Week of May 12, 2025

I spent M-F this week fly fishing in the Catskills. I primarily fished small streams in search of native brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis. I’m happy to report that I found some great spots and caught 61 brook trout over the course of the week, along with 7 wild brown trout and 1 rainbow. I caught fish all five days.

One of these streams yielded 43 native brook trout in a single day, plus dozens more that I missed. On that day I packed a sandwich in my backpack and spent from 9:30am-7pm hiking and fishing the stream. Another yielded 16.

Despite it being peak fishing season in the Catskills and every parking area and pool on the Willowemoc, Beaver Kill, and Esopus was full of anglers, I didn’t see a single person the entire week on the small streams I fished. Bliss!

Some photos of the streams:

I love these state forest signs:

Some of the beautiful speckled brook trout I caught:

And a nice sized wild brown for the small stream it was in:

It was incredibly gratifying to catch these beautiful fish on flies that I tied. The elk hair caddis and the peacock herl futsu kebari were the two main producers, with a soft hackle pheasant tail, bead head futsu kebari, and a frenchie catching a couple fish as well.

After this trip I’m considering simplifying my fly tying lineup to include fewer flies with a wider range of sizes rather than a wide variety of patterns in mostly 2-3 sizes.

I primarily fished my Dragontail Mizuchi tenkara rod at the 11ft length with an 8ft level line and 2-3ft of 5x tippet. This was a great length combo for fishing tight cover and deadfalls for fish that spooked easily. The long rod gave me good reach, but the shorter line casted better without getting hung up on tree limbs.

Focusing for five days on fishing with the tenkara rod allowed me to greatly improve my casting, as well as improve my water reading and stealth. I’m looking forward to revisiting some of my local streams with renewed focus. I’m also eager to find some brook trout streams closer to home!

Thursday around lunchtime I lost my hook remover. I know roughly where I lost it, but couldn’t find it. The walnut handle was beautiful, but it blends right in with leaves. I should have kept it on a zinger. I’ll make another one this week.

I stayed in a little A-frame in the Roscoe area for two nights and a cabin the Phoenicia area for two nights. Outside of fishing, I also visited the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum, perused books in the Jerry Bartlett Memorial Angling Collection in the Phoenicia library, ate at the Phoenicia Diner, the Beaver Kill Covered Bridge, stocked up on fly tying materials at Dette Flies, and visited the Catskill Hatchery.

Amanda and I visited the fly fishing museum 8 or 10 years ago, but I viewed it with fresh eyes now that I tie flies. It was neat to see the tools and jigs people made to help them tie. It was also neat to see some of the original patterns in person that I’ve only seen in books. In the rod building shop at the museum, I ran into Mark Sturtevant, whose blog I subscribe to. He kindly showed me around the shop and showed me the lo o bamboo cane rod he was building. I’d love to make my own bamboo fly rod one day.

Throughout the trip I listened to Ed van Put’s Trout Fishing in the Catskills, which provided some great historical context.

I saw some neat creatures: Red efts, speckled salamanders, a rosy maple moth, deer, turkeys, and eagles. One eagle was perched above the raceways at the fish hatchery, snatching easy meals. And some beautiful trilliums (red trilliums, white trilliums, and painted trilliums)!

The bugs were atrocious. I wore a hat, a buff, long sleeves, and used bug spray, but still had a dozen mosquito bites on my forehead and hands.

I came back home Friday afternoon and had dinner with Charlie and Amanda at River Outpost. It was great to spend a week fly fishing, but I missed them. I love coming home to them!

Saturday we played outside in the morning, went to Charlie’s swim class where he did really well learning to float on his back, and then I took him grocery shopping at Stew Leonard’s for a couple hours, then mowed the grass after dinner.

Sunday we got up and walked in the woods, went to the playground, and then had some friends over for an afternoon cookout.

The tulip poplars are blooming!

The black locusts are blooming, too. This is such a beautiful time of year, even if my allergies are killing me. This is the most I’ve seen the one in our yard bloom: