Favorable water conditions continue, thanks to ongoing rain showers and storms.

Despite a return to summertime/hot weather of last week, there were only two days when water temperatures reached 70 degrees. On Sunday evening, the Beaverkill at Cooks Falls was a comfortable 66 degrees Fahrenheit, and was flowing at 462 cubic feet per second, which is well above the median average flow of 112 cfs over 110 years of record-keeping. The maximum flow to be recorded on September 10 was 2000 cubic feet per second in 2011; the least amount of flow recorded on this date was back in that drought year of 1964 when just 29 cubic feet of water trickled past the gauging station.

After a busy weekend it was great to be back in the cool waters of the Beaverkill, fishing with my friend, Martha Mason, on the upper river. It was a warm evening, probably about 78 degrees when we suited up. There were a few small flies in the air but not much on the water’s surface. Taking the water temperature as soon as we entered the stream as is a long-time habit, it was gratifying to see the thermometer reading of 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

We noticed a few rises here and there, certainly not a major hatch, but enough to provide a target from time to time. Martha chose to fish upstream in the current; I took the pool area downstream. Martha wasn’t fishing but a few minutes when she had a fish on - a rainbow trout, the first of the night. I asked what she had caught it on, and she answered “the Usual.” I had some action, netting a brown trout on an Adams. Then Martha hooked a beauty on a slightly larger Usual fly, and when the fish was reeled in it filled the net - a chunky wild rainbow trout of at least 16 inches. The Adams produced a couple more fish, one a hefty wild brown of about 12 inches, beautifully marked with dark spots. It was interesting to note that Martha’s fish were rainbows, caught while fishing in the riffle upstream, while mine were browns from the pool below. And also that as the years go by, more and more rainbows are caught in the Beaverkill - which was once known as a brown trout stream.

The Usual is a very effective fly, although not an attractive one - looking like a piece of fuzz! It was created by Fran Betters (1931-2009) who for 47 years operated his fly shop on the West Branch Au Sable in Wilmington, New York. Fran’s best known creations are the Haystack, the Ausable Wulff and the Usual.

True to his habit of using inexpensive materials to tie ‘buggy’ flies that float well in the fast roily water of the Au Sable, the Usual was created in the 1950s. As the story goes, after a busy day of tying dozens of flies, Betters was looking through his tying material for something different. As luck would have it, he came across a rabbit’s foot - or rather the large hind foot of a snowshoe hare he had saved for just such an occasion.

The fur inbetween the pad of the foot was unusual - it was fine and somewhat translucent with a kinky texture when tied onto a hook. The new fly was tied using only a hook and thread and fur from the snowshoe hare - with no hackle, relying on the wings and tail to float.

The first person to try the fly was Fran Betters’ fishing buddy, Bill Phillips, an expert fly fisher, who found it to be extremely successful in catching Adirondack trout.

Betters originally named the fly the “Phillips Usual” but it eventually became known as “The Usual.”

Here’s the pattern for “the Usual” created by Fran Betters, as written in an article by Rusty Dunn for Southern Wisconsin Trout Unlimited:

The Usual

Hook: Dry fly, #14 - #22

Thread: Hot orange, 6/0 or 8/0

Wings: A large bunch of hair from a snowshoe hare’s foot pad

Tail: A small bunch of hair from a snowshoe hare’s foot pad

Body: Underfur of a hare’s foot pad dubbed on thread. Use a blend of the gray next to the skin and light tan which has very fine guard hairs mixed in to make it float better.