Tangled Lines: year in review

The angling year 2023 started sluggishly and steadily disimproved.

Looking back at my “notes,” I find mutterings and complaints that high flows in the Housatonic persisted well into May.

Matter of fact, take a look at the USGS data for the Hous at Falls Village and note that it was above 1,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) for what looks like somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the year. The 1,000 cfs mark is what I consider the highest flow for safe wading, and at 1,000 cfs, it ain’t all that safe.

An informal poll during my last visit to the Limestone Trout Club, aka Home of the Green Weenie, revealed that other anglers like a flow around 500 or less.

Why is this?

Rain. Lots of rain.

In June I took assorted people into the wild for the purpose of chasing wild brook trout. It is great fun to watch anglers adapt to the demands of creeping around little streams, learning to read the water, and discovering new and exciting ways to trip over things.

I spent much more time this year fishing the fabled Catskill rivers: the Beaverkill, the Willowemoc, and the East and West branches of the Delaware.

I am fortunate to have a fishing buddy who knows these rivers well, who has a big truck and doesn’t mind driving.

A high point was at The Place, a smallish stream that empties into one of the Catskill reservoirs.

There is about a mile of public water, culminating in a deep pool where the stream runs under the road and then widens out as it blends into the lake.

I caught my personal best wild brook trout here. Wild-ish, anyway. Not straight outta the hatchery. I am so used to regarding an 8-inch brookie as a Leviathan that I was startled and perplexed when an honest char of some 14-15 inches obligingly rose up from the tailout and hit my size 12 Deer Hair Sedge (DHS), a sparsely-tied caddis dry that rides low in the water and is one of a handful of consistently productive scouting flies in my box.

Photo by Gary Dodson

The author hooking up with a brown trout using a Tenkara rod during one of the rare moments in 2023 when the Housatonic was at a wadeable flow.

At intervals during the summer, I had my nomadic attorney with me. Thos. has renounced the world and is touring the eastern half of the country towing a camper. He alternates between campgrounds public and private, and arriving unexpectedly on the doorsteps of unwary but ancient friends.

He spent about a week at the state campground on the Beaverkill and sent me garbled but excited text messages about a productive stretch he found.

It was indeed productive, and together with Gary, my Catskill guide, we made several trips.

One evening we were fishing right at the covered bridge, a hallowed location where the legendary Theodore Gordon tested his patterns.

As the daylight faded, there were browns sipping caddis bugs in the seam between the main riffle and softer water on the opposite side. It was difficult to get a decent drag,and the fish were being snooty about it.

I fetched a Tenkara rod about 12 feet in length, added a greased 12-foot furled line and about 6 feet of 5X nylon tippet.

This allowed me to deliver the DHS to the soft water, bypassing the main current altogether. A longer fly rod with a very long leader or a mono rig would have worked too.

I was rewarded with three goodish browns, and incredulous looks from Gary, Thos. and a masochist with a spinning rod better suited to Montauk.

How do I know he was a masochist?

He was wearing a Jets cap.

This was the Year of Simplicity. I vowed to get everything organized.

Strictly speaking, I failed.

But I did get some things streamlined.

I settled on a waist pack for the bulk of my trout fishing. It holds three or four fly boxes, floatant, extra tippet, stream thermometer and my licenses.

What it does not have are things dangling off it, which is one of my primary objections to vests, chest packs and slings.

For dangling things, I went to a lanyard, which holds tippet spools (nylon and fluorocarbon) and a hemostat, which does double duty as hook remover and barb smusher. The lanyard also has a clip that attaches to the shirt and prevents the whole thing from swinging around.

This setup works with or without waders and forces me to think harder about which flies to put in the small boxes.

It is also a lot easier on the back muscles.

The primary disadvantage is it looks stupid.

I’m used to that.