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Itinerant angler/mountain biker/raconteur David Asselin doesn’t let anything slow him down.
Patrick L. Sullivan
Itinerant angler/mountain biker/raconteur David Asselin doesn’t let anything slow him down.
Ahh, spring. The balmy breeze. The brilliant sunshine. The plants poking up through the dead leaves.
And the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s trout trucks are rolling.
Only the last item is true.
We’re having a typical Northwest Corner spring, which means fits and starts, two steps forward and one step back.
And the first annual Tangled Lines Cliche Contest.
The Blackberry River is my preferred early season location, because it’s close and what it lacks in wild trout it makes up for in the difficulty of the terrain.
On the one really springy day recently, when it was warm enough to break a sweat, I spent an enjoyable couple of hours playing with rookie trout and finding out if I remembered my knots.
Of course the weather turned on a dime and the next couple of days were miserable.
The trout sulked and the wind made my teeth chatter.
I did meet itinerant angler/mountain biker/raconteur David Asselin. His nifty RV was parked at Beckley Furnace when I hove to. I noticed fly fishing gear by the cabin door and ambled over to say howdy-doo.
With this guy, a simple greeting opened the floodgates.
I learned quickly and in no particular order that he’s a Connecticut original, that he’s been all over the world including Antarctica, that he’s new to fly-fishing, that he teaches mountain biking in Montana from May through September, and that he’s a double amputee.
I had already deduced that. Being a trained observer, I noted the sticker on the RV that says “I’m a double amputee. I’m not useless!”
Turns out he froze his feet off. In Colorado, not Antarctica.
He cheerfully informed me he’s got no toes or heels, just three inches and change of remaining foot on both sides.
He does not wear prosthetic devices. He does get around, carefully.
I pushed off and worked the stream for a couple hours, with minimal results. Then I caught up with him and we sat on the bank and yakked some.
This evolved into an impromptu dry-dropper lesson.
This resulted in David catching a stocked brookie, on a size 16 Bread and Butter nymph tied on about two feet of 4X fluorocarbon tippet, in turn attached to the bend of the hook of a size 10 Parachute Adams dry fly. He caught a couple more, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke.
The stars were aligned, for once. (I make that four cliches, if you’re counting.)
Alas, duty called and I had to depart. We exchanged information and a few days later I got an email detailing his plans for the next couple of weeks.
With a little luck, we can connect again and continue the lessons.
Scolding department: Yes, the stocking trucks are rolling. No, you can’t keep them. Not yet.
Connecticut did away with a closed trout season a couple years back. But the regulations clearly state that it is catch and release until the old opening day, the second Saturday in April, at 6 a.m.
So you’re good to go at the crack of dawn on April 13.
I mention this because I saw people killing trout. I don’t know if it’s ignorance or indifference, but it is illegal.
Besides, after a life spent in a tank the fish are going to taste like fish food. Give them a chance to acclimate, and they might actually taste like something else. Trout, perhaps.
We’ll close here, after wishing you tight lines, which is cliche number five. Not bad for a 600 word piece.
Abstract art display in Wassaic for Upstate Art Weekend, July 18-21.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene from the Amenia garden tour.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else.
I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.