Step outside: Wonders await even if you don’t catch fish
If a person plans a fishing trip and it is rainy, rainy, rainy locally, it might be tempting to cancel the trip and sit on the couch.
However, my wife, Dorothy, and I discovered this past Friday that it’s better to just go and see what will happen. It was rainy and gray in our neighborhood. There had been so much rain that it appeared the trout streams would be too high.
Our plan to fish the Catskills looked to us like it could be a rain-out, after we heard a weather forecast that suggested New York City and the southern part of the state would be swamped.
But after renewing our fishing licenses, we decided to head out anyway and see what the conditions were like. We stopped at the Guilderland Public Library and took advantage of the library’s ability to renew or issue fishing licenses. We also saw the new coffee shop in the library, which looks appealing.
As we drove south, the rain tapered off. By the time we got to Stamford, New York, in Delaware County, the rain had stopped, and the sky was partly sunny. Water in the trout stream was on the higher side but not a raging torrent.
The plan for this trip was to fish for trout with dry flies. Conventional fishing wisdom is that dry fly fishing greatly limits angling success, as fish consume most of their food below the surface.
When fishing below the surface, with a nymph, wet fly, or streamer pattern, the fish takes the fly with a varying degree of firmness. Sometimes, it’s a solid hit, as might occur when fishing with bait or a lure; other times, it’s a whisper of a strike.
If fish are rising to flies, dry fly fishing can be more rewarding as the angler feels and sees the strike.
Before going to the stream, we stood on a local bridge over it and watched to see if fish were rising. On the upstream side, the water was as flat as glass. For the first few minutes, it was the same way on the downstream side.
But then we saw a small ring of a rise. Looking down into the brownish water, a nice-sized trout was sinking back down after rising to a fly. Then it came up again.
As I kept looking, suddenly I could see fish that were not previously visible, a flotilla of them. They seemed to fade into view the way a ghost might in a haunted house.
It appeared the fish were rising to nearly invisible flies, flies that were so small they would make a BB look gigantic. But we cast to them anyway. Sadly, no fish took our offerings.
Nevertheless, it was a great day on the water. The weather was nicer than it was in Guilderland. We got to see autumn wildflowers, such as several kinds of asters and several stands of wild sunflowers. On distant hills, we saw that leaves were starting to change.
If you head out this week or next, the sights may be different. The flowers may be past their prime, or leaves might be fading. But you could very well see something equally delightful. And who knows, if you fish subsurface — or bigger insects are coming off the water — you might catch fish!