August has continued to grace us with favorable weather, water and wonderful bounty! Our gardens are now bursting with the fruits of summer - red ripe tomatoes, beans, squashes, herbs and colorful flowers. With adequate rainfall keeping our rivers in great shape, sunny daytime breezes and cooler evening temperatures, the sweetness of August is all around.

An unexpected email from an old friend, Ed Ostapczuk, provided a welcomed sentimental journey, as he described fishing the West Branch of the Neversink, near Frost Valley. It was a stream I was well-familiar with, and we enjoyed corresponding about pleasant memories of those waters. 

Ed relays that he parked his Tacoma in a hidden lot and proceeded a bit more than ½ mile through goldenrod fields, around fallen trees, through a shallow marsh and a pine stand, along the horse field across from the Forstmann Castle, while seeing well-documented signs of bear that had passed by. He remembered when the horse pastures were protected by electric fencing, their orange signs warning “Don’t Touch”; the fencing has now been replaced by cotton utility rope, with no signs needed.

He approached the edge of the small mountain stream, waters that carried both memories and history. It had been fifteen years since he last traveled over to the West Branch, a journey halted by the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Irene. But as he cast his line into the familiar currents, the gap in time melted away; he had been fishing these waters since 1977, mapping a quiet relationship with the river that now spanned nearly half a century. And on this bright mid-August “blue-bird” day, similar to those he’d encountered in the past, he was enveloped by a profound sense of serenity, stillness, and seclusion.  

Ed was fishing with his 7’ 4-weight Weiler Garrison “201 clone” bamboo rod, beginning with a small size #16 Yellow Stimulator fly, figuring that his choice could pass for either a Yellow Sally stonefly or small grasshopper, as no flies or hatches were observed. As he traveled along and crossed Biscuit Brook, he was greeted by a barn owl. And for old time’s sake, desiring to catch his first trout of the day there, he managed to bring a small brookie to hand.  He then started a 3 1⁄2 hour trek back upstream, enjoying the “slow and meticulous journey through my angling past”, describing the afternoon as an exploration outing, and was delighted when he hooked an 11” brook trout that filled his net. Enjoying the coolness of the rocky stream and the hemlock forest overhead, he passed beyond first one, then another long-forgotten submerged pool-digger, then to the junction of a spring creek, finally ending at the Logging Bridge.

Dozens of colorful Neversink brookies were caught and released - some up to eight inches - from almost any riffle, run or pool that looked like it would harbor trout, save for “Heartbreak Hole”, where “something shot beneath the overhanging tree.”  Ed recalls that over the years, on two different occasions, he had broken off big brown trout that had taken refuge under that same tree.

  During the exchange of emails with Ed, I had mentioned an old friend, Palmer Baker, now long past, who loved to fish the West Branch Neversink and for many years leased the Stone Cottage along that stream. Palmer, an attorney by profession, was a kind and benevolent humanitarian and possessed a delicate mastery of the gentle art. He wrote a lovely book titled The Sweet of the Year, one that Ed also enjoyed very much; he sent me a quote from Chapter Five titled Little Trout: “In angling literature there is much ado about big trout…. Yet the earliest associations of these anglers were with the little trout.… This is a passion which takes strength from the experience…. The intensification is that much greater where experience embraces fishing in the little brooks--- where there is the certainty that under the bank a rod’s length away there is a nine-inch brook trout that is going to strike in this habitat of six- and seven-inchers.  There the angler perfects his art in miniature.”

Ed closed his email by saying “Anytime I’m able to fish upper Neversink with dry flies and catch trout is clearly “the sweet of the year” for me” a