I had anticipated driving down to the Catskills on Friday afternoon to rendezvous with some old friends and drink a few beers before Troutoberfest. As life would have it, I needed to use my Friday night to catch up on some last minute fly tying business. Here is how my Friday into Saturday went. I was up at 5:00am, at the real job by 6:00am, back home to get the kids off the bus by 2:30pm, off on a microbrew quest to Rochester, NY for a friend until 6:00pm, start fly tying at 8:00pm, pack the fly tying gear at 11:30pm, in bed by 12:30am, up at 5:00am to hit the road for the Catskills. Needless to say it was a busy start to the weekend but I was in the right mind set and looking forward to tying and chatting with the folks who were at the Beaverkill Angler in not-so- sunny Roscoe, NY.
I made it to the shop early and got set up to tie and we were off to the races. Not long after I was getting things set up, fellow tier Johnny King arrived to tie next to me. If you have not seen Johnny King’s work I highly recommend that you do. He has a great level of skill in both fresh and salt water realms. His comfort level behind the vise and in front of people is infectious and a pleasure to experience firsthand. The demo from my perspective went well and there was a nice steady flow of people in the morning. Loren Williams of Fly Guy’s Guide Service drew in people to his talks on traveling , fly fishing, and steelheading. I was able to relax and tie an assortment of soft hackles and some steelhead flies. I was surprised at the number of folks who were just learning or fairly new to fly tying and wanting to learn more. One of the neat things was to meet a follower of my blog whom I had not met previously. We talked about tube flies a bit. I’m going to try to incorporate a tubes into a demo in the near future. The free burgers and hot dogs were a perfect way to break away from the tying. By early afternoon the crowds had thinned a bit and I took the opportunity to pack up and make room for Loren Williams to tie a bit. That means time to hit some water. After consulting with shop owner Evan Lavery and shop manager Matt Nelson on where to prospect for line tuggers, my buddies and I set off. As my buddies and I geared up I gave each of them a different fly that I had tied at the demo. The first spot just didn’t have the right vibe for me, but my buddy Matt had come around and said he scored a brown trout on the fly I gave him.
I joked that I needed it back right away and that I had given him the wrong one. We moved to another spot and I felt the presence of fish in the cool afternoon weather. I had it in my mind that I wasn’t leaving this spot until I moved a fish. I tied on an experimental fly that I had whipped up late Friday to see if bright and flashy would move a fish. It did, but I lost the fish as quickly as the strike came. Then I moved down a bit and connected with a cookie cutter brown, but I was happy to say the least.
Eventually my buddy Eric worked his way down and I told him to go back through and fish the run I had just fished. He did so and about ten minutes later he was into a fish of his own. Come to find out he caught the fish on the other fly I had done at the morning demo.
For me this was a huge reward. Three fish, three friends, and three different flies that I had tied. We headed to the cabin for a night that got real fuzzy in the memory, but lasting in the friendship. There is a lot to be said about good friends, good music, good homebrew, and good microbrew (Naked Dove’s 45 fathoms porter and hopulus localus mixed). I spent Sunday morning licking my wounds and preparing for the drive home. I fished the West Branch of the Delaware with no fish, but the time on the water eased my aching cerebelum.
