Wandering the Esopus, in search of the spawning trout

A few years back, the New York authorities extended the trout season on the Esopus Creek in Ulster County six weeks, all the way to the end of November.

This allows anglers to take a whack at spawning browns moving up from the Ashokan Reservoir, and at the greedy rainbows following to eat the browns’ eggs.

Years ago in New Mexico’s high mountain meadow streams, I learned about fishing for spawning trout.

They are preoccupied. Their minds are focused. They might take time out to eat, and they might not.

So my fishing buddy Glenn May and I decided it was a solid tactic to try and annoy the males with gaudy flies, like Humpys.

It didn’t always work, but then again  our Plan B — which was for me to enter the creek upstream of a male brown looking for love and try to chase him downstream, where Glenn waited with his net, like a hockey goalie — was foolproof, in that it never worked.

Glenn later wrote a fishing column for the New Mexico Daily Lobo and then the Albuquerque Journal, and when he recounted this story was sternly taken to task by a local angling eminence.

Not sporting, said Ye Guru, to which Glenn replied in the “Oh yeah? You try it!� vein.

Glenn finally had to join the Peace Corps to end the controversy.

In any event nobody need try such rococo tactics on the Esopus. Streamers are the order of the day — big ones.

And large fat nymphs with lots of rubber legs and such.

Last week the water was medium high, so I used a combination of streamers and nymphs. The winning pattern was a hare’s ear nymph with a bead head, tied in a sort of bird’s nest configuration by my friend Mike Vincent.

I took two decent browns in the 16-inch range by swinging the fly — weighted down additionally with two pieces of BB shot about 8 inches up the leader — through the transition zone between the end of a long flat run and the beginning of a rapid.

Just for the heck of it I tried floating a red Humpy around some large rocks, which sparked a couple of investigatory runs but ultimately found no takers.

The handful of anglers taking advantage of the extended season were mostly wearing neoprene waders. It’s certainly cold enough to justify that, but I find neoprene so clumsy that I use my standard breathables, with thermals, wool socks and a pair of Swedish army pants that are about half an inch thick. They’re almost as clumsy as neoprene, but vastly hipper. (Would you rather look like a Swedish soldier or the Michelin Man?)

The Esopus has didymo, or rock snot, and although there hasn’t been much evidence of it, it is best to either clean and dry your gear thoroughly after fishing there, or devote one set of waders and boots to affected waters.

The Esopus begins at the Five Arches bridge in Boiceville; big water with plenty of public access from Route 28 is available upstream to Allaben. The Esopus above the Portal, where water from the north is channeled through the mountains on its way to New York City, is a medium-sized stream. There are two obvious places for fishermen to park — one just up from the Portal on the left (heading west on Route 28) and one in Shandaken (from 28, take Route 42 north and the next left on county road 47, about a mile and change from the intersection).