Troutoberfest 2012 Recap

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.