterly’s Lover,” much the worse for wear and undoubtedly flung away in disgust by a prudish AP English student; and the puzzling phenomenon of beer cans, coffee cups and food wrappers, neatly piled (as if waiting for Lady C.’s lover to saunter by and pick up by way of earning the weekly pay envelope).

June: Driven to a complete frenzy by the excitement of the NBA and NHL playoffs, now in their second full month, I ordered an 11-foot, four-weight rod to go with the 11-foot five-weight and the 10-foot five-weight that is really a six-weight. Using the three wet-fly system of the immortal Davy Wotton (the “Welsh Wizard of the Wet Fly”), I began fishing even smaller streams, like the Blackberry or the Woodland Valley Creek in New York, with the long rods. It was tricky, but it worked.

July: I spent July fishing wet flies almost exclusively, mostly on the Esopus, and with a variety of rods — the long ones, and the short ones, and the medium ones, and the bamboo ones. Conclusion: Fishing wet flies is very effective and is not dependent on the time of day.

August: Spent much of August floating around in a pontoon boat, catching largemouth bass, crappie, perch and other members of the lobster family. I resumed the instruction of my cousin Collin, who goes to college in Colorado, the lucky stiff. And I explored Sage’s Ravine for the first time, catching innumerable crazy brook trout out of holes that looked like isolated puddles.

September: With the New York Mets in the midst of an improbable run to the World Series, I fished more in the morning, so I wouldn’t miss anything on the baseball front. The Housatonic was low much of this period, which meant I caught a lot of smallmouth bass.

October: My back was sore. My right arm was sore. My brain hurt. Nonetheless, I continued to flog the waters, even indulging in a little straight-up dry-fly fishing.

It’s been a season of some experimentation and some exploring. It’s also been a time to consolidate what I have learned, mostly by failing, about leader construction, longer rods, two- and three-fly combinations, and how not to get tangled up in the wading stick.

Oh, yes — 2015 was the first year I have ever used a wading stick on a regular basis, after being on the receiving end of a kindly but stern lecture from one of the fly-shop guys. At age 53, I am no longer able to leap from boulder to boulder, wearing an old pair of sneakers. I am also not quite so sanguine about falling down. The stick saved me from injury, minor to severe, approximately 18 bazillion times this year.

And now it’s November, and time once again for the extraordinary excitement of professional basketball and hockey.

See you in 2016.