While up in the Catskills last weekend I was able to spend some time on the water with Shawn Combs of Orvis on both the Beaverkill River and Delaware River. We had a great time both wading and drifting those rivers. As someone who grew up fly fishing spring mayfly hatches in northern Michigan, it was neat to do it from the Catskills perspective on this trip.
A few things we learned (some the hard way) over the weekend were...
1. You don't always have to travel very far to find good water as we checked into The Rockland House, geared up, and walked to the river through the field from our room to find rising trout to a couple of different mayflies.
2. Stay until after dark. Both nights we were out we were rewarded with dry fly rises long after we could see our flies dancing on the water.
3. Lordville is a freaky little hamlet. Ghosts clearly live there.
4. Don't take float route advise from people who only wade fish a river. Our Deleware River float was screwed up ten different ways but we still bumped a couple trout, and a surprise smallmouth as well, though we had to push through A LOT of dead water. In the rain.
5. My casting with little dry flies and long leaders to picky fish clearly needs work. I need more practice.
Special thanks to Shawn for making the trip over from Vermont and bringing his badass wooden drifter with him. Shawn is good people with a lot of interesting and innovative gear ideas that I think we'll see over the next couple years coming out of Orvis.
Oh yeah...and we may or may not have fished most of the weekend with prototype fiberglass fly rods that he brought along from the shop. Hypothetically...if he did...they all cast very nice...especially the four weight.
A few things we learned (some the hard way) over the weekend were...
1. You don't always have to travel very far to find good water as we checked into The Rockland House, geared up, and walked to the river through the field from our room to find rising trout to a couple of different mayflies.
2. Stay until after dark. Both nights we were out we were rewarded with dry fly rises long after we could see our flies dancing on the water.
3. Lordville is a freaky little hamlet. Ghosts clearly live there.
4. Don't take float route advise from people who only wade fish a river. Our Deleware River float was screwed up ten different ways but we still bumped a couple trout, and a surprise smallmouth as well, though we had to push through A LOT of dead water. In the rain.
5. My casting with little dry flies and long leaders to picky fish clearly needs work. I need more practice.
Special thanks to Shawn for making the trip over from Vermont and bringing his badass wooden drifter with him. Shawn is good people with a lot of interesting and innovative gear ideas that I think we'll see over the next couple years coming out of Orvis.
Oh yeah...and we may or may not have fished most of the weekend with prototype fiberglass fly rods that he brought along from the shop. Hypothetically...if he did...they all cast very nice...especially the four weight.
3 comments:
We stayed at the Rockland House that weekend as well. Would have been nice to meet. We had a good float on the East Branch. Didn't see you as I surely would have remembered that drift boat.
Combs is a beast
Great post and great photos as always. I'd love the fish that area.
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