In light of the recent hurricanes, I am publishing with permission this essay by Ed Ostapczuk, a long-time president of Ashokan-Pepacton Watershed Chapter of Trout Unlimited, now a board member and publisher of TU’s newsletter and detailed fishing reports.
As a life-long angler, he has experienced the change in weather and climate first hand. He noted in email, “Whether we believe in, or accept data, on climate change it’s happening in our watershed. […] I have quickly attached some old data based upon the USGS Coldwater gauge station. It lists the 13 worst floods recorded at that gauge station since March of 1932, through July of 2017, some 85 years. Four of those floods have happened since 2005, slightly less than 25% of all floods in a 12 year period.”
The spring storm of 2005 seems quite quaint compared to Irene or this year’s monster hurricanes, but even this stormy season 12 years ago left many anglers frustrated. We are inviting Mr. Ostapczuk to be our guest on our upcoming podcast series.
The 2005 trout season for me began like so many before it, full of optimism and anticipation with visions of dancing rainbows on the business end of my leader. Our streams were low and clear, the mountains full of snow pack; only great expectations for this season occupied my dreams. Then before the clock struck midnight on Opening Day the rains came, and stayed for days. They washed away the snow pack, roads, railroad tracks, bridges, and even a few homes. And they opened an untold number of clay banks throughout the Esopus Creek system. The rains turned the Esopus brown, filled it with a red tide that lingers on to this very day. Each new heavy rainfall since this event causes the Esopus Creek system to return to square one storm conditions.
But this only addresses the physical problems caused by this spring flood; nothing alludes to how this storm almost broke the human spirit of the mountain people intimate with the Esopus. Business folk grew despondent, grown men cried, elected politicians cursed the rain, and anglers gave up on the Esopus Creek in untold numbers. Thus began the long season of our discontent.
I have avoided the Esopus like the plague, who wants to fish in turbid flows anyway? The one time I did fish the Esopus earlier this season it was nothing like I remembered; it held a sad somber look of devastation. But I have been itching to get back, and today would have to be that day otherwise it might just get to warm when the next opportunity presented itself. Heavy rains pounded the region Sunday evening and many of the Esopus Creek tributaries were off color today. The stream at Five Arches looked like gray water, above Phoenicia it was colder, brown, and filled with tubers; so I left my Subaru in the Chimney Hole parking area and fishing “Home” it would be.
The normally well traveled path to the Chimney Hole was overgrown, and lost in the weeds; muscle memory from a hundred or more prior trips blazed the trail for me. It was hot today, up around 90 give or take a few degrees. Nonetheless at the Trestle I watched birds work the creek and to my surprise found stone fly shucks on the rocks along the rivers edge. So I attached a small streamer and large wet fly, a Fran Betters Mini Muddler Minnow and Ralph Hoffmans Black Bear. Standing in the Esopus at 5:30 PM, I lost all visibility in water deeper than twelve inches. On my first pass through the riffle below the Trestle I managed a small rainbow; on my second pass I only nicked one fish.
Than I decided to walk down to Chimney Hole, how can a season pass for an Esopus Creek angler without at least one visit to this famous hole? On my way downstream I was amazed to see how much of this section changed since the flood. Drifting my combination of flies in the Chimney Hole I soon felt the vicious strike of a real good fish, another Mike Tyson, a fish measured in pounds not inches. I set the hook at least twice and held my ground as this beast tore up Chimney Hole. It cleared water three times, showed the slender profile of a trout, sliced through the stream like a rainbow but I never got within 40 feet of it to determine exactly what it was. My line went slack and upon inspection I noticed my dropper fly was missing. One more knot failed me the second day in a row. Aroused, I tossed a selection of streamers into the shaded, dull gray water of Chimney Hole for 30 minutes or more, but never felt another fish.
Eventually I found my way upstream to Big Bend Pool, a favorite of Arnold Gingrich. Even though I did not see a single rise, I fished a #10 Ausable Wulff having observed stone fly shucks earlier. Working the Esopus with this dry fly I managed to raise over a dozen fish while landing another small rainbow, a wild brown about 10, an 8 rainbow with a big head and slender body, and a silver bullet almost 10 a well condition bow. At 8 PM I quit, soaked to the skin with sweat but satisfied.
I find it rather paradoxical that perhaps the defining moment of 2005 on the Esopus Creek for me might just have taken place in a legendary pool on an early August evening involving a fish I never landed in a season that never got off track. Heaven knows how I miss my Esopus; I was one of those grown men who cried when the rains came. But tonight I stood in the red tide and made my choice; I will return to the Esopus at the next opportunity, red tide or not.
But as he stood immersed in death in the raging tide, He saw at once what his choices had since implied. Our discontent is built of what we perceive, What we make each day is the best we can achieve. – John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
So thats it. In 2½ hours I managed 5 small wild trout today and missed perhaps my best fish of the year in this the season of our discontent.
Ed
