5-24-24 Two day Catskill Trip

For the past 5 years, we’ve spent two days in the Catskills each spring as part of a work related trip. My friend Jim organizes this trip and is gracious enough to have his company, and a few other companies sponsor the 2 day event. The goal is to mostly dry fly fish, but somedays the fish aren’t really looking up. Friday was one of those days! We managed to anchor the boat up and do a little nymph fishing. The water we fish is one of the most pressured fisheries in the area, so I like to keep things small. I was using 5x sighter with 6x tippet and 18-20 was my go to fly size. As usual, my entire leader is just 50’ of sighter material attached directly to my tippet. Simple and small, but very effective at times, especially fishing bigger water. With this thin and light set up, I always feel more comfortable fishing a little farther away when I can’t wade any closer.

I started the day with an olive perdigon on the point and a small olive emerger up high on the tag end. This is typically my go to starting set up on this particular river. I also like fishing two sections of the water column this way to help locate at what depth the fish are feeding. Some days I notice a lot more eats on the upper tag, other times they focus on the point fly, and some days I don’t think it matters. On this bright and sunny day, the fish seemed to be down low and eating the point fly.

This section we were fishing typically holds a lot more brown trout, however on this particular day the rainbows were hungry and ready to fight. I always love catching nice brown trout, but the fight doesn’t even compare. The rainbows on this river are some of the toughest fighting fish, maybe second to some of the rainbows we’ve battled out in Montana.

Day 1 was a pretty typical day of nymphing, nothing too crazy but able to pull a few fish out of each run we stopped to fish. The olive perdigon was the fly of the day, simple but effective. Not sure color really matters all that much, I might try fishing some similar flies in different colors to see if it even makes a difference, but the bead size was critical. I found myself using the same fly, just adjusting the size of the bead based on the water depth and speed. Interesting how you can fish a run and not get an eat, then use the same fly with a more appropriate bead size and start hooking into fish almost immediately.

The second day was absolutely crazy, we fished a different section of the river and the fish were very cooperative. I caught quite a few fish in the first run of the day and then hung back as my friend Wayne worked some trout with this dry fly. As I sat in the back of the boat, I noticed a brown trout moved in and started feeding below the surface about 5 feet upstream of our anchor. After Wayne connected on a brown trout, I decided to see if I could sight fish that brown right off the bottom with my nymph rig. I casted above the fish and my nymphs were in the right line. I couldn’t see them, but my sighter gave me a clue about the approximate location. As it drifted closer to the trout, I noticed it slightly turn and open it’s mouth, as soon as it closed, I set the hook and had him!

We anchored up downstream again and got out of the boat to fish, I worked a small side channel and hooked into a few fish before I got into the really prime looking water. I asked another guy on the trip if he wanted to try nymping with my set up and he agreed to give it a whirl. After going through a few of the basics, he started fishing and landed a 3 inch rainbow on his first cast. As he worked the prime water, I noticed a quick pause in the sighter and yelled for him to set the hook, and he connected on a really nice brown trout.

The rest of the day, I tightlined out of the boat and it was extremely productive. One of those days were there was little wind and our guide Kevin did a great job of pacing the drift boat where I rarely needed to make any adjustments. In my opinion, fishing out of the boat with a tight line/euro set up is one of the most effective ways to catch trout, as long as it’s not really windy.

Overall, it was a fun trip spent with great people, and we even found some happy fish as an added bonus.