April 1, 2020: I never find all my gear in time for opening day of trout season. Usually, I don’t find trout either. My annual list of rationalizations is familiar: cold water, heavy runoff, spring debris, few insects, angler error. This year, my stream thermometer has gone missing since I packed it away last fall, so I can’t take a reading. The water is clear and looks cold. Mist hangs in the air, clings to the stony trail.
The Beaver Kill laughs as it rushes to join the Esopus Creek in the broad valley nine miles below. Occasional shafts of afternoon sunlight break from behind low hanging clouds. Birch branches wait for their buds to emerge. Unseen forest birds call to their mates. Streamside boulders, the handiwork of a glacial finger that stretched south down the narrow gorge, sit quietly counting the centuries. Another spring day unfolds in the storied Catskill Mountain trout stream of Mink Hollow.
The Munsee band of the Esopus tribe, part of the Algonquin-speaking nation, once traversed Mink Hollow through a notch between the two mountains presently known as Plateau and Sugarloaf. Their footpath led south to fertile cornfields in the Esopus Valley and north to a verdant plain the Mohawk people called Schoharie. I start up the old Munsee trail just before noon. All winter, this day has occupied my mind. Last year, I did not see a single fish in Mink Hollow. I’m seriously concerned about the health of the trout — not to mention the planet.
I tie on a Red Quill, the harbinger of spring, given to me by my neighbor Nick who has plied these waters for six decades. Just after noon at the First Pool, I spy a black fly crawling up a rock in search of sunlight…