By April, trout are beginning to look upward, having awakened from their semi-dormant state and willing to rise to a hatching bug or a hook wound with a bit of fur or fluff if drifted with skill.
The first birds of spring have already returned, a sign that the season is turning.
This is when black stoneflies crawl along streamside foliage, their gray wings easily blending in with the drab bark of trees. These aquatic bugs emerge from their watery homes, leaving inanimate skins on the sides of rocks as they take on new wings folded flat along their backs.
By late afternoon, the females return to the stream. Like tiny helicopters, they hover over the water. If the temperature is warm enough, fish will slash at a black- or gray-colored pattern with swept-back wings, especially if twitched to imitate the actions of these insects as they skitter across the surface to lay their eggs.
Beginning with Paraleptophlebia adoptiva, a hearty, dun-colored insect imitated by anglers with a pattern called a Blue Quill, a succession of mayflies will hatch as the month progresses. After rising en masse from the stream’s bottom, the nymphs emerge through the surface film, molting into duns that float upon the current like tiny yachts, their gossamer wings tacking with the breeze.
Those that survive the trout’s inevitable onslaught flutter toward streamside brambles as phoebes and swallows take their share. After a second molt, the adults will return to the stream to mate, after which the females lay their eggs before falling to the surface, their life coming to an end within hours of emergence.
All of this plays out under dark and rain-threatening skies for which the month is known.
As April progresses, two other mayflies hatch from the streambed in much the same way. They are imitated by flies known to anglers as Quill Gordons and Hendricksons, patterns named after anglers who once fished the rivers of New York’s Catskills.
I often wonder if more of us spent time along the bank of a stream or in a field of wildflowers there would be less strife in the world. If only we could appreciate those simple gifts found just outside our door, we might be more willing to set aside our prejudices, less inclined to dredge up old grievances, make war.
Judging from the lines of “Lines Written in Early Spring” by William Wordsworth, he understood that time in nature can quiet the noise of the world.
Nevertheless, there is something satisfying in casting a fly first created by my fellow brothers of the angle. Each spring I’ll follow in a long tradition of men and women who have found momentary sanctuary from a troubled world while wading a trout stream, tramping along a woodland trail or perhaps simply standing upon a porch surrounded by birdsong.
