Communication from the cave

     I've actually been handling it well up until this point.  I haven't slid into waders for about six weeks, which is the longest stretch since my re-launch into fly fishing several years back.  The difficulty doesn't rest with the time gone by, but by the lack of prospects ahead.  Water temps in the region are brutal- the USGS gauges are showing a consistent 32F and ice is causing the CFS intakes to malfunction.  Average, historical lows throughout February still range in the teens though I am thankful it is the shortest month of the year.  Too many times, lately, the squeal of the metal shovel within my grip brought me back to the squeak of an oar lock with the wooden handle in my palm.  I could often overcome the scentless winter landscape by imagining just a whiff of lily pads on a hot day, if I tried.

      Of course we know it all remains a temporary fix, and that the plow comes by to remind you that you are a dreamer and not a doer.  What else can you do when the three most reliable winter fishing rivers in the Northeast are choked with ice or aren't giving up their prizes.  It hurts a little more when I looked back over my shoulder at Montana this week, and learned that 45-degree days are giving rise to amazing midge dry fly fishing.  These are the same fish brats that get to focus on hoppers in the Summer.  Meanwhile, behind my tires on the mudflaps remains a chocolate slush block of bitterness that celebrated its one month birthday recently.

     But all is not lost.  Fly fishing can be a way of life and there is at least a portion of every day that I devote to it.  Besides being on the river, I survive on the other two phases which are tying, and researching.  It can be a couple of flies on the vise at night, or scanning an Internet article over morning coffee about how to craftily fish an ant when you run into trouble during a trico hatch. As always, there are other things that I should be doing.  My tax information just came in the other day.  The garage needs some attention.  I can't find my other flip flop.

     I had been doing alright until it spun itself in my jaws.  

     I have always loved rubber legs on my flies, but never tried it on the surface. The first time I ever worked with bull elk hair, I immediately smiled and cast aside my regular deer hair. My in-laws graciously gifted me a quality neck of grizzly hackle this Christmas which I am loving (I have more parachutes now than I have imagined I would).  Somehow, I came across an existing fly pattern in a catalog that incorporates all three that I have overlooked for years, likely because I never had the ingredients at my disposal to whip it up.  Also, because it's a "Western pattern".  But once I did, I had a hard time sitting still.  My hibernation was interrupted. Oh, the potential of this thing!  I could dry-dropper it on the Beaverkill riffles and throw it under the tree limbs of the grassy East Branch shoreline.  I could even trail another dry #22 BWO behind it during a hatch.  I am going to laugh when the little silver bullets on the Esopus "refuse it", i.e. can't fit it in their mouth!

     Maybe we get to focus on hoppers here in the East, as well.  Even if just in winter.  Even if just a hope.  It's hard to disappoint me at the vise when it's eight degrees out.

     It's streamer-meets-dry-fly.  Are we allowed to fish with 4X in the East? Can we get away with this obnoxiousness out here?  You bet your ass I am going to find out and you'll be hearing from the "Madam" in 2015.  We're getting closer.  Hang in there.