SNOWED IN

The weather is highly variable in southwestern Virginia, but a few things are for certain. If it’s gonna’ get cold and spit, pour, or dump snow it’s gonna’ be in February, and I’ll be holed up, sleeping late in my on-campus apartment with no school or possibility of fishing to busy me. And even after the weather has departed for the end of the month, or some surprise visit in March, and left a legacy of ice, my two-wheel-drive won’t be making it to the river, and the brown trout will be having a jolly old time in the runoff in the mountains without me. It’s a peculiar and uniquely frustrating situation to live through—like a bad trip, if you’ve got the right fascination.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Annually, upon this occasion, I find myself waking in a gray morning without intention. A sense of urgency reaches me through the gloomy face of winter. Water levels are up, dirty, and like the dingy chaos of a river coursing with runoff, there is a haze in the air that obscures reality, clouds the known. Finned legends emerge from enigma.

    There is a spring creek that rises just off the college’s property that is of little consequence and hop-across proportions until it feeds the pond in front of the cafeteria. I walk past it several times per day, and rarely notice the water in it. But when snow or rain hit hard, the water comes up, brown and frothy, and it catches my unyielding fancy. Only in the direst of circumstances does it become a destination.

    I abandon my living quarters without breakfast or any gear, but for a fly rod and a streamer of black and purple—something that can be seen in brown water—and head for the creek.

    The raging current has worn away the banks a few feet, greatly increasing its size and creating an almost unending succession of undercut banks, accentuated by the roots of trees on the lawn, now exposed. I’ve forgotten how rocky the bed is, but the roiling current, full of soft, almost still, pockets of water, reminds me.

    There is no one in sight, but why would there be? It’s early morning and there are no classes, no cafeteria hours, no reason to leave bed. No reason but a spring creek and a burning, bordering on desperate, need to tangle with the unknown.

    My first cast is directly upstream, to the near bank. The fluorescent fly lands in a slow pillow of water, inches from the dirt. A hard jerk-strip, and the fly jack-knives headfirst under the bank, below a tangle of roots. A second brings the fly back into view, and I watch it suspend there among the turmoil.

    Excited by the performance of my fly in the water and the ease with which it’s imparted action, I send a similar second cast to the opposite bank, upstream. For a second, it sits motionless in a micro-eddy, shielded from the ripping current, but a subtle twitch brings it closer to being swept away.

    Just as the current begins to grab the fly, a wake and surge of energy grabs the fly and straightens my fly line. A paddle tail erupts recklessly from the rolling current, as the fish points its nose down into the creekbed and struggles for leverage to get upstream.

    When it achieves the perfect balance and finds water to surround its tail, the fish blazes a trail upstream, slicing through the flooded river like a bird through air, taking to the air several times, and coming down into the narrow channel perfectly every time.

    As I chase the fish upstream, my line goes limp. Like it changed its mind, the fish reverses course and begins charging downstream. This time with twice the speed. I reel like mad to maintain tension on the fish, but as it approaches my position on the bank, I can sense the leader heading for the surface.

    In a moment of supernatural confusion and instinct, I pull my net from its holster fastened to my back. The fish takes off mere feet from me, and comes crashing down into the rubber basket of my net. I drop to my knees to submerge the fish in the net, and behold its majestic novelty—a brown trout of 22 inches, or 24, or 26.

    Pleased but still frustrated, I push away covers and lumber into the kitchen. Snowed in. A late breakfast is a good breakfast, I figure, and crack some eggs in a frying pan—the kitchen a refuge from the frozen windows and tile floor. I’ll spend the day tying streamers to target browns when I can finally get on the water. Something black, with some purple for contrast, maybe. Or perhaps something bright, to catch their interest.□

*Originally published in The Rural Virginian

BEFORE THE STORM

“I’m dropping out after today.”

    The declaration was one part joke, two parts intent, and escaped daily into a warm, bluebird sky from behind a bottom lip bit in collegiate compliance.

    Once you’ve invested years of tireless angling and observation, and compiled and analyzed a few thousand fish’s worth of fishing logs, you come to recognize Go-Time for what it is.

    It was Day Four of what was to be a week-long warming trend, and March’s winds were moving in response. Friday afternoon would see 75 degrees, and Saturday would bring a sharp cold snap—30 degrees and the possibility of snow. Local stream flows were double average from spring rains, and dropping slowly. In other words, it was Go-Time, and I knew it.

    With the looming reward of escaping to the mountains in search of big wild trout, I crammed my schoolwork into the dark hours, and shaved all unnecessary habits from my routine.

    Thursday afternoon found me speeding towards a Virginia mountain valley, eyes glancing nervously from the road towards the snaking creekbottom below. An eagle soared overhead—casting a shadow over the river’s course and the farm fields surrounding it in its lower reaches—it too content in the spring sun’s gaze.

    I found the water and realized a dream. Rivers—in their ideal state in my mind’s eye—run full and deep. From snow runoff, their runs and holes are highlighted an icy blue. Wonder and possibility are retained when the gravel of the streambed is not too visible. And so this river ran.

High spring water. Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Within these holes and runs and un-seeable gravel lots lies the year’s most promising opportunity to tangle with a big fish, for they find confidence in the slight discoloration, and large prey is disoriented in the chaos.

    Likewise, I tied on a large crayfish fly and worked my way upstream, methodically, keeping contact with the gravel and opportunity.

    Opportunity took me by surprise a few casts into the afternoon, when a sizeable brown snapped at my fly and released it in the same breath. An hour and a half later, opportunity returned with conviction, and ripped my fly into the undercut of a rock ledge. My Tycoon Tackle Scion throbbed under the pressure of a large flash, and a thick 24-inch wild rainbow initiated an adrenaline-soaked game of net tag downstream.

24-inch wild rainbow trout taken on a streamer in the mountains. Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Friday was a continuation in the weather trend, and the joke in my daily threat to abandon academic employment was further diluted with intent. The wind was raging harder; the sun, shining brighter. A storm was coming, and the front was shaping up to be a dramatic one.

    This time, I found the water slightly lower. The currents were calmer and the water clearer, though still rich with opportunity.

    Brown trout are homebodies, particularly in small mountain streams, and so I started the day with a hit list. Patiently, I placed my fly along the current seam of the first run, working my way upstream. 

    Redemption struck where she should have—in a pillow behind a large chunk rock in the streambed where she showed her face the day before—but held on, and rewarded me with 21 inches of wild butter-belly and shimmering bulls’ eyes.

About 20 inches of brown trout taken on a streamer in the mountains. Photo by Matt Reilly.

    It’s funny that fishermen yearn for redemption so avidly, and yet release her graciously once achieved. I was pondering this thought as I examined my tippet and discovered nicks that could cause me to lose another big fish, should I be so lucky. I retied.

    In the act of retying my fly, my focus shifted from my knot to the water in the background, captured by unexplained movement. My heart ricocheted about my chest, more than it would for any fish, when I quickly recognized the brown figure lumbering over the limestone streambed towards my wading boot as a hellbender salamander—18 inches of giant, beautifully adapted, rare salamander.

A hellbender salamander cruises the limestone streambed inches from my wading boot. Photo by Matt Reilly.

    With shaking hands, I reached for my backpack’s side pocket and squeezed my eyes tight in thankfulness for having remembered my waterproof camera. A few moments interacting with, and studying the awesome intricacies of the animal left my spirit enriched.

    God must have been smiling on me and rewarded my responsible stewardship, when granted redemption in that large wild brown trout, with more blessings; for the afternoon ran on, and more wild trout came to hand—approximately 40, with most being larger than 12 inches. The term “golden light” comes to mind—that moment of perfect elemental combination that results in a truly magnificent circumstance, as recognized by photographers and outdoorsmen, alike.

Photos by Matt Reilly.

    As I write this, the weather has turned stable; the water, low. I’ve hardly threatened to abandon my studies for the river, and my nighttime motivation has shrunken. The conditions are not prime for my mind to wander, but they will be again.□

    

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian            

FEBRUARY IS A HARD MONTH TO LOVE

February is a hard month to love. The most ardent endure her harsh temperament--her changing moods--with some success, rarely without sacrificing self, in the form of numb fingers or wind-chapped cheeks.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    February is a time of change, one without which the climactic arrival of spring would be of muted contrast. Snowmelt, under the typically warmer-than-winter closing days of the month, floods rivers and streams with cold, dirty water, while small game seasons peter out. But if February offers any consolation, it’s that taking it by the horns and experiencing the true end of the outdoor year makes spring all the more grandiose.

High, Cold, and Dirty

    Six inches of snow fell over the weekend, and promptly melted, unleashing inches of 36-degree, muddy water on the landscape. If there’s a type of water that warrants hanging your hat up for, it’s this—but when the going gets tough, I find it unacceptable to accept defeat.

    When I arrived at the roadside pull-off, I could hardly recognize the creek that brushes the road. Under normal circumstances, a well-defined run-pool complex passes tranquilly under the shadow of a hemlock-lined bank. With the right angle of sunlight to facilitate, a half dozen or so dark, elongated forms can be seen waving in place like submerged grass in the lucid blue belly of water, fins grazing cobble below.

    This time, however, the scene looked and sounded of chaos. Green-brown water capped with foam rolled and chopped like ocean waves, ignoring the serpentine borders of the creek, and challenging the quiet forest highway adjacent to a contest in violent white noise it was sure to win.

    I learned a lesson in high-water trout fishing in western Maryland three years prior. That river was running roughly four times its typical flow. Wild brown trout filled the river, and I had considerable success fishing soft water behind big boulders along the flooded bank with a large, dark fly. That was mid-June.

    A third odd was stacked against me on that February day—cold water. I knew I’d have to fish slowly, and very thoroughly.

    When a creek jumps its banks, holding and feeding lies are tossed in the air. The food chain scrambles to reestablish footing in the changing system. Small fish are tossed around, and large, predatory fish cruise harsh current breaks, looking for a feeding opportunity.

    A few hundred yards upstream, I found the setting for the scene I prophesized in my mind. A long, hard run ran over chunk rock, tossing water in crests and pits. An abutting slab of bedrock calmed the churning, and pooled a few feet of calm water.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Several casts with a heavy crayfish-imitating fly into the seam ended with a hard stop and the turn of a massive female brown trout that ran downstream, broke me off, and became my latest heartbreak.

Two Triples

    A crisp, sunny afternoon in February beckoned me to the squirrel woods, amped with adrenaline, 20-guage pump shotgun in tote.

    Late season bushytail hunting, in my mind, speaks of delicate walking, skittish squirrels, and quick shots—a game tailored to the indiscriminate, somewhat forgiving reach of a boom-stick.

    Just barely inside the treeline, as I stood mid-way up a hardwood ridge, sun to my back, three squirrels busted from cover, nervous from my prolonged pause, and darted for independent cover. Swinging, and operating the pump-loading mechanism instinctively, I dropped all three on consecutive shots—a triple, for half a limit.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Another 45 minutes of still hunting landed me in position to take another bushytail. From a creekbottom, I closed the distance between me and the rustling I could hear near the top of the ridge, hopping and skipping in bursts, imitating the sound of a pouncing gray squirrel.

    The first shot was presented when an alarmed gray pounced from the trunk of an oak tree into the branches of another. As it was scrambling to establish footing, I dropped it with a swinging report from the 20-guage.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    A second bushytail peeked out from behind the trunk of a neighboring oak, curious, presenting a headshot that didn’t go unclaimed. Down went another batch of meat for the pot.

    A third held tight to the forest floor for 30 seconds before making a mad dash for a nearby hickory tree. I ran forward ten feet as the squirrel began its ascent of the trunk, and interrupted it, taking a quick knee, and firing a rising snap-shot—a second double, for a limit of late season bushytails.□

 *Originally published in the Rural Virginian

BROWN TOWN

Under normal circumstances, creeks, rivers—bodies of water—usually give sufficient warning before they reveal themselves to a wandering angler. An analytical eye on the terrain while driving slowly towards a perceived destination, chest leaning slightly up on the steering wheel, is all it takes—unless you’re in the downtown district of a major city.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Looking down at the water from the overgrown and crumbling parking lot of an abandoned building, I wasn’t surprised I had almost missed it. A small freestone creek, no wider than 10 feet across, gushed over river rock 10 feet down in a gully that navigates a hodgepodge of residential lots, industrial facilities, and businesses. Even the short bridge that I drove over failed to harness enough of my attention to signal the proximity of the stream.

    My mind questioned by what device there could be a viable population of wild trout occupying the water below. Machine shops, abandoned car washes, and other impenetrable surfaces bordered the stream’s course for miles, surely keeping it stocked with a hefty supply of automotive chemicals and other pollutants. Lawns and roads took up the remainder of the immediate bank, contributing still more chemical pollutants, as well as novel trash items like pizza boxes, onion sacks, and wire fencing.

    “There’s no way,” I thought.

    Still, the creek had a reputation for fish, and so I returned to my car, and suited up.

    Fishing a favorite double nymph rig, my first cast landed in the head of a small run that spanned the width of the creek. Within a few seconds of hitting the water, the fly line stopped suddenly, and a quick hook set pulled a bottle rocket from the white water and sent it careening downstream. I let slack line slide from my line hand, and started my downstream chase.

    My opponent’s energy was running out, and I had him folding under the influence of my long rod in the tail of a long run. Guiding his head towards me on a short line, I plunged my net underneath its form and scooped.

    What superficially appeared to be a roadside ditch creek, accented by the occasional oxygenating riffle, had rewarded my preliminary effort with a sizeable wild rainbow, taping at about 15 inches—one I’d be proud to have pulled from even some of the larger streams and creeks in the vicinity.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” passed through my mind, prompting me to take a more critical look at the water. Small patches of water cress colored the bank in a few spots. Tree cover was marginal at best. If the cress did indeed indicate the presence of springs throughout the creek’s course, they play an important role in keeping the stream cool year-round. Still, though, I couldn’t rationalize the success of the wild trout population in front of me when considering the chemical and domestic pollution I can all but guarantee plague the water quality.

    “Maybe it’s a fluke,” I thought.

    An hour and a half later, after catching 12 small to average wild rainbows in a single run under the confused gaze of two brothers playing catch with a football in their backyard, the thought that my first fish was a “fluke” had fled my mind and dissipated into the background traffic noise.

    The brothers’ own house caught my eye as I glanced upstream, planning my next attack. From the back door of the house, concrete steps descended to ground level where they met a large concrete slab, presumably the foundation of the house itself. The tip of the structure extended into the water along the bank, catching a short pocket of water in its tail and creating a dynamic eddy.

    My formal training on the Shenandoah Mountains’ brook trout streams has made it near impossible for me to pass up such a lie, even for its small size. From head to tail, the pocket was no more than two feet long.

    My nymph found its head and stopped abruptly. My rod doubled on the hookset, the captured yielding no ground. A long, brown back breached, facing upstream, and kicked itself out of the pocket to roll downstream with two labored fans of its tail.

    Positioned for the cast sharply downstream, I kept my rod tip high, handled my net, and waded to midstream to collect the trout on its run downstream. The battle expired shortly, as I had current and tool working for me, and the weight of a brown trout of about 18 inches sagged in the silicone basket of my landing net.

    As I ungloved my hands to handle the fish, I glanced nervously upward at the house towering over me. I can be a nervous guy in the city, but for fish, I can make an exception.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginia

A MORNING WITH THE VILLAGERS

Mountains are the world’s best hiding places. They can shield you from what’s immediate and threatening and place you closest to what’s most important in a single breath. This, I am certain, was God’s intention; to move or alter one should be a sacrilege. The communities and cultures that emerge at the end of the roads that navigate the folds and ridgelines, and cross the creeks that animate them, are, by design, strongholds for old-world values and charm. Thus my soul is pulled down secondary roads that lead up and away.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    For a few hundred miles, as they dive into the southwest corner of Virginia, the Appalachian Mountains find girth. The highlands to the west begin to expand from the narrow crest that mounts in the central part of the state, and continue to do so as they roll into western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee—the Great Smokey Mountains. Ridges and fertile valleys take turns striping the land to the east, giving rise to a number of small mountain towns that once dotted a railroad that wandered the valleys and hollows.

    Taylor’s Valley is one such destination. Nestled in the palm of the southwest Virginia highlands, the village is as far removed as you can get in just a 15-minute drive from Damascus—affectionately dubbed “Trail Town USA.” Fork Mountain, which separates the two populations geographically, pushes the traveler south into Tennessee along a mountain highway before a ramshackle, faded, wooden sign directs him northward along a pot-holed road back into the state from whence he came.

    While I refrain at all costs from writing about secrets, Taylor’s Valley is none such. In fact, visitors—hikers—en route from Springer Mountain, Katahdin-bound on the Appalachian Trail, pass through shortly after making their collective favorite stop in Damascus. Perhaps Virginia’s most popular bike trail, the Virginia Creeper Trail, drives dozens of bikers through town daily. A single-lane bridge spanning Whitetop Laurel Creek—arguably one of the highest quality trout streams in the Southeast—is the town’s welcome mat.

    Gardens are plentiful; gas stations, nonexistent. Churches outnumber restaurants, which are few; and on a pleasant fall morning it would not be a surprise to find the majority of residences vacated for the comfort of nature. The Game Department’s regular stocking of the creek throughout fall and spring makes the retired man sporting hip-waders, creel, and limber spinning rod a common character—canine companions are optional, but largely endorsed.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    It’s a homey place. That’s the impression I got when I opened my car door in a small gravel shoulder by the creek to find my very own dog waiting for me, like a housewarming present for my sojourn. Perky ears and friendly eyes stared me down, a wet nose implored my hands for attention, as I shouldered waders and strung my fly rod, intent on sampling some of the Valley’s aquatic villagers, but not without satisfying its four-legged one.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Golden leaves barreled down the creek pecking at my fly line, catching my fly on occasion. Patience and persistence payed out, though, in the form of four chunky brown trout, flamboyantly adorned with spawning garb.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    I released the last fish and looked up to notice an elderly man fishing a good way above me. I stepped out of the river to explore upstream and give the man some space to enjoy the morning, but happened upon him leaning by his aged red pickup, retired from fishing.

    “Seems every time I looked you were doubled up with one of them!” he exclaimed.

    “The jury’s still out on the luck part of it,” I returned politely.

    “Any browns,” he inquired?

    “All browns,” I replied,

    “Huh,” he returned, hoisting a stringer of four rainbow trout. “They looked pretty good sized. Last year the state did a questionnaire asking people if they’d have lots of small and average fish or fewer bigger fish, and I think they settled on bigger. Works out good for me. I come down here when I can, but I don’t fish any of those other creeks. This one is the prettiest.”

    “There’s something to be said for that,” I said. “They say ‘trout don’t live in ugly places.’ Those are some nice fish.”

    “Tell me, are you a Christian?” he asked.

    “Yes, sir,” I said.

    “I thought I could tell it on your person,” he replied, smiling. “Most folks here are. Some of ‘em opened up their home as a café for the bikers. Their chocolate cake won some award in one of them southern magazines.”

    Talk of family and fishing petered out after a snack and a wave. I moved upstream to explore, caught a dozen more trout, exchanged waves with the bikers and hikers, and thought a familiar thought: These hills are home. And everything in them.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian