I recently spent a week chasing trout in the Catskills, and went back last week for a couple of days to button up the camp for the winter.
My accomplices in this endeavor were my nomadic attorney Thos. and my regular fishing buddy Gary.
A good fishing buddy is a rare find. Different anglers have different styles, and what I don’t want is a low-holer, or a fish bro, or someone who’s gonna spout Latin names of bugs at me.
It’s also good if someone has a truck. Gary does, and it holds copious amounts of stuff plus three of us.
Either the passenger ponies up for gas or picks up the lunch tab, preferably at the World’s Second-Greatest Restaurant, the Roscoe Diner.
(The World’s Greatest Restaurant is, of course, Mizza’s in Lakeville.)
In a previous incarnation, Gary built homes for the rich and clueless, which is how he can afford to be a serious trout bum now. On the long ride back to Phoenicia from the West Branch of the Delaware, he entertained us with amusing tales from this era.
Such as the time in the 1980s when the Famous Actor decided the Upper West Side condo needed crystals installed at the four compass points.
Bottom line: They had to rip up a lot of stuff but the condo’s chi is still humming along, 30 years later.
“The guy didn’t even live there,” said Gary. “He just kept it for his New York girlfriend.”
His what?
“Yeah, his New York girlfriend. He’d show up every once in a while for some movie bleep, and she’d be his girlfriend for a few days. Rest of the time she was on her own.”
“They bleeping explained it to me. He had the same deal with other women in other cities. Just matter of fact about it. The girl didn’t seem to mind.
“He told me that his spiritual advisor told him he needed to have the crystals put in. I don’t know how many people he had on his payroll.
“It was a pain in the bleep but KA-Ching!”
This year I discovered the Shandaken Wild Forest. This is described by the N.Y. Department of Environmental Conservation thusly: “Shandaken Wild Forest contains six different parcels, each with its own distinctive character. The many remnants of past industries found here including farms, sawmills, bluestone mining and tanneries, will intrigue those interested in Catskill history. “
I’ve been driving past the signs for these spots for decades and never took a look. It’s embarrassing.
Birch Creek is a squirrelly little brook. You get there by banging a sharp right off Route 28 in Pine Hill just before the long rise that tops out at the entrance to the Bellayre ski complex. Drive past a small neighborhood and take another right on a dirt road, and look for the blue and white DEC signs that indicate public access.
More accessible, far less squirrelly and also part of the Shandaken Wild Forest is Rochester Hollow, which is off Route 28 in Big Indian.
This involves a very short ride up a dirt road to a trailhead. The babbling brook is about 30 yards away.
My first attempt at Rochester Hollow during vacation was less than stellar. I managed a couple of wild browns but it was cold that day and I wasn’t feeling it.
Last week, between domestic chores, I took another crack at it.
Got a brookie right off the bat, and had both browns and brookies chasing big bushy flies on the surface.
Then the dang sun came out and it was behind me, causing my shadow to fall on the stream. This is not good.
In the two hours, me and my shadow proceeded to send approximately 80 bazillion trout scurrying for cover.
I finally found one decent pool without ruining it and low-crawled.
Pausing briefly to savor the lower back pain, I then enjoyed possibly the most frustrating hour of fly-slinging in a 50-year career.
They came up and looked. They chased things subsurface. They hemmed and hawed and swam in circles.
And when they did finally hit a fly, the take was so subtle that I missed the strike and sent the fly into the trees. Because I didn’t want to stand up and send my shadow across the pool, I had to yank. Good thing I had plenty of flies, because I left enough there to pass for Christmas decorations.
That pool is now etched in my memory under “Unfinished Business.
