I have always been a trout fisherman. I grew up fishing the little brook that flows down past our farm. There was a time when every pool had a nice native “brookie” hiding beneath those undercut banks. I fished the Otego Creek and the Charlotte and caught my fill of trout many times.
But when I was about fourteen, I was fishing the Delaware River near Hamden with an old friend. Just upstream I watched a gentleman working his rod back and forth to drop a tiny fly on the water. I was fascinated and slowly worked my way up to his location. As I got closer I watched a nice-sized brown trout rise and suck in that tiny clump of hair and feathers. Before long a fifteen-inch trout slid into his net. That fish was not the only thing that was hooked. I had to try fly fishing.
A few days later I was in Stevens Hardware in Oneonta picking out my first fly rod. When I left, I had an eight-foot rod with a simple single-action reel. John had put on a floating fly line and showed me a few of the basics. He picked out a few hand-tied trout flies and sent me on my way. The next day I was on the Cherry Valley Creek and landed my first trout.
My neighbor, old Bill Naatz, took me and his grandson to the Ausable River near Lake Placid later that summer. We stopped at a fly shop in Wilmington owned by Francis Betters. There I bought a few flies including one of his own design, the Ausable Wulff, made with woodchuck hair. Boy, did it catch fish.
As the years passed I wasn’t a purist by any means. I still drifted worms in the rapids and into the deep pools. They always caught fish. But I enjoyed standing in thigh-deep water and casting a fly into the shadows and let it drift down in the current. There’s something about watching a dry fly being sucked from the surface by a trout feeding underneath that excites me.
People have asked me, “Where’s your favorite place to fish?” I love the West Branch of the Delaware. I have a few sections that I prefer, but I caught my largest fish below Deposit, just downstream from the catch and release section. One early morning I was drifting a Blue Winged Olive to a feeding trout. Suddenly the water exploded, as I hooked a six-pounder.
The problem with that water is the number of fishermen. Fish there have hundreds of flies floated over them every week. They get extremely fussy, making them difficult to catch.
One evening a friend and I went over on the Charlotte Creek near Davenport to fish. He went downstream, and I went up just a ways. As I approached a bend in the creek, I saw a fish come to the surface and take a fly. I waited a few minutes and watched him continue to feed before moving in below him. I had tied on a gold-ribbed hair’s ear and cast it above him. As the fly drifted through his feeding zone, he hit. I set the hook, but my leader snapped. The fish was bigger than I suspected. A few days later I landed and released a three-pound brown from that very same pool. Rather than eating her, I left that beautiful fish to produce more fish in the future.
A few years ago we were camping on the West Canada creek just outside of Poland. The state had released numerous breeders from one of their hatcheries into the “no kill section.” These fish would hit any fly drifted over them. It was a heart-pounding rush to hook into those giants.
Gosh, there are so many memories. The problem is, there are so many places to fish with so little time. Well, there’s always tomorrow. The flies will hatch and the trout will rise. Maybe I’ll head over the hills and wade into the Delaware. I think I hear it calling my name.
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