Ramblings of a Charmed Circle Flyfisher

By Ed Ostapczuk

Ramblings of a Charmed Circle Flyfisher retraces over forty years of fly fishing the Catskill mountains first inspired by a two-part magazine article published in the spring of 1969. Cecil E. Heacoxs articles entitled Charmed Circle of the Catskills appeared in the March and April issues of Outdoor Life. Heacox wrote about several legendary Catskill Mountain trout streams informing the reader why they were charmed. Ostapczuk has been retracing Heacoxs journey ever since, taking his readers along on the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477112021

Ed Ostapczuk

Ed lives in the Catskills with his wife, Lois where they have resided since 1973. They have four children and six grandchildren; he is retired from both public education and a career in corporate America. He has also worked as a licensed New York State fishing guide and former fly-fishing instructor. Ed has been fishing since he was 8 years old and fly fishing for trout in the Catskills since 1969. He authored a chapter in the book Trophy Trout Streams of the Northeast, edited by Jim Capossela and has appeared in Trout magazine. Additionally, the ERIC Clearinghouse on Teaching and Teacher Education has published some of his work. Finally Ed is the recipient of several local and regional conservation awards for his efforts to preserve and protect the wild trout streams of the Catskills. In 1981 Theodore Gordon Flyfishers bestowed their prestigious Salmo Award on Ed and the following year Trout Unlimited presented Ed with their 1982 Trout Conservation Award. Then in 1999 the New York State Council of Trout Unlimited conferred the author their Chapter Newsletter Award.

Book preview

1

THE UNDERPINNINGS OF A FLYFISHER

image2.jpg

I wasn’t born in the Catskill Mountains, but I am convinced that I was born to wander, fish, and spend the rest of my time in a place that noted regional historian and author Alf Evers said had two stones to every dirt. This is a flyfisher’s story that is a long interweaved tale which traverses some crooked, windy rivers—mostly cold wild trout streams. It begins somewhere in the Garden State, where I grew up and caught my first trout, continuing a lifetime later wandering through the Catskill Mountains of New York State and the celebrated Charmed Circle. Like many other tales, it has a beginning that unravels with time, so let’s proceed as far as our curiosities will allow us to advance.

The trail that I have followed, including some of the trout I have touched, has taken me to some wild and pristine places, introduced me to many interesting people, and allowed for some wonderful adventures, all associated with this amazing diversion we call fly fishing. Reflecting back on these piscatorial pursuits and my life in general, I can honestly say that a handful of people have had major influences on the things that I have done, the flyfisher that has evolved. Though not all have had the same unwavering impact on my life’s developing stages, these individuals are the potters of my clay: my parents and loving wife Lois, my Uncle Pete, Father Murphy, Sergeant Hernandez, and Cecil Heacox. Coming from a loving, nurturing family, hopefully it is obvious how one’s parents and spouse would have a major positive impact on a person’s life, the paths we might follow and who we are, but what about these other characters that I mention?

My Uncle Pete is my godfather and younger brother of my Dad. He has, and always will, hold a special place in my heart. As a young boy growing up in central Jersey, I remember the marvelous times that he shared with our family and me, how he always made everyone laugh; his very presence would light up any room. Yet the greatest impact he had upon my life was the day he gave me my first fishing pole. Not only did he purchase that initial spinning rod and reel of mine, but also he engaged me in fishing even though he never fished himself. Those acts of kindheartedness sparked a flame within me which has since become a wildfire raging out of control. So if there was one person solely responsible for this piscatorial affliction, it was my Uncle Pete. And for that, I am forever thankful.

But wait, there’s more to this beginning as my uncle lived in an everyday house in a rather extraordinary setting for a kid like me. It was located along the banks of the Rahway River in Cranford, New Jersey. The Rahway River derives its might from several branches, including two with humble beginnings. One branch flows through the hills of the South Mountain Reservation and the other emanates among the upscale communities of Montclair and the Oranges. The Rahway then flows some twenty-four miles in length through many suburban surroundings, mostly within an urbanized watershed before emptying into the Arthur Kill, a tidal strait that separates New Jersey from New York. For all its many flaws, it had one redeeming feature when I was passing through adolescence; it held a few trout, at least some of the time, especially after it was stocked by the state. The river flows through several sizeable urban neighborhoods in central Jersey where numerous residents, many who purchased state fishing licenses, lived. Thus, state fish and game folks seemed obligated to stock the river with trout, providing easy access to the anglers among the masses, including me, who wandered its banks. But sadly each year with the advent of the first warm summer rains, oil, and other pollutants from nearby roadways leached into the river, choking the low dissolved oxygen levels, adding toxic wasteful runoff, and raising marginal stream temperatures. The results of which triggered most holdover trout to go belly up and perish. Yet the Rahway River was my Mississippi, and I a modern day version of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn.

In those early days, any issues with the Rahway and its trout really didn’t matter much; I couldn’t tell the difference between a stocked fish and a wild one if they were both stamped as such. More importantly, I didn’t care at all. I loved to walk the banks of a stream, any stream; and if that stream held fish, all the better. Unfortunately, much of the bounty of the Rahway consisted more of old tires, broken cinder blocks, and misguided shopping carts snagged on the river’s bottom. These were the objects that I would drift my bait about in search of any fish the river held. As scarce as trout were, chubs were plentiful and served as my instructors in the fine art of angling with a worm. In my youth, I spent several pleasant days at my uncle’s house free to explore the mysteries of the Rahway River but never caught a single trout. As for Father Murphy and Sergeant Hernandez, let me continue on.

Father Murphy was a Maryknoll missionary who almost had me believing that I was meant to become a priest, following in his footsteps. At that time in my life, I lacked the courage to make that commitment, so I didn’t but maybe that’s why I enjoyed my second career, teaching, as much as I did. I have always enjoyed working with and helping kids. Thus, after a twenty-three year stint with corporate America, I taught almost fifteen years in a middle school environment which gave me great satisfaction and more free time to fish. And just perhaps Father Murphy’s connection with Saint Peter, one of the most famous fishermen ever to walk the planet, exerted some higher influence over my passion for angling, although I doubt either Saint Peter or Father Murphy were flyfishers of any kind.

As for Sergeant Hernandez, he was my army drill sergeant in basic training. Hernandez was easily a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound hard-fighting American soldier who carried at least two hundred pounds of that weight above his waist, in his shoulders. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, he walked around with a baseball bat in his meaty hands. His sole mission in life at that time was to train and help keep a bunch of insecure, unprepared American boys alive in the days ahead. I had, and still have, tremendous respect and admiration for Drill Sergeant Hernandez. Not only did he school us in essential aspects of military training, but he also imparted a bit of philosophical wisdom that I will never forget. Even after completing many postgraduate college courses since my days in basic training, Hernandez imprinted far greater words of wisdom upon me than anything ever learned at school. The drill sergeant would often say, Excuses are like ass holes, everyone has one. In other words, failure was not an acceptable option in the face of life’s most dire threats. Since my days in basic training, I have earned two master level degrees and can honestly say that those pearls of military wisdom have guided me much more as I navigated through the cross currents of life than any college degree.

Okay, so who is Cecil Heacox, and what role did he play in all this? If you are still with me, we need to read on to find the answer to that question and then begin some serious fly fishing.

2

THE CALL OF THE CHARMED CIRCLE

image3.jpg

With time and chronological evolution in age and angling experience, I would eventually walk miles, or ride my bicycle greater lengths, or even occasionally take public transportation to explore the Rahway River closer to home, in Union, with young fishing buddies. As youthful and exuberant anglers, we had our vested rituals like all serious trout fishermen do. On nights before most angling expeditions, my friend, and early fishing companion Mark Perrotto, and I would wait for the cover of darkness and go worm picking. Engaging in this activity required only some flashlights, a container to hold the captured crawlers, and a bit of dried mustard, borrowed from my mother’s pantry, that was poured into the grass-veiled holes on neighborhood lawns, home to fat and juicy worms. These were special occasions in and of themselves as we were young men filled with many questions about life, often sharing limited, and sometimes erroneous, information about such worldly topics as girls, sex, and other pressing matters of teenage boys. Under black night skies, often made dazzling with heavenly constellations above, these endeavors were completed to the sweet smell of moist spring grass with a damp evening April bone chill in the air. As a young teenager, life was simple and as good as one could ever imagine it might get.

These escapades began in 1962; I was fourteen years old then. Many a predawn morning, Mark would wander to the back of our house where my bedroom was located; and if I over slept, he would quietly tap on the window to arouse me, but not my parents, from my slumber. Next we would bike out to the Rahway River in Union, either along Morris Avenue or eventually US Route 22. Once in a while, good fortune was with us, and we’d catch a ride from a family member up at these untimely hours of the morn. Then after fishing, we’d either walk back home or, for fifteen cents, take a Public Service #8 bus. On those rare occasions that luck was with us, we would hoist a dead, wrinkled hatchery trout, or two, dangling from a stringer, often to the chagrin and visual disapproval of other bus riders. We were young noble knights of the eternal Order of Sir Izaak Walton, and the Rahway River was our preordained turf.

Since those early days, I have fished an immeasurable number of times and walked endless miles along countless waterways in the pursuit of what fish scientists classify in the family of Salmonidae in the taxonomic ranks. But in ’62, there was a lot more fishing than actual catching; yet it never much mattered at all. By the time the trout season ended, I had creeled a total of three hatchery rainbow trout. One was fooled by a worm, one on a salmon egg, and one on a dough ball, no less, made from refrigerated biscuit batter purchased at the Morris Avenue A&P nestled along the banks of the Rahway River.

Lack of angling success notwithstanding, I knew from the onset that I was meant to be a flyfisher. Occasionally, I fished with two cousins from my mom’s side of the family, Tommy and Richie Brennan. Rich was the younger of the two brothers and often tagged along on our fishing adventures with the assigned responsibility of baiting hooks with those juicy night crawlers. This task of attaching a big fat, wiggly, disgusting worm, which often sprayed its guts all over when pierced with the hook’s barb, was something that I never could really delight in. Hence, over time, my bait of preference evolved to the salmon egg; these trout baits just seemed much more civilized and much less messy. As my growth in piscatorial matters evolved, I learned the importance of carrying several different colors of salmon eggs to give those hatchery fish a choice of preference. Most days it would be orange eggs that worked best, some days blood red or white were the colors preferred, and once in a while even frog-green color eggs did the trick. This would be a lesson that served me well as a fly fisherman later in life; one can never have too many different fly patterns to choose from, or so it seems.

What I recall most about salmon eggs was how the guys in the neighborhood pooled limited finances, then walked a mile, plus down to Huff’s Sporting Goods store on Stuyvesant Street and purchased at least a case of Mike’s Glo Fluorescent Salmon Eggs. Those were the best salmon eggs money could buy back then, and we would divvy them up among ourselves prior to every Jersey opening day.

As my piscatorial growth continued, leaving this dark side of angling to become a full-fledged flyfisher was a slow and arduous process. Eventually while bait fishing, I grew to prefer the feel of a fly rod over that of spinning gear. A greater sense of connection with quarry hidden in the unknown depths of a stream was experienced while holding a soft pliable fly line as opposed to a hard metal handle of a spinning reel. Initially I fished garden worms, salmon eggs, and then eventually wet flies using my first fiberglass fly rod. Much was learned about nymph fishing from the self-taught lessons of the art of angling with garden hackle. Things like how to read water, where fish lie, and the feel of a trout’s take were knowledge gained as a direct result of drifting worms.

Then in the summer of 1963, I finally caught my very first trout on a fly. This milestone occurred in Trout Brook, a tributary of the Black River, in Hacklebarney State Park located in the gentle rolling hills and glacial valley of northern New Jersey. The setting was a major habitat upgrade over the Rahway River, and I remember that feat like it was just last year. My parents took the family, comprised of my younger twin sisters and me, to Hacklebarney for a day visit. While my parents read on strategically placed shaded lawn chairs and my sisters played, I explored the park with a fly rod in hand and fished. While wandering a tributary to the Black River, I came upon a diminutive shadowy plunge pool. Having recently read Schwiebert’s Matching the Hatch, I searched for any signs of insect activity, or feeding fish. Seeing none, I shook a rhododendron which overhung the tiny dark pool, and several white moths took to the air. So I searched through a limited supply of flies and chose a White Irresistible, hoping this dry fly might imitate a moth. I don’t recall how many casts I made, but eventually a little brook trout took the Irresistible and to this day remains the only trout I ever caught on that pattern. Except for this outing, most of the time back then I would only use the few flies in my possession if fishing was very slow, or especially good, figuring little would be lost, or gained, if I wasn’t drifting bait. My maturation to a full-time flyfisher was a slow transition seemingly equivalent to the geologic time scale of evolution.

Duly noted, the day I finally crossed over to enlightened side of angling, never to look back on bait again, is as fresh in my mind now as when it happened decades ago. On opening day of 1969, my future brother-in-law, Grover Koch, and I together fished the Big Flat Brook River in northwestern New Jersey. He fished bait while I took the high road and used nymphs, an unweighted Cooper Bug, as I had sworn off worms and salmon eggs forever from that day forward. The stream was overcrowded as Jersey streams often tend to be on opening days; but we were happy to take part in this annual ritual. I remember split shots plunking, bobbers bobbing, anglers hooting and howling, and hooked trout splashing and flopping on the bank, being caught all around me. I had all I could do just to get a decent drift through this piscatorial mess of slap-happy humanity. Eventually things settled down as most other anglers limited out and left the water, and eventually I caught and released two small hatchery rainbows. I was content with my catch and proud that I stayed the course not succumbing to the urge of bait fishing. As I surveyed my surroundings, there resting on the bank watching me was Grover. At first I felt a bit sorry for him, since he was no longer fishing, but quickly asked him how he did, to which he responded, OK, I caught, and released, twenty-three trout! How did you do? At that moment in time, I knew my fly-fishing experiences could only improve. And simultaneously a hard-core fly-fishing purist was born within me—something that I never regret.

But before leaving this topic, I must admit that the underpinnings of this piscatorial pastime—fly fishing—are without any doubt laid in the solid foundation of lessons learned from my early days of drifting bait. Yes, the price of being a purist was steep that opening day in ’69. The crossover from the dark side was painful, but I had finally arrived, a full-fledged flyfisher wannabe. That day was my epiphany; no longer would I ever use a simple fishing pole again. You know one of those outfits purchased at a big-box discount store for $19.99 that includes a closed faced spinning reel loaded with eight, or ten, pound test heavy-duty monofilament, a few dobbers, a plastic box of imitation lures, and a package of number eight snelled hooks. From that day forward, my tools of the trade would only be the long rod—a fly rod to be specific, and eventually plenty of them. This is a story in and of itself to be told in a later chapter.

And, about this same general time period I obtained my New Jersey driver’s license upon turning seventeen; that event opened a whole new venue of angling opportunities far exceeding the banks of the Rahway River. Within the Garden State, I explored streams like the Black River—on my own, no longer with my parents, the Big Flat Brook, the Muskie, and my favorite, the Ken Lockwood Gorge on the South Branch of the Raritan River, among other places.

It was also in the spring of 1969 when I read an enlightening article by Cecil E. Heacox that appeared in the March and April issues of Outdoor Life. The two-part article was titled, Charmed Circle of The Catskills. The magazine narratives covered angling lore of famous Catskill Mountain trout streams that would leave an imprint on my life—much like home rivers do on salmon alevins. Up until then, almost all of my trout fishing was done over hatchery fish—transplants—man-made imitations, counterfeit trout of the human influence, if you will. It wasn’t until I ventured forth to fish the Adirondacks and Catskill Mountains did I ever truly experience fishing for wild trout and not mass-produced facsimiles.

By 1968, I had just begun tasting the richness of the waters of the Ausable and the following year added the Beaverkill; and now Heacox’s article opened my eyes to other angling possibilities fanning the piscatorial flame within me that my Uncle Pete initially ignited. Those stories made such an impression upon me that in 1970, upon graduating from college, I took a job with a computer company located in Kingston, New York. Some twenty-three later, U.S. industry was going through a business trend known as downsizing, restructuring corporate missions utilizing fewer employees. While this practice was somewhat new to the American landscape, the procedure became rather prevalent. In fact the 1994 movie Disclosure, starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore, made reference to the downsizing phenomenon in an opening scene on a ferry boat. As a result of this business practice and the overwhelming magical influence of Heacox’s articles, I eventually made another career choice. Cecil Heacox and his articles were major influences in my life—more