Proclaimed eggs, leaky waders and lost boots

I spent the third week of October at the Tangled Lines Western HQ, in Phoenicia, New York. Everything was low, even the Esopus tailwater, so there was a lot of making do.

One morning I spent dredging the famous Chimney Hole on the Esopus, hoping to provoke hits on streamers, junk flies and big nymphs in the depths. This produced precisely bupkis.

I noticed some splashy rises in the shallower water and switched gears, abandoning the sink tip/short leader for a nine foot 4X leader with an extra two feet or so of 5X tippet. Naturally I forgot to bring a box of specks. Thank you, Dr. Boing-Boing.

The closest thing I had to a speck was a size 18 standard Adams dry fly.

It was maddening. The closer I got to the strike zone, the more the zone shifted.

Finally I hit it. Lo and behold, instead of the shiners I was half expecting, a wild rainbow came to hand. Nothing spectacular in terms of size, maybe 11 inches if I squinted, but feisty and seriously reluctant to be caught and admired.

These are the “silver bullets” of yore, and in the three or four years since New York stopped planting thousands of brown trout in the river, they have increased in size. So where I used to catch a mess of six to eight inches, now they are 10-12 inches.

And they have an almost entirely silver body, with just a faint red line. Hence the name.

Gary Dodson picked me up one morning early and we went on the long drive to the two Delaware tailwaters. The West Branch was too high and murky for our delicate sensibilities, meaning we were afraid of falling in and drowning.

The East Branch was crystal clear, and low. We worked a stretch where we tried everything, and failed. Some graffiti on a sign in the parking area warned us about this but we chalked it up to sour grapes.

Dr. Boing-Boing struck again — three times. First Gary was disassembling his breakfast sandwich as he drove (he doesn’t eat a lot of bread, and definitely not the kind from McDonald’s). The egg fell out and disappeared under the driver’s seat.

Since it was quite warm and sunny, and when we were fishing the truck was locked up, I reminded him several times to retrieve the egg before it proclaimed itself.

Then I discovered my waders were leaking. A post-mortem revealed the good news — an easily patched puncture, instead of an insidious and ultimately unfixable seam leak.

Finally, as we rolled into the gas station in Margaretville to refuel and plan the next move, we noticed we’d just driven 75 miles with the truck tailgate open. I panicked for a moment, thinking my boots were gone.

Then I remembered I was wearing them.

Back at HQ, my all-purpose guy came and took down a dozen dead ash trees that were menacing the new roof.

We have a new roof because a dead ash tree fell on it two years ago. There is nothing like waking up at 3 a.m. to a waterfall coming out of the ceiling.

This fellow plays the excavator like a musical instrument. Observing, I had several anxious moments but Dr. Boing-Boing did not make an appearance.

And they left me with a lot of firewood to split in the spring.

Over the years I have assembled quite an angling library. My late father bought and read widely, and I have added to the collection. It could fairly be described as “swollen.”

I was bemused when browsing George M.L. LaBranche’s “The Dry Fly and Fast Water” (1914).The author was complaining about specks (the tiny flies that cause so much consternation to the angler), drought, and having to fish with long leaders downstream so the fly is the first thing the trout sees.

If you pared down the prose and added a couple of bad jokes, it could have been a Tangled Lines column.

Back in Northwest Connecticut, I noticed that the state went ahead and stocked the Blackberry, despite the lack of water.

It’s worth a quick prowl, if for no other reason that the bones of the stream are exposed. Assuming I remember what I saw, this knowledge will come in handy once normal service is restored. (Same goes for the Housatonic.)

I spent a thoroughly frustrating 90 minutes chasing trout up and down the Silty Pool. Similar to the Chimney Hole experience, the trout were making a visible fuss, although it was directed downwards. I could see their fins and tails as they nosed around gobbling whatever was on the menu.

I drifted an assortment of speckly things down to them on a long, fine leader. The more I drifted, the more they shifted downstream a few yards.

Finally I said to hell with it and Wooly Buggered them. This can go one of two ways.

Either they say “Hallelujah! A square meal at last!” and hit the fly so hard the knot breaks.

Or they say “Eek!” and go into Witness Protection.

Guess which option they chose?