![Knees creak by wee creeks](https://millertonnews.com/media-library/first-brookie-of-the-day-in-hand.jpg?id=52419108&width=1200&height=675)
First brookie of the day in hand.
First brookie of the day in hand.
This spring I have spent more time than usual creeping around the “little blue lines,” those streams that show up on good maps as, yes, little blue lines.
This is where to find wild trout. Often brook trout, occasionally browns or rainbows.
The first thing to do is get used to kneeling. The fish are generally aggressive, but they are also incredibly spooky.
Once they catch sight of an angler, or even a rod going back and forth, they will zoom off to their hidey holes and sulk.
If you don’t believe me, go to one of these streams and wade right on in. Watch as the little dark shapes whizz around.
When I was a callow youth of 45, kneeling was no big deal. At my advanced age, I have gone to knee pads, as worn by roofers and the fellows who restock potato chips at the grocery store. (It was one of the latter who kindly took his pads off and showed them to me.)
Reading the water is more important than ever in this context. What you want is “soft water.”
Imagine a pool that has a chute or plume of water coming in from above. As the faster-moving water enters the pool, it creates white water. On either side of the chute, there is calmer water. That’s soft water.
You’ll read about finding the seam. The seam is the line between slower and faster moving currents, or white water and soft water.
Trout like to hang around somewhere that offers protection from predators, not too much current to battle against, and adjacent to faster current, which brings food.
Finding the balance of these elements is what trout do all day, except once a year, when they have what passes for sex in the fish world.
It’s a depressing prospect for an ambitious fish, so don’t dwell on it.
So when approaching a likely pool, identify the different currents, areas of soft water, and the seams. Do this from a kneeling or crouching position, of course.
Soft water flows down the little blue line.Patrick L. Sullivan
Now you have figured out where to stick the fly. Pausing briefly to savor the lower back pain, try a dry fly first. A bushy dry fly that floats well and that you can see.
Park it in the soft water. It will bounce around. Don’t let it sit more than a second or two. Flick it in, wait and flick it out.
Sometimes they’ll whack it right away. Other times they will want to see it a few times.
Next hit the seam. Sometimes it will disappear in the foam. Maybe it will sink. Don’t worry about it. Keep flicking.
When you do this often enough, you’ll get good at making miniscule adjustments from cast to cast. On big water, this is a matter of feet or a few inches. On a little blue line, it’s an inch or two tops.
None of these casts are going to be long. Use water loads, bow-and-arrow casts, even roll casts if you’re good at them. (I am not.)
You’re probably not going to be rearing back with a standard forehand cast too often. Not enough room, and no point to it either, since you’re sneaking around in kneepads and peering around boulders.
Whatever you do, don’t get stuck at one pool just because the big one flashed your fly but did not take it.
A good rule of thumb is: Show the fly to them six times. After that assume you are boring them, and move on.
When do you go subsurface? As usual, it depends.
One of my favorite tactics is to use a Chubby Chernobyl or any foam-bodied dry fly, really. It serves as an indicator 90% of the time.
I tie a piece of fluorocarbon tippet, usually 4X, to the bend of the dry fly hook with a clinch knot. The tippet piece is usually between one and two feet.
I start with a wet fly or an unweighted nymph. If that doesn’t work, I go to a brass beadhead nymph, which sinks some. And if that’s a bust, I go to a nymph with a tungsten bead that really sinks.
And if all that fails I cuss a bit and chuck a Wooly Bugger in there, just to show them who’s boss.
What rod to use?
I have a number of small stream rods, ranging in length from five and a half feet to eight feet, and in line weights from one to five.
More often than not I grab a Cabelas CGR six and a half foot four weight. It’s a slow action fiberglass rod, quite inexpensive. I have a discontinued CGR click and pawl reel for it, and a double tapered line.
For fixed line fishing in small streams my favorite is Dragontail’s Kaida, a zoom rod that fishes at nine feet and a bit, and 10 and a half feet. This is considerably longer than the fly rod, but the extra leverage allows me to keep most or all of the line and tippet off the water. The extra length is also helpful if I latch onto one of the little blue line Leviathans.
About that: Little blue line fishing is extra-crazy. You have to accept this.
After all, you are expending considerable energy in difficult terrain, performing a highly technical task, in pursuit of quarry you are not going to kill and eat.
And even if you did, a creel full of six-inch trout will yield only enough meat to cover a few Saltine crackers.
You wouldn’t be fishing for dinner, but for hors d’oeuvres.
Maxon Mills in Wassaic hosted a majority of the events of the local Upstate Art Weekend events in the community.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene during the Garden Tour in Amenia.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else. I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and
Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.