The Farmington River and the, “Other”, Farmington River. 

Connecticut is amazing to me. Have lived next to it all my life and never gave it a second thought. Not even a first thought most of the time as far as Trout Rivers go. Rhode Island is flat and is lowland for the most part. Connecticut is not the Rocky Mountains but it has elevation and some fairly big rivers. Long ones too.

The Farmington is one of those and I discovered that it is a very interesting place to fish both in its upper reaches where it is pristine and beautiful and woody and forested and quite large and wadable to its lower regions where it changes and becomes quite brawny and rocky and full of chutes and runs and great big trout. The river has many faces indeed and I like all the ones I have seen and I like the caliber of the fishermen I met while I was there.

I fished there once before, last year on a long weekend when the river was very low and at a reduced flow and I liked it and the water was cold and there were trout rising through out the day and into the evening and it was restful and sweet and I saw a lot of places on the upper river, that section from Ovation pool above the bridge in New Hartford up to the Riverton area which is where most people fish. There were lots of people and I would say that it was a bit crowded on that excursion. This time was different.
I had local help. 

I stayed at Paul Rossman’s bed and breakfast not knowing him at all and to my pleasure I met one of the most creative and innovative fly tiers around. Salmon flies, trout flies, caddies, mayflies, pupa, CDC duns and dries and spinners and all sorts of state of the art trout flies I had never seen before or even conceived of and this guy was fluent in that language. We talked for hours each evening after I came back from fishing and he was a wealth of great insight and information about trout and flies and presentation and we did that evening talk for three days. His place, the Pine Meadow House, was just a few doors up the road from the Upcountry Fly Shop where each morning I met the folks who took me fishing that day. It was easy. There was no heavy lifting involved. I was taken care of wonderfully by everyone. 

Joe Klinger who fishes with me in R.I. for stripers on Tuesday nights had e-mailed me asking if I would like to fish with him and his friend Gary who had also come to the Tuesday night fishing several times and I said yes. They met me on Wednesday morning and took me out to breakfast and then on a long car ride down river past several towns and through a maze of turns and highways and back roads to what was to be a series of secret spots but ended up being one spot that we never left. 
The river was big, full of rocks and drop offs and the rocks were tough to navigate around and over in waders. I found out the necessity of having a wading staff that day as I had to move very slowly and cautiously and was restricted in my movements due to the treacherous footing but I can’t wait to go back. There were no paths along the river. No one fishes there and the banks are wild and overgrown with bull briers and rose thorns and downed trees and impassible blow downs and rubble from past floods and all sorts of things to hinder ones progress but… I can’t wait to go back.

Gary had been telling me tales about afternoons and evenings there during the Hendrickson hatch in the recent past and I was smiling to myself as they sounded unbelievable. Twenty, thirty fish over sixteen inches and many over 18” with a few twenty plus thrown in a few hours fishing every time out, browns and rainbows all fat as footballs and no pressure on them from anglers. I was smiling at these fish stories as I said. This is New England not Montana or Alaska after all and what did I know. Nothing, it turned out.

Gary rigged me up with a furled leader and gave me some tips and told me how he fishes with it and then he and Joe went out into the river chasing some trout that were rising to caddis flies. He told me about the deep sections and how to wade to get across and up the pool. I told them that I would be along shortly and they left me by myself to get a feel for things. I took off my gear and got a little net and chased some bugs and poked around here and there and finally got into the water and headed downstream by myself.

I fished here and there without too much enthusiasm and saw one fish rise one time.
I came back up about two hours later and Joe was still chasing the risers in the pool but Gary was nowhere to be seen. Joe called down to me and told me that Gary was upriver around the bend and that he had found some fish feeding. I headed up river through the woods and met the briars and brambles and blow downs and ravines and rocks and took a left to some higher ground and a pine forest with easy walking and headed to where I thought I might find the river. It must have taken me a half hour to get to where I could hear the river again and I headed toward it and I found it on the other side of more brambles and briars and blow downs and holes and when I found it, it was fast and steep and looked like a mountain river tumbling down a gorge and Gary was no where to be seen but across the way there was a spin fisherman casting a spinner. Hummmm? I wondered how he got there and I was thinking I must have missed Gary somewhere below and I was not going to attempt to bushwhack my way further upstream and there was this spin fisherman guy there and then I heard a voice call out, “Joe”, and I headed for it. I found him just above where the spin fisherman was standing on the far bank.

“This is the place where I had that great fishing on the Hendrickson’s “, he said and then he said, “I have been catching them all along this stretch”, and pointed down stream to a raging torrent, (you have to keep in mind I am a lowland river guy and I have not fished in this kind of water except perhaps for stripers in the surf). “Really,” I said.

I showed him my fly and he said, “I think it is a bit too dark. Try one of these”, and he gave me a GR Hares ear wet fly. NOT a modern one but the old fashioned one from the Stone Age and I was very pleased as I am from the Stone Age and feel comfortable being immersed in it when it comes to trout fishing. 

He was using a two fly rig with the dropper tied into the hook bend and he gave me a little explanation of how he fishes it. He had a caddis larvae as the head fly and the little Hares Ear hanging off it. I had on 3 .5 lb tippet and asked him if it was heavy enough for this water and he told me he was using 2 lb. “Oh”! I thought. (I think twenty pound is a bit light for most of the fishing I do but I was there to learn something and I asked him if he thought it would be all right to use what I had on.
“Sure”, 
I asked him what kind of a knot the used and he said a five turn clinch knot.
“How about tying this on for me”? 
“Sure”. 
And he did.

“How do you fish it? I asked looking helpless. 
I wanted to get everything I could out of this time with him. 
Gracious man. 
He then rigged me up with a BB split shot about eighteen inches up from the fly and gave me an explanation of how to cast the rig on a short line upstream into the chute (not quite a water fall) where this gusher of water was spilling down from a pool. 
“ Cast up and let it drift down, almost tight and when it comes abreast tighten and let the fly come up like a caddis rising from the bottom. Watch the end of the furled leader and if it hesitates or stops it is a fish and they are hitting it as it rises for the most part. I don’t like using strike indicators and the furled leader is easier to see than regular mono. 
I prefer it”. 

I made my first cast and a fish took it. That is how the rest of the day went.
A cast, a fish, he cast, a fish and on and on and then I realized that these fish were kind of big. Some times they weren’t but most of the time they were. Damn big.

His net was 18” long and most of them were longer and they came, and came, and we took pictures just because I know no one would believe this without pictures, and I do not like to convince people I am telling the truth. 
I like to enjoy telling a story without having to swear on the bible. 
We took pictures. 
Denise had to see the pictures to be convinced.
They were beautiful fish deeply colored and the big ones were all browns fat as footballs. They were everywhere feeding beneath the surface in those fast flows on emerging and rising caddis.
Thanks Gary and Joe for showing me your Farmington. 
No crowds, no paths, no named pools, no people except a lone spin fisherman who left to be replaced by another. 
I asked Gary about that. He told me that bait fishermen walk in from the highway and make a few casts and they leave but they can’t get across as the water is too deep and the river doesn’t fish well from that side.
He also told me that the river fishes well all summer and the fish move into the pocket water in the rapids and there is plenty of deep holding water and that they are well fed and unmolested for the most part. I asked him about the rest of the river and he told me that the whole river is full of fish and that most people only fish above the New Hartford area and that is fine with him. 
It is fine with me too. 
He then told me a few secrets about fishing the upper reaches and I put them in my memory box to be taken out for use at a later date.

Then I went and gave my little tying and slide presentation at the Farmington Rivers angling association and had a great time. 
Good people.

Then I went back and spent a few hours learning about flies and pools from Paul.

The next morning I met Steve, “The Fisherman,” from the boards.
He showed me his flies and his rig and a new secret spot which again was down river.

He fishes with a puff ball strike indicator that is quite ingenious and can be moved up and down the leader at will to control the depth that your flies are fishing. He uses two flies the top one was a Golden something or other as an attractor and the bottom one was a bead head PT. Pheasant Tail size 16. He rigged me up and gave me instructions and then I sat and watched him for a while. He hooked a fish in short order in a fast run and gave me a running commentary on what he was doing. 
He is a bold wader, 6’, 2” tall and sure footed and less than fifty years old. 
Watching him jump around made me feel like I was about two hundred 

Same drill, short cast upstream, tip pointed at the fly, mends to keep the line straight, slipping line into the drift to fish further downstream and a single BB shot about 18” above the fly. 
He puts the indicator about one and one half time the depth of the water to keep his flies in the zone and adjusts the length as conditions change. 
“Move the indicator first before you change flies, depth control is more important than pattern for the most part”. 
Good advice.

After we had fished a while and I had managed to catch a fish and scare a couple of more we left there and went to the upper river to the lower Ovation pool. 
Picnic Benches it is called. 
He started fishing in the same way and I managed to almost hook a fish and then we left as he had to leave at 2 P.M and wanted to show me the upper Ovation pool. 
Lunker heaven as it is known to some. 
Too me too, as it turned out.

I was very fortunate to fish with both Steve and with Gary as they are masters of the techniques they showed me. I was lucky enough to catch fish with both these deep nymphing approaches by mimicking their methods as closely as I could while I was with them. That is the fast way to learn by the way. 
You already know what you already know. 
So when you get the chance to fish with someone who fishes perhaps a different way than you do put what you know in the trunk of your car or the back seat of your SUV and 
get the most you can in the time you have with them. 
Young guys are always trying to prove themselves and show what they know to be equal to others - insecurity - to be able to feel comfortable. 
All I can tell young guys is this. 
Get over it as soon as you can and keep your mouth shut and absorb.
You already know what you know; you can’t lose that by learning more.
You can miss the opportunity to learn by trying to prove yourself.
.It takes humility and self control to learn new things from others.
That is maturity. 

The Ovation Pool?
That is another story but it is Paul’s favorite pool on the river and I know why.

I am going back and I will be staying at Paul’s. 

I am bringing Denise.
I have a wading staff now, so does she.

What is the difference between a river and a creek? I saw creeks that were three hundred feet wide, miles and miles long, full of trout and completely wadable. I saw rivers that were the same but I do not know why one is called a river and the other is called a creek?
I discovered that is always best to empty your bladder before you embark on a long deep wade over stones and rocks in swift current to reach the far bank where the, just a bit too deep, water stops your forward progress. Taking a pee becomes a major life decision and of course that,¡¨ Should I wade back,¡¨ decision comes just at the moment when a fish decides to start doing back flips in the air after caddis¡¦s twenty feet beyond your longest cast . Should you wade twenty more feet or retrace your steps for three hundred and do the deed and then come back? Decisions, decisions. 
Pee first.

For a flatlander like me it was stunning to see these beautiful rivers. Wide complex sometimes gentle sometimes intimidating. I never knew what they looked like and now I do and I am very pleased. I fished in the West Branch and the East Branch and the Willowemoc and the Esopus. Two creeks and three rivers. The Beaverkill was the third river. I ate at The Riverside and met the regulars and Dan the owner and the food was outstanding. I got to spend time with Mike Canazon and cast his beautiful handmade Catskill style Bamboo rods and see how he makes them. Wonderful stuff. The great Bamboo rod maker Bob Taylor came over to visit Mike and stayed the night and we all ended up at a special secret Beaverkill hideaway. 
Ken Kobayashi opened his home and showed Denise and I around and made sure we saw all the rivers, ate well and took us to his favorite pools and special hidden Catskill treasures. I got to drink some single malt out of his tin flask. ƒº 
Bamboo was everywhere and dry flies and silk lines and peach 444¡¦s the old standby, Blue winged olives and Carnutas and March browns and Caddis¡¦s and I did not see people catching fish. I did not see any hatches with fish on them but I did see fish rise and I did see bugs in the air but I am visually challenged. 
I can cast further than I can see. At a certain point I can¡¦t tell if I have a rise unless the fish gives me a tug. 
I am embarking on a new challenge at my age. Re-learning how to trout fish without good vision and I am enjoying the re-education process. I have to get some of those little Binoculars to see risers past forty feet and a fine mesh landing net so I can catch the bugs and see what the hell they actually are. This is a great place to go to renew ones first fervor for trout fishing at least it was for me. I loved every minute of it. I may even order up one or two of those handmade Catskill bamboos at some point. I want the old fashioned full slower action the way bamboo rods used to be. I like them to sing sweetly with the weight of the line without a DH or SH assist.

The rivers are gorgeous and wide and clean and clear and the pools have names like Hendrickson and Wagon Wheel and Cairns and ¡K Little brass plaques that say something like, ¡§Theodore Gordon slept here the night before he invented the Quill Gordon.¡¨ There is no plaque that says that but there could be. I did see one that said it was his favorite pool. Everybody that I met there is familiar with fly fishing history and has an opinion on everything. I ran into Dave Brant at the Riverside restaurant who is still teaching at the Wulff School and he reminded me that I had not signed his book yet. I reminded him that he never has it with him. 
No one asked me a single question about Striped Bass. It was great.
I did get to talk about the tiny crabs that hatch in July with Ken K as he saw them with me one night in R.I. and was amazed at how a great big striper could be so interested in those tiny little crabs, size 16¡¦s the size of wood ticks. It is incredible to actually see and this amazement was from a guy who uses size 28¡¦s on an 18¡¦ leader all the time. 

It was great to be around people who love fly fishing lore and bugs and trout and still practice all the traditions and hear those ongoing debates and ¡V it made my soul smile.

Denise took me to her secret spot on the East branch of the Delaware and it was a secret spot. She kicked in her four wheel drive and headed out across a meadow and into the woods beyond and told me not to look at the signs - I said what signs. What a beautiful place. A river as smooth as silk with little stones from bank to bank and the banks were two hundred feet apart from each other. NO people.
Just endless river and wild trout - no stocking. I did not know places like this existed in the East but they do. The next day Ken K took us to his favorite place on the West branch it was a carbon copy of the East Branch in terms of beauty. I was in Pennsylvania! 
What a place. Rivers everywhere and if you were not at a famous pool on the Beaverkill or the Willowemoc there were no people. Just like home. 
Parking lot - and - fishermen. No Parking lot ¡V no fishermen. People will not walk.
Little clumps of them having a ball and just up the river - no one - and that seemed to be true everywhere we went. It is a trout fisherman¡¦s paradise. Trout fisher-women¡¦s too.

I was very lucky to have Denise to show me around as she has been fishing there all of her angling life and knows her way around and knows about the fishing too. Ken was great and very knowledgeable about all the flies and the places to fish and the timing and the history s between the two of them and their friends I was treated very well for a tyro.
The both of them have amazing eyes for seeing tiny flies and hatching flies and naming the bugs and for seeing risers two hundred feet away under a bank next to a rock under a tree that almost broke the surface. The fish are always two hundred feet away by the way. At one point I was in the head of a pool on the Beaverkill, my first time fishing the river and I saw Denise way down stream sitting on the bank. Mike and Bob came out of the woods and she moved a bit further down. Then Ken came across the river from the far bank and the two of them proceeded across the river, wading up to their armpits it seemed and moved closer and closer to that far bank. Finally they were so close that it was hard to distinguish them from the trees. I waded out and moved down and started across to see what was going on. I had not seen a rising fish and I moved slowly across the river the water tugging and pushing and navigated over the big rocks and the small rocks using the eyes in my toes and gradually got closer and closer and then I saw a fish rise right there in front of them, Denise was casting and drifting her fly over him and then right when I got there she hooked him.

They told me later that she had raised that fish several times on several different patterns until finally she had put on a little reddish colored spinner at Ken¡¦s suggestion and he took it solidly. That was the first fish I saw hooked. He saw the fish and came and got her 
That is friendship.

The next morning Denise and I took the long way home driving past the whole of the East branch past the reservoir and into Margaretville and stopped at the Esopus.
There was this incredible little town where we stopped and ate. I think it was called Phoenix or something similar. It reminded me of that old TV show called Northern Exposure. It is worth a visit. Stop in the Mexican restaurant and sign up for fly-fishing lessons at the hardware store.

We were driving along and she pulled into a supermarket parking lot, drove around back and got out of the car. The river was right there. I mean the creek was right there all 300 foot wide of it, shallow and a tinge discolored. She said, ¡§Did you see that¡¨? What? ¡§Look over at the far bank right by that path next that rock next to that tree. Let¡¦s get suited up.¡¨ It was raining. 
It seemed like it rained on and off all weekend and the rivers doubled in size overnight near Roscoe and this Esopus Creek was high and moving fast but it was fishable. 
I looked and looked and then, damn, I saw a fish rise beyond my normal non vision, vision but I saw it! Then I saw another one and another. 
The whole far bank was full of rising fish and I could actually see them. She asked me if I saw the flies.
My eyesight miracle was a bit limited not big enough to see the Size 24 BWO that she thought might be hatching at least not at that point. 
I turned around to talk and she had her waders on, her rain Jacket and hat on and I suddenly found myself at the edge of the river boots on rod in hand wanting to pee but ¡K
Across the river we did go. 
Took about ten to fifteen minutes to get across but we got there and the fish were there and they were rising. 
She tried a spinner first and then a BWO and I tried a March brown as I could see some floating down. 
She looked over and said, ¡§I know what to use¡¨! 
She then pulled out a fly that her friend Dick Smith who guides up there and works in the Beaverkill fly shop told her to use as it was hot right now and she tied it on and made a cast. 
She tilted her head and knowingly said;
¡§This is it, Dick knows his stuff¡¨. 
There were two fish right in front of her about twenty feet away and another one was just a tad further down stream and about four feet further out. 

She loves her little bamboo rod and she made the sweetest little quartering cast and the fly landed perfectly. It drifted about a foot when a fish rocketed out and took it. Big splashy rise and she tightened on him and he bolted and headed across and down and the hook pulled. She flinched and pulled up on her line to check and see if the fly was gone and as it hit the surface, the four feet down and further out trout grabbed it and held on.

She had managed two fish on one cast and this one was a good one and he was in big trouble.
She fought him for a while and finally he gave up and she got him in and he was a good two pounds and pure gold with great big spots and was a fine, strong, fat brown. A very beautiful fish.

She rose her eyebrow and said,¡¨ You want one of these Dick Smith Specials? I have one more and I will give it to you if you want. 
I want to see you catch a fish¡¨.

I took it and thanked her. 
I tied it on. 
There was a fish rising in front of me. 
He was slashing too.
The fly Dick had given her was a Henryville special with a different type of wing configuration than I was familiar with and I made a cast and Bang. I missed him. Hmmmmm.
I could not raise him again. 

A little further down there was another fish rising and I waded down and Denise followed and I got to where I could cover him and made a couple of casts and nothing; then I made another and gave it a little skate and bang. 
Missed him too. 
That was it. 
I could not get that fish up again and 
I was quite happy. 
Then a big hatch of Cahill¡¦s started and the fish stopped rising.
They may have gone down to feed on the nymphs and it was raining and I had raised the two fish I had a shot at and I had been witness to Denise hooking the only three fish I had seen hooked in four days and I was very sad to have to leave. 
I heard fish stories but¡K
I didn¡¦t see any fish hooked and caught except by Denise all weekend. 
She is deadly.

It was time to go.
I had to pee.

The Dead Drift in freshwater fishing is a very useful technique. It is also a very useful technique in the salt. When trout fishing a dead drift or drag free float is necessary for most dry fly situations. If the fly moves or drags n the surface the fish most often reject it and that movement or drag can be infinitesimal. Some people insist that in some forms of nymph fishing that if the nymph moves through drag the fish will reject it as readily as they will a dry fly. Sometime that is true and other times they will accept it readily.
To think that something is always true in presentation is actually a belief system not a hard fact. If there is an absolute when it comes to fishing it is to keep your hooks sharp and tie good knots. Everything else is fluid.

In salt water fishing the use of the term Drag free float is not as singular in meaning as it is in Dry Fly fishing for trout. IT is used to describe allowing a fly to move with the current but not necessarily to not have any drag or movement. Because of all the recent (fifteen years more or less) salt water books and articles that deal with fly fishing in the salt from a pure cast and strip methodology the radical idea of allowing the fly to swim in the current naturally has no connection or counterpart to recent salt water methodology. This is unfortunate as it causes confusion because of the fresh water trout fishing understanding of the dead drift presentation. Cast and strip is effective and it is a good away to fish – sometimes. It is easy to understand and to communicate to beginners and it is the norm in almost all modern salt water fly fishing circles. It is an approach that has definite limitations however and is not always effective because of the way fish often feed. For cast and strip to be highly effective the fish have to move to the fly. When they are focused on waiting for food to come to them often they will not move. This cuts down the effectiveness of cast and strip to a minimum. It still works when the fly passes in front tf them but if it doesn’t they will not swim after it even if they see it. This is normal not a rare occurrence. It happens often.

Casting and letting a fly swing is the method that works best when it is happening. 
This is what is being referred to when the dead drift is mentioned in salt water fly fishing. There are several methods of doing this and all of them depend on line control and depth control and mending. The fly does move but it is not stripped in. It is allowed to swim across the current naturally and the cast is fished out without retrieving. 
There are many ways to do this and it is fun to learn as many as one can. 
It is just another way of fishing in the salt and in fact all of these ways put together is a very effective set of ways to catch fish that are not susceptible to cast and strip methods at the time. It is fun to learn new ways of fishing.

The other night I went to my hot river and fished it hard all the way through several times and it was not hot. I took out my light and took a look and did not see any bait. I think the fish ate it all or it left and when the fish came they did not find it so moved somewhere else. That will not last long however maybe tonight they will take another look. I give them credit for being smart and resourceful. Most people choose not to. 

We people are the only beings on the earth that think according to us. I used to think that too until I stopped thinking that and decided that I would try thinking that other beings are intelligent in their own way too. I started to give them the benefit of assuming that they were just as smart as me or anyone else and guess what happened?
I started to catch more of them.
So… 
I may be wrong but I am quite happy being wrong - all the time. 
My pride at being smarter than a fish is not at risk as I do not have it. 
It is not an intelligence contest between me and the fish race or the bug race or the plant race or any other race - including having to stick up for the human race - at all costs to protect our/my sense of superiority. 
Thank God that waste of time and energy is over.

I usually start by saying to myself questions like..
If I was a fish and I did not find any food here what would I do? Then what would I do next if I did not find any food at that place? 
What would be a good fall back position and what would give me the most options for a full belly? Some times I ask myself what would I do if things kept splashing in the water all around me and; my brothers and sisters were acting crazy and being yanked out of the water all around me? 

I can think like that if I want to. 

I was thinking about the fish and my hot river just today and I was wondering if they are going to come back before the next moon to take a look around again. 
Would I?
I would if I had slim picking elsewhere or if I thought that I could get in on some good eating based on remembering what happened last year. I like that spot when the clam worms are zipping all around the place so yes I will take a look again and if they are not there I will high tail it someplace else and not waste too much time hanging around. 
If I can smell those worms maybe I will stay for a bit, maybe a half hour and see what is up but I am not going to go hungry again like two nights ago. 
Where will I go if they are not there? 
Oh! I will go to that next spot the one with the shrimp and that will only take a few minutes and I may find something interesting along the way.

Since I started to give the fish credit for being able to make decisions and factoring in my own rationality as an interpretation based on - nothing at all - I have found that the fish act in very intelligent ways. Of course that is impossible for us humans to accept because of what we have been taught about our superior intelligence but it works unless my projected thinking is flawed but that is good enough for me.
Why do I do this?

Because it works! 
I do not have to believe it. Aall I have to do is act, “As if,” it were true and the results follow like a tree falling once the saw cuts it from its root ball.
I do not care about belief systems or defending them.
I care about catching fish. 

Form follows function.

The new moon is past and things have quieted down a bit and the tides that I like to fish in the estuaries and rivers are later and later especially way up the bay with the delay do to the distance from the ocean. Some places I fish are an hour to three hours later than what it says on the tide charts. Tides are actually predictions and not absolutes. 

One river I like to fish has been hot and another right next to it is not. There are fish in both but one is small and searchable and the other is big and the fish are spread out and cherry picking silversides out in the main flow. Hard to cover them as they are ranging due to the abundance of baitfish holding in the main current flow which is too far out to reach with a fly rod but not with a spinning rod. That won’t last long though. I like that big river and I can wait.
When the fish move in to a new location they are often aggressive and high strung and then they settle and find places that suit them in various locations in the river. They spread out and as the days go by more and more of them come and spread out too.
It is a time of transition for them. They know where they are going and every year they come just like the birds that come in the spring to the same woods and backyards.
Nature has order and that order is real and predictable to some extent at least in terms of the big picture. Every year is different but even that is cyclical and within the cycle of 13 moons in 12 months and 2 equinoxes and 2 solstices are the determiner of what will happen when and where. A movable feast but a feast none the less.

You look for clues to figure out just what is happening. You learnt the clues by observing what happens in the now and remembering it next year. Lilacs blooming, daffodils sprouting up, tulips, red maple flowers, skunk cabbage and even insect hatches on trout streams. They are all in an order determined by the moons and the equinoxes. The twelve month solar calendar is meaningless in relation to the moons as it does not factor them in as the curser. We trick ourselves into thinking that this year is late or early and it never is. It is the moons and their relationship to the Solstices and the Equinoxes that is the measure.
This year the full moon fell on the Spring Equinox. This is a benchmark year.

The dates from this year will not repeat next year but look to the spring full moon in relation the equinox for your clues. It will not be exact but it will be real.
We have to adapt to change even if we can’t predetermine what these changes mean.
Look to the flowers and the plants for clues as they are never wrong.
Nature never makes mistakes.

Went to a May Day celebration yesterday with Denise and had a great time.

Saw what happened in ancient England with an Oriental twist. Dancing around the May pole, lots of food and great food and farm animals and a peacock prancing around to boot. What I liked most about it was seeing children having fun without having to wear crash helmets and knee pads and no soccer moms or dads trying to prevent their kids from imaginary dangers like a skinned knee or other types of normal Boo Boo’s.
It was refreshing to say the least to see children allowed to have fun without being regimented and protected and harnessed and without fussbudget monitors futtzing and clucking and bellowing about the dangers of being alive and having fun on the planet.

The most fun I had was watching kids pin down a wonderful lady and hear the explosion of giggles as dogs and kids and rain and mud and the chaos of love and good will and joy erupt out of the core of human beings souls both old and young - spontaneously and freely once the should’s and ought’s were abandoned.

I saw a little boy chase a chicken through the woods and bushes and paths and tables and peoples legs for an hour and then when a big male peacock crossed his path change from chicken hunter par excel lance to a wild eyed peacock stalker. No one stopped him and he had his first taste of unbridled human animal freedom and survived. The chicken finally roosted on top of a step ladder and and the peacock survived too.
Something to be said for Pagan rituals. 
This is the year of the rat on top of the May pole . 
The year of the Pig is over.

Then Denise and I went striper fishing. 
She wanted to chase a big one and she had fire in her eyes. 
Well she did. 
She chased one and almost got him. 
Thin wire hook after a long hard fought battle and the hook wore a hole and the thin wire finally cut through and released the fish so close and yet so far. 
About ten feet away. Small thin hooks are not very forgiving in a long hard fight. 
She did land several very respectable fish 6 to 8 lbs and a teeny tiny one and missed several in a row until she stopped striking at the tap and felt them before she set and used a tight line pull (which you have to do with larger fish) and hooked and landed them quite nicely and quickly.

3/0’s are just about the right thickness for a hard fight with a decent fish. You can lean into them and not worry about cutting through the mouth and that is old fashioned thinking and it is good thinking. It works. Also you can put your finger into the bend of the hook and push down and get the hook out without doing damage to the fish.

Good strong hard mono tippet and good soft but tight to the fly presentation and you get to release the fish. That is satisfying.

She has a new favorite striper rod. A thirty year old 10 ½ foot 4 wt. She can handle anything on it and well. It gives the fish a level playing field and you have to be good and smart to land them quickly and she does it with grace.

It is wonderful to see someone fish without depending on an overpowering club to beat the fish into submission with. Wonderful stuff to witness.

She wants to go again tonight and use a bigger hook.
She is going to get her wish.
So am I.

I was going to go to Scotland today with a friend so he could hang out and see the country as his son is going to go to school there but his son wanted to go with him so I bowed out. Fathers and sons should be uninterrupted if they get a chance to spend this kind of time together. I wish I would have had the chance to travel to Europe or anyplace with salmon in it with my dad. I just got to go striper fishing and trout fishing and blue fishing and Bass fishing and fluke fishing and tautaug fishing and had a boat with him and a canoe and tied flies and had a beach house and fished about five times a week with him for my entire youth until I discovered girls and left him flat.

Yesterday I took a girl fishing. We went in a canoe and the river was high and really moving. No risers at all and she likes risers and she likes to fish downstream. I did a lot of back paddling and grabbing onto branches. It was dark and rainy and she asked me where the fish were. She is a good fisherwoman and can handle a rod really well and get it were she wants it and she much prefers her bamboo to any graphite - hands down.

I do not blame her they are so sweet to use and they are alive in the hand. High water and nymphs with heavy wire hooks and no takers. No risers and no takers and she wanted to know where the fish were. It wasn’t working out and we almost turned around and headed up stream to take out the boat but we didn’t.

We picked up and headed downstream to a pool We could fish in our waders.

There was a fish there rising inside a fallen tree.

She graciously told me to try for him and I did what I was told and promptly lost a nice fly to that tree and gave up. I waded sown a bit and fished a little glide and lost another fly in short order. Then I remembered what everybody knows and re-rigged a bit heavier and decided to try a new fly for me.

To me a new fly is a Muddler minnow and I only started to use that fly in the semi-recent past so I thought I would try another new fly for me. A black wooly bugger. Up stream I could hear muttered anglerette curses (similar to angler curses but sweeter in pitch) as the sunken tree kept eating her flies and I tried to be helpful by keeping my mouth shut and not getting in her way.

I was sick of tying on a tippet in the damp and grayness with my waterlogged fingers and my imperfect eyes so I tied on a loop and looped to looped a tippet of about 4.5 lb test. Made a little flick and landed the fly across stream dn started to play wit it and let it drift and then swung it a few times here and there and remembered Ray Bergman and spinners with spinning rods for high water ad make anther cast a little down and across and started a swing while letting some line slip to keep the fly down and I got a hit.

Oh! You got him! I was very proud of myself when she noticed I must say. “He looks like a good one,” and indeed he did fight very strongly and owned the pool fighting deep and then heading up and turning back down and I could not get a look at him. I started to think maybe a twenty inch brown Maybe bigger?

So I quieted myself and started to work at it. He was tough and strong and felt heavy. So we kept at it a while and he came close and his tail broke the water a few times and I asked my lady friend to get the net and she did. She was upstream and told me that she had better get below me if we were going to net the thing and she was right an she did and she did net it It was a coal black rainbow of modest proportions that was deep and dark and strong and fat as a pumpkin. I was impressed and we released him and she put on her favorite wooly bugger and that tree of hers ate it in short order.

I went back down stream and there was a big log jam sitting there all mean looking and dangerous and I let the fly ease down to the a little past the lip right in between a beer can and a soda bottle that were awash in froth and bang. I put it to him right away and yanked him right out of there as hard as I could and he came and I was full of glee. He did not fight nearly as hard and I had him in hand in a minute or less and he was brighter and longer and it was getting dark and we got in the canoe and headed up the river went out to dinner in East Greenwich a t a place called the Post Office Café which I highly recommend and I am glad I left my dad flat for girls. We both got over it. I am going trout fishing by myself this afternoon on the Blackstone for a few hours and then I am picking up my friend who netted my trout and we are going striper fishing tonight. Her idea. I think my dad would have approved of her big time. Her name is Denise.

Today is a grey day. A little damp, wet but bright. Good day to think about flies. 
Friend of mine just called he was standing in a trout stream fishing. He had just flushed a turkey and there were trout rising in front of him, beside him and behind him. 
The 21 century is amazing and it has just started. The cell phone is the tricorder of Capt Kirk.
Think I will tie some trout flies to celebrate the new order. 
No trustworthy color, sizzle and glitz. 
Just a touch, of sparse glitz maybe some dampening muted semi veiling with a bit of wildness. 
Punk rock hip-hop nymphs with nose rings and rhinestone tattoos. 
Gotta make em look alive.
Flight or fight flies. 

I will give them a try this afternoon.
You gotta have fun and there are no rules.