Art of the Possible
It is a hot, airless September afternoon in the Catskills, the transitional stretch of that month when corn maze signs appear and swaths of summer birds begin to vanish. I’ve traveled to fish a favorite pool on the Delaware’s West Branch, and while you never need a reason to go fishing, this trip is special. Accompanying me is a new and unconventional piece of tackle: a split-cane fly rod that represents an extended collaboration with one of the world’s great builders and a personal, 40-year light-tackle odyssey. It is a piece of equipment I believe could alter the sport.
Despite being a tailwater, the river is unusually low. Following weeks of drought, its mile-long flats resemble millponds, and the unseasonable heat has trees releasing leaves early. They patter down softly, like raindrops leading a front, the effect pleasant if vaguely discordant. We are down to minutiae and 7X tippets and the wariest fish of the year.
While midstream shimmers, the bank I’m scouting is heavily shadowed, overhung and protected by interwoven branches of spruce, hemlock and oak. Springs also trickle in here, and the air smells sweeter and feels notably cooler. My eyes bracket the gloom, searching for the dimple or crease that could spell a trout. That’s how you fish this reach of water — shift an inch or two, stop, scan, repeat — the only way that’s really effective. One of the finest anglers I know, John Shaner, a lifelong habitué of the river, refers to the process as “oozing up a bank.”
The rod I’m fishing was built by Per Brandin. Of six-strip, two-piece construction, it measures 8 feet and carries a 2-weight fly line. It marks the fifth and final ideation of a concept we began testing a year ago. The color of a burnished, freshly opened chestnut, the rod is hollow-built from butt to within a few inches of the disconcertingly slender tips (among the finest its maker has ever fashioned) and is a study in purposeful lightness. It has a skeletal reel seat and shortened grip, both entirely ventilated, and is
