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The crystal clear water of this small northeastern trout stream makes wading tricky since everything looks deceptively shallow. Those of us accustomed to judging depth by the fading clarity in stained water have a little trouble adjusting our perception to such clear streams.

Here's a school of creek chubs.

This is a really deep hole on a famous Catskill river.

I missed one strike in this pool after taking the picture. It was a good fish that first showed itself with a telltale bulge and eddies below my fly, the sign of a nice trout refusing without quite breaking the surface. Five or ten drifts later it took convincingly, but I missed the hookset. That was the story that day -- missed hooksets. I didn't stay to fish this pool very long, because I tried to cross to fish it from the side that's on the right in the picture, obviously the best angle, and I found that what looked like an easy crossing near the tail was a swift, bouldery flat of very deceptive depth in the clear water. I found myself half-way across, past what had originally looked like the deepest water, only to find that the water that looked easiest was even swifter and deeper. I thought surely I was in for a swim, but somehow I made it back to the near bank dry and jumped in the car to head for less treacherous wading.

Here are the empty nymphal cases of Isonychia bicolor mayflies which hatched in early fall in the Catskills by crawling out onto a rock.