Ah, the Hendrickson. At first breath, it sounds so distinguished. Like it has advanced degrees, the pedigree of a blue blood one percenter, and over-engineered rooms all filled with the finest vino in the basements of its multiple estates.

Actually, Hendrickson is an ancient Scottish name with its own family crest. Well, that’s nifty. But, with apologies to proud Scots in waders, in my little part of the world the Hendrickson is nothing but an oaf living off the reputations of far more ethical mayflies.

Up here in northern Michigan, the Hendrickson opens the annual parade of river bugs. (Unless you count the Black Stonefly, which is more like the fat old impotent afternoon drunk who waddles out in front of the St. Paddy’s Day band in the middle of Main Street.) The Black Stone is a harmless lout wallowing in low expectations, but this Hendrickson is some kind of shifty combination of cheerleader-temptress, cuff linked personal injury attorney, and class clown.

The males appear first, if at all, and never on any kind of schedule approximating a working man’s calendar. Oh, sure, you’ll get phone calls from your upstate buddies when you’re in rush hour traffic on a balmy Tuesday night in early April: “We had henny sailboats all over the place today!” But on a Saturday or Sunday? Fuhgettaboudit. Stay home and buy Powerball tickets instead. Oh, those weekend emergers are out there in the currents somewhere, but there’s always an east wind or a torrential Friday night rain that turns the streams to chocolate by hatch time on Saturday. You can even try to wire this thing with some kind of contrived mid-week business meeting up north and catch a warm breeze out of the south. Trust me, the water temps will linger in the forties and those Henny males will shrivel back into their shucks with a bad case of the shrinkage, and the river, unbroken by trout snouts, will convince you the Silent Spring has finally arrived. Meantime, back at the office the boss will look at your empty cubicle and wonder if it’s finally time to let you go.

Then you have the indecisive and chronically disoriented females who, almost without exception, immorally abort egg-laying after hours of wasted energy hovering just inches

above the current. We’re talking about clouds of dainty hotty spinners here, dancing for you, yellow eggs all aglow on their butts behind their smooth mascara-colored bodies, until the sun fades and the girls wave goodbye with wings all a-winking, untouched as they whisk away right back into the cool cedars of despair on the opposite bank. The cabin boys and I witnessed it again last year on Tax Day, but we’re too old and bruised to fall for those hollow flirtations. We just sat there in blue jeans, chewing cigars on the deck, and flipped off the last lingering prostitutes.

By mid-May, the wildflowers will pop after two straight weeks of warmth and the homeless guy who hangs out at the gas station in your one-stoplight town will tout an armload of morel mushrooms. And you’ll head to the river, hours early, on a warm morning, so hopeful you won’t even check the weather forecast. In your silly bliss, you’ll give a sideways glance to the Brown Drake box and count the days ‘til that Memorial Weekend spinner fall. Then you’ll grab handfuls of sulphurs and popcorn caddis, drive to a favorite bend an hour from town, wader up, and jump in the current with your four weight and prissy CFO reel.

Within moments, a fresh north wind will suck twenty degrees out of the thermometer. The sun will die behind a purple sky to the west. Ice pellets – nature’s own buckshot – will pelt the back of your neck.

And in the middle of the season’s last snowstorm, the browns and brookies will erupt and you’ll be nothing but a glowering chaperone at the Henny Prom. The males and females will disco and fall by the thousands into the river, all around your untouched sulphur, as your other fly box, a veritable housing project full of unemployed Hendrickson males and females, sits in a dark corner of your downstate bedroom.

Goodbye, Hendrickson.

You can fly your pretty pregnant butt all the way back to Scotland for all I care.

– John Bebow, Second Vice President