OVER LAND AND WATER TO CRYSTAL POND

I make a habit of ending an adventure with a capper that’s worth the distinction.

Bow pointed towards Mt. Katahdin, headed for camp on Crystal Pond. Photo by Matt Reilly.

Whether it’s truly a conscious effort, or simply a last ditch attempt to milk the most opportunity from every day, I can’t say. Regardless, as the Independence Day weekend threatened to dewild the gravel roads of central Maine’s Baxter State Park with flatlanders and other vacationers, I had one such capper on my mind.

    From my point of view, the crown jewels of Maine’s interior are the countless remote brook trout ponds that play host to some of the last strong populations of native brook trout in the country. The 200,000-acre Baxter State Park serves only as a sample platter of these fisheries; thousands more exist throughout the region.

    One such pond had captured my imagination from the moment I got my hands on a map. For confidentiality’s sake, I’ll call it Crystal.

    A hike of about two and a half miles separates Crystal Pond from the nearest road, thinning the crowd of those not willing to work for their fun. Primitive camping is not permitted on the road-side of the pond. However, a few maintained primitive sites dot the shoreline opposite the trail’s terminus. 

A boat is required to reach them, thus thinning the crowds further. Luckily, in a phone call two days before, a friend revealed to me the combination to the canoe he, like many Mainers make a habit of doing on their favorite ponds, keeps on the banks of Crystal.

    According to pond survey maps, Crystal is quite large--as backcountry brook trout ponds go in the state of Maine—with one very prominent piece of shoreline structure. Halfway up the east bank is a long, skinny point, the tip of which, shot directly up the same bank to a similar point, marks a drop-off from four feet to almost 40 feet in depth.

    Stillwater brook trout are very structure-oriented creatures, and so having structural features like this drop-off present and easy to locate is a huge advantage to the angler.

    The weather had been unseasonably warm, bringing little rain. The famed Hexagenia mayfly hatch, which brings brook trout in numbers to the surface to feed on the giant, emerging insect, was proving to be a non-starter. So, depth chart in hand, canoe combination memorized, the romantic vision of my great New England capper drew me to the trailhead.

    For the majority of my New England expedition, I carried with me a Water Master Grizzly one-man pack raft (Read the review HERE), which comes in a dry bag built as a backpack for mobility. Not needing the boat, I emptied the backpack and refilled it with overnight, boating, and fishing gear, and hit the trail.

Canoe forest. Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Approximately an hour of navigating craggy ridges and buggy bogs placed me sweaty and fly-bitten on the banks of Crystal Pond, amid a glimmering canoe forest. Crafts of varying makes, colors and conditions lay strewn about the pine-needled forest floor. Some were chained to trees. Others were left unfastened by anything but a cultural expectation of respect. Mainers are serious about their canoes--Old Town canoes originating in Old Town, Maine--and the sight that greets hikers to Crystal Pond is hardly a novel one.

    I quickly found, among the dozens, the canoe whose use had been granted to me. Chained to two logs, each lashed perpendicularly as a makeshift rack to two pine trees, sat cradled a red canoe, faded to the point of being described as pink, and with so many patches along its hull as to make the original material the minority.

    Sliding the craft down off its rack, I loaded it with my gear and dragged it a short distance to a gravel bank along the pond’s shoreline. Mount Katahdin and Baxter Peak illustrated the skyline and threw its impression upon the glassy surface of the pond, moreover populated with the mini-peaks of partially submerged boulders.

    Twenty minutes of paddling landed the canoe’s stern squarely on my campsite. I made camp, ate a quick dinner, and repacked my gear for an evening’s fishing.

    The sun was falling behind Katahdin’s domineering figure by the time I reached with paddle the prominent point mid-pond. A few casts killed time before the pond’s surface was broken by the rising form of a brook trout to my right. A reflexive cast and a short strip of a muddler minnow through the ripple produced a quick strike, and strong 14-inch northern brookie was soon to hand.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Emerging rise-forms grew more numerous as light faded, and the song of the willowing loon bounced off the walls of a shrinking world. Soon the light of an early moon was all there was, save for me, the loons, and the brook trout, and the memory of my last day of summer in Maine.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

OVER LAND AND WATER TO CRYSTAL POND

I make a habit of ending an adventure with a capper that’s worth the distinction.

Bow pointed towards Mt. Katahdin, headed for camp on Crystal Pond. Photo by Matt Reilly.

Whether it’s truly a conscious effort, or simply a last ditch attempt to milk the most opportunity from every day, I can’t say. Regardless, as the Independence Day weekend threatened to dewild the gravel roads of central Maine’s Baxter State Park with flatlanders and other vacationers, I had one such capper on my mind.

    From my point of view, the crown jewels of Maine’s interior are the countless remote brook trout ponds that play host to some of the last strong populations of native brook trout in the country. The 200,000-acre Baxter State Park serves only as a sample platter of these fisheries; thousands more exist throughout the region.

    One such pond had captured my imagination from the moment I got my hands on a map. For confidentiality’s sake, I’ll call it Crystal.

    A hike of about two and a half miles separates Crystal Pond from the nearest road, thinning the crowd of those not willing to work for their fun. Primitive camping is not permitted on the road-side of the pond. However, a few maintained primitive sites dot the shoreline opposite the trail’s terminus. 

A boat is required to reach them, thus thinning the crowds further. Luckily, in a phone call two days before, a friend revealed to me the combination to the canoe he, like many Mainers make a habit of doing on their favorite ponds, keeps on the banks of Crystal.

    According to pond survey maps, Crystal is quite large--as backcountry brook trout ponds go in the state of Maine—with one very prominent piece of shoreline structure. Halfway up the east bank is a long, skinny point, the tip of which, shot directly up the same bank to a similar point, marks a drop-off from four feet to almost 40 feet in depth.

    Stillwater brook trout are very structure-oriented creatures, and so having structural features like this drop-off present and easy to locate is a huge advantage to the angler.

    The weather had been unseasonably warm, bringing little rain. The famed Hexagenia mayfly hatch, which brings brook trout in numbers to the surface to feed on the giant, emerging insect, was proving to be a non-starter. So, depth chart in hand, canoe combination memorized, the romantic vision of my great New England capper drew me to the trailhead.

    For the majority of my New England expedition, I carried with me a Water Master Grizzly one-man pack raft (Read the review HERE), which comes in a dry bag built as a backpack for mobility. Not needing the boat, I emptied the backpack and refilled it with overnight, boating, and fishing gear, and hit the trail.

Canoe forest. Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Approximately an hour of navigating craggy ridges and buggy bogs placed me sweaty and fly-bitten on the banks of Crystal Pond, amid a glimmering canoe forest. Crafts of varying makes, colors and conditions lay strewn about the pine-needled forest floor. Some were chained to trees. Others were left unfastened by anything but a cultural expectation of respect. Mainers are serious about their canoes--Old Town canoes originating in Old Town, Maine--and the sight that greets hikers to Crystal Pond is hardly a novel one.

    I quickly found, among the dozens, the canoe whose use had been granted to me. Chained to two logs, each lashed perpendicularly as a makeshift rack to two pine trees, sat cradled a red canoe, faded to the point of being described as pink, and with so many patches along its hull as to make the original material the minority.

    Sliding the craft down off its rack, I loaded it with my gear and dragged it a short distance to a gravel bank along the pond’s shoreline. Mount Katahdin and Baxter Peak illustrated the skyline and threw its impression upon the glassy surface of the pond, moreover populated with the mini-peaks of partially submerged boulders.

    Twenty minutes of paddling landed the canoe’s stern squarely on my campsite. I made camp, ate a quick dinner, and repacked my gear for an evening’s fishing.

    The sun was falling behind Katahdin’s domineering figure by the time I reached with paddle the prominent point mid-pond. A few casts killed time before the pond’s surface was broken by the rising form of a brook trout to my right. A reflexive cast and a short strip of a muddler minnow through the ripple produced a quick strike, and strong 14-inch northern brookie was soon to hand.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Emerging rise-forms grew more numerous as light faded, and the song of the willowing loon bounced off the walls of a shrinking world. Soon the light of an early moon was all there was, save for me, the loons, and the brook trout, and the memory of my last day of summer in Maine.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

FAMILIAR FACES IN STRANGE PLACES

I left home on a Tuesday. Little Blue didn’t seem as full as perhaps she should be with the intent of spending a month on the road in New England on a tight budget. But I wasn’t lacking in flies, food, or camera gear. So what more do I need? The jury is still out on that ever-standing question, though it’s only Day 1.

    When I found Cape Cod for the first time in two years, she was covered in darkness. Traffic held me up in the bold points of Megalopolis, and I didn’t make camp before sunset, as was the intention. Oh well. It’s all part of it.

    I regrouped in the morning. Day 1, officially, and pointed Little Blue towards Buttermilk Bay of Buzzards Bay, on the eastern edge of the Cape.

    Buttermilk is an uncelebrated fishery, itself, but it drains the 4.5-mile spring creek, Red Brook, which flows south from White Island Pond through classic Massachusetts pine barrens. Every year, around the middle of May and early June, Red Brook is the seasonal host of alewives and blueback herring, both herring species that run up the river to spawn, and the water is thick with them.

    But herring is not why people come to Red Brook. Hidden beneath undercut banks, and nestled up tight to woody cover and watercress edges, fin the speckled beneficiaries of a great conservation success story.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    I connected with one on the end of a delicate, tricky cast that floated through a tangle of trees and landed on the upstream edge of a watercress patch. In a flash of gold he darted out from cover and ate my Edison Tiger, fashioned in a vise weeks prior.

    A familiar face in a strange place, the small brook trout that came to quiver in my hand looked no different than any I had tricked from their mountain lairs back home. However, this fish’s life story is a bit different.

    He started his life as an egg in the slow, meandering Red Brook, but his childhood years were spent along the weedy banks of buttermilk bay, filtering saltwater, and feeding on small fish and crustaceans. In the creek, as a grown individual, he sits in wait for the chance to snack on a herring fry, as they, like their spawning parents, are thick in the river.

    Indeed, until recently, the “salters,” as they are called, of Red Brook were one of the last known populations of sea-run brook trout remaining, and like their Appalachian cousins, they too face adversity.

    Near the headwaters of Red Brook and White Island Pond is the town of Cranberry, aptly named, as the hub of a great deal of historical (and ongoing) cranberry farming. As a tool perceived to be ecologically harmless, Red Brook was dammed to flood acres of cranberry bogs.

    The dam spelled low and warming water on the downstream side, which made it impossible for coldwater species to thrive where they once had unhindered. Once the plight of the salters was discovered, a collaborative effort between Trout Unlimited, the Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife, and the Trustees of Reservations got the dam removed, woody cover added to the streambed, and a regular stream monitoring protocol instated.

    Today, that stretch of river is managed under special regulations, and enjoyed by fishermen, birdwatchers, hikers, and photographers.

    There are other rivers like Red Brook, and all have fishable populations of salters that love to chew on streamers. If for some reason you needed to find me sometime in the next few days, you can be sure it’s somewhere under the branches, and within 40 feet of a watercress patch sliding flies to familiar faces.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

CRACKING CRANBERRY

Excitement and anticipation seemed to boil within us, warding off some of the chill and threat posed by a heavy, oppressive sky. Fog hung thick and low, and drizzle fell from it to soak the alpine crest of Black Mountain. Wind slanted it sideways and drove the chill deeper.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Just a day before, my brother, Phillip, and I toted backpacks peacefully into the heart of West Virginia’s Cranberry Wilderness, set up camp, and angled for sprightly brook trout along the middle reaches of the Middle Fork of the Williams River. But on the peak of Black Mountain, we stood another day into a weeks-long cold, wet spell plaguing the region, on the opposite side of the wilderness area, poised a few hundred feet above the Forks of Cranberry, with enough food in our packs to last us four more days. Donning waders and rain shells, we began sloshing our way down the mountain, ready for what the coming days would have in store.

    Research, travel to, fish, photograph, and report on notable fly fishing destinations throughout the East Coast—herein lies my job description, at least for a large fraction of the summer. It’s a tough life, but it’s my life, and I’ll deal with it as such. The Cranberry Wilderness was the first on my hit list, and did its best to invoke the fictional dread I attribute to this lifestyle.

    It hardly succeeded, though we made camp and fixed dinner in a steady, cold rain that second night, after a six-mile hike through mud puddles and downed hemlocks and spruces. The next morning—Day 3—we awoke to the peaceful sound of snowflakes stippling the tent’s rain fly. The air outside of the sleeping bags was harsh and raw.

    The gurgling of the North Fork of the Cranberry just outside the door prodded us along. Snow is at least gracious, as elements go, for not soaking you to the bone. We boiled water for coffee and shoveled in some form or another of dried oats, and exchanged sleepwear for waders and rain shells, once again.

    Existing information can’t seem to make up its mind about the state of the headwaters of the Cranberry River. Do a few internet searches, and you’ll find as many people talking about wonderful brook trout and wild trout fishing in the Forks of the Cranberry as you will naysayers yelling “dead river.” This, and because I refuse to propagate commonly rewritten, un-researched information in my writing, is why I wanted to devote several days to experiencing these rivers before writing about them.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Phillip spent the morning plying the runs and pools of the small North Fork with a fly rod and various nymph patterns, while my industry was achieved with a camera and tripod. Snow grayed my compositions until noon when, fishless, Phillip suggested what had been on my mind all morning.

    We gathered food and water bottles, stuffing what we could in our wader pockets, and began hiking downstream as the sky opened to reveal a comforting blue that had been absent since the beginning of the trip.

    Not a fish was seen in the upper or middle reaches of the North Fork, and so a cautious eye was held to the stream’s course as we wound downstream at the mercy of the foot trail. The story was static, all the way to the mouth.

    At the bottom, we encountered a water treatment station, equipped to dose the inflowing North Fork with limestone powder just a few hundred yards before its confluence with the South Fork—a sign suggestive of an acidified upstream ecosystem.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    With the goal of netting a few fish before nightfall, Phillip waded into the main stem of the Cranberry River, just downstream from the confluence of its two headwater streams. I remained up on the cliff bank, shooting photos and giving instruction. A few casts in, Phillip nailed a stocky rainbow.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Our spirits were recharged that night, after a spirited walk back up the North Fork to camp, a strong fire, and a hot meal.

    The next morning, we high-tailed it downstream to the main stem. I did a quick study of the benthic macroinvertebrates in the South and North Forks, looking for signs of pollution-intolerant species—mayfly and caddis larvae—and found several. However, a few hours combined fishing on both forks yielded nothing from the North Fork, and two stocked rainbows and a single native brook trout from the South Fork. Not even a fin caught my attention in the former.

    Nevertheless, the latter half of the day we spent slaying chunky rainbows in the main stem of the river, having come to terms with the compromised system.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

SNOWFLAKES IN SHENANDOAH

Snowflakes stippled the barren-gray scene, tossed by a corkscrewing breeze tumbling down the gauntlet of a mountain hollow, following the track of a frigid mountain stream. I opposed its course, head into the wind, eyes watering, mind set on a deep pool upstream.

The author with a large Shenandoah brook trout taken in the snow. Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Clouds set the tone for the landscape, casting a cold, flat light on rock and trunk, granting a frozen appearance to even what was not. Brown leaves, long since fallen and captured by a stiff layer of frost, were static features, even in the wind, and finalized the atmosphere of harsh rigidity about the place. The bone-chilling threat of nearly-frozen mountain water resounded.

    The natural world stays inside on days like these, or so it seems. Gray squirrels may not show themselves in the absence of a mid-morning sun to loosen their limbs. Save for perhaps a solemn march for carbs, the majority of their day is spent dreaming of sunlit explorations of the treetops, curled up, veiled by a thick, bushy tail.

    Deer find thermal refuge in thick lowland pine groves, legs curled under their tawny brown coats, metabolism slowed, fighting tooth and nail for spring. Hunting pressure from the expired season has trained them to sit tight in daylight, and venture forth at the moon’s height (if there is a big moon) or in the respite of dusk for safety.

    Even the parking lot on the fringe of the Shenandoah backcountry, typically jammed with automobiles for its proximity to Charlottesville, is devoid of all but three vehicles, owned, of course, by humans who have engineered their own nutritions outside of the seasons’ environmental demand, and think nothing dangerous or wasteful of a two-mile hike in sub-freezing weather.

    One of those cars is my own, and I passed the owners of the other two on my way up the mountain trail, stride rustling in a pair of weathered waders, my fly rod gripped through a thin glove on my right hand.

    The first was a college-aged girl, presumably from UVA, or otherwise on Christmas break, like myself. As she approached, her covered head bobbed up to see me, as it was previously fixed on the ground, keeping pace with her swift stride. She drew attention to the cold--the weather, as is a cliche among brief trail encounters--and then passed, returning her gaze to the path, hands jammed into her pockets, without breaking stride.

    Surely her business in the mountains was of fitness, as her visit was quick (I saw her depart from the parking lot as I geared up), and seemingly devoid of observation or enjoyment, which might have been hinted at through a slower stride and exploring gaze.

    The second driver followed shortly behind, accompanied by his female of unknown relation, and canine, who, more than any of the humans I had yet encountered, seemed to be enjoying himself. The owners, both clad (as was I) in winter coats, hats, gloves, and sunglasses, whisked by at a hurried pace, hardly breaking their gaze from the course ahead to acknowledge my passing.

    It occurred to me that their being there must have been tied to the needs and desires of their furry companion, though I should think it not entirely fair to consider their motives totally polarized from a respect for nature. Why else, then, would they choose to walk their dog in the mountains and not down their own street?

    That is not to say that there is a right or wrong reason to be in the mountains on an exceptionally cold, and snowy and windy, afternoon. Just that I seldom encounter an angler so taken by the spirituality of the chase as to cross paths with one in the dead of winter, and that I naturally find my mind coming to rest on the question of why that is, and how that makes me different when the creeks turn cold. Am I crazy? Perhaps.

     My own motive comes clear when I reach the trail’s third ford in the creek and moves on, up the mountain, affording a view of the water tumbling through the woods. I leave the trail and make a short trek to the creek to find a large hole with current bordered by a large volume of slack water.

    I ply the water with a large fly, and entice a handful of lethargic, delicate brook trout, and hoist them only momentarily from the icy water, conscious of the air temperature and its effect on them.

    It’s in that cold mountain scene, harsh and rugged in winter, that I feel content, classically pleased. To me, the action is as important and as relaxing as reading a book by the fire or tying flies to music and hot chocolate.

    But everyone lives for different things. I just happen to live for this.□

*Originally published in The Rural Virginian

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

“Just show ‘em something they’ve never seen before.”

    When it comes to traveling and fishing, this is a piece of timeless advice that I increasingly give, am given, and practice. Local knowledge imparted by fly shops and marinas across the country is invaluable, but the very fact that it’s accepted knowledge implies the idea that such patterns are widely and frequently implemented. The same goes for fishing your home waters. Patterns that fish see time and time again eventually lose effectiveness as fish learn. Yamamoto grubs and Wooley Buggers will always take fish, but not like they used to.

    About two years ago, one of my high school teachers who lives on the lower Rivanna River found a fly box full of rusty flies washed up on his island after a substantial rain. As I was the only one he knew in the area that could put the flies to use, he brought them to me one school day.

    Inside was a collection of streamers, foam dry flies, and poppers—all unique. At least I had never seen the likes of them before. Most had rusted hooks, but all found their way into my fly boxes, nevertheless.

    The following winter, sometime in late December, my brother and I headed over the mountain to fish a well-known trout stream. We fished hard from late-morning through early afternoon.

    The upper boundary of public water was in sight, when I got into position to fish what would be the last run of the day. Feeling the need to switch up tactics, I was excited to tie on one of the mystery streamers that washed up on the banks of the Rivanna several months earlier.

    It was essentially a Woolley Bugger, tied with a webby hackle, lots of flash, and mottled marabou. In no way was it a revolutionary design or concept, but I would not be able to reproduce the complimentary rusty and dirt matted in the fibers of the fly at the vise, nor could a replacement be found at the fly shop.

    In about twenty minutes, 12 stocky rainbows fell prey to the mass of feather and dirt. The rusty hook posed no issue upon hookup.

    Also in one of the weathered corners of that washed-up fly box was a foam grasshopper pattern, complete with realistic rubber legs, eyes, flash, and wing. Of this fly, however, there was only one copy, and I could not, no matter how much I searched, find a replica for sale.

    Because of its density, and therefore the splat it made on the water when it landed, I am convinced, this fly is extremely effective on larger brook trout during the terrestrial season, which typically runs from mid-summer through early fall.

    On one particular night, while fishing a well-known brook trout stream near my home, I came upon a large pool edged by grass that hinted at the presence of grasshoppers. I lost no time in clipping off my attractor dry fly pattern and swapping it for the meatier foam hopper.

    Splat. On my first cast, a healthy 10-inch native brook trout rose from the depths and hammered the fly. Upon landing and examining it, I discovered the remains of a large ant and a five-inch centipede in the fish’s gullet. An ambitious fish, no doubt about it.

    A few plying casts later, my fly landed at the head of the run leading into the pool and was gulped down and pulled to the bottom by a brute of a fish. A few tense moments later, my biggest brook trout to date was hanging heavy in my net.

    Over the course of its two-year life in my box, this fly has caught several species of fish, and big ones at that. It is a go-to when fish are feeding on the surface, and continues to reproduce, even after losing legs and chunks of foam. I guess some flies are just “fishy.”

    Both of these patterns have often placed me in (in retrospect) dangerous positions I probably shouldn’t have assumed to retrieve them. I have chased the hopper downstream after breaking it off on multiple occasions. And when these patterns are finally gone from my box, they will be just that, never to return. Perhaps that is why they are so effective, because they are irreplaceable, unique. I can only hope I’ve harvested some new good luck charm from the bank of some river or branch of some snag when that time comes.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

THERE'S A FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON IN OUR MOUNTAINS

There’s a fire-breathing dragon in our mountains.  Should you request a photograph, he is invisible, but breathes his torch upon our coldwater flowages, ever more intensely as years progress.

Pine Creek, PA suffers from early autumn low water.  Photo by Matt Reilly.

    You’re skeptical?  Scientific academies the world over confirm his existence; and should you, being biologically inquisitive, wish to know where such a creature was birthed from, I would inform you that those very same scientists are in concurrence that you and I are the culprits at large. 

    A brute of such stature and appetite, you reason, must have some significant impact on his environment.  This is true.  However, I will counteroffer that he is a habitat generalist, omnipresent.  His impact is slow, yet steady—relatively undetectable to the untrained eye.

    Still, this intangible monstrosity of Sagan speciation affects quantifiable damage.  Our very own Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken note (as of last summer) that his very existence on planet Earth results in rising water temperatures and altered streamflow so significant that 62 percent of coldwater fisheries habitat is projected to be compromised without intervention by the year 2100. 

    In layman’s terms, our dragon has the life ambition of forcing our trout and salmon from Appalachia, the continental lowlands and hills, and all but the highest elevation streams of the Rocky Mountain West.  Any individual concerned with ecological diversity, recreational fishing, or economics should consider such an antagonist a cold-blooded murderer.

    Still, he can neither be touched nor seen, and thus we have a decision to make.  Either we intervene, or we refrain, on faith that the dragon is merely a figment of our imagination.

Greg Craven, author of What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, an innovative, rational response to the climate change debate, offers a model that fits our dilemma quite nicely.  In reality, there are four possible actions and outcomes to this question.

    First, our dragon does, in fact, exist, but we decide not to intervene.  As a consequence, 62 percent becomes a very real number, and our trout and salmon are ravaged by a destructive reptile.

    Second, our dragon exists, and we decide to oust him.  As a result, we invest greatly in destroying the invasive fire-breather and save the majority of coldwater fisheries from slow death.

    Third, the dragon is actually make-believe, and we decide not to pursue his execution.  In this case, all is well that ends well.

    Finally, our dragon is, after all, a figment of our imagination, and we do decide to act.  Unnecessary economic downturn is the result, as we invest in dragon-killing measures that are effectively a wild goose chase.

    Mere days following the release of the EPA’s dramatic statement, I was having lunch with a handful of coldwater fisheries conservation professionals, employed by Trout Unlimited, delivering the comprehensive State of theTrout report—a critical look at the risks posed against coldwater fisheries, and the proposed solutions to those problems.  Many of those problems are related to climate change.

    In that setting, the aforementioned model would have served useful, as an aged gentleman sitting in on the discussion dug his heels into the dirt. 

    “Why are we focusing on climate change when the real problem is the health of our coldwater fisheries?” he questioned.

    “Because their decline is tied to climate change,” it was countered.

    The conversation hit a wall.

    What failed to be recognized is that failure to act, based on the claim that climate change is not occurring, gambles with the viability of the ecosystems in question.

    Within our four real options, two require action and two don’t.  Of the two that don’t, the only positive outcome relies on the premise that our dragon doesn’t exist (an idea which is strongly and collectively opposed by the international scientific community), while the worst results in the loss of over half of our coldwater fisheries.  Of the two that do require action, the positive result is a country of relatively healthy salmonids, while the worst reality is an unnecessary investment.

    Thus, it is irresponsible to get hung up on the question of whether or not a scaled beast inhabits our hills.  The question that should be asked is whether or not we should act; and the steward’s answer is “yes.”

    And so we are called to make an assumption:  there is a fire-breathing dragon in our mountains.  For should at last his unhindered wreckage be permitted to culminate, skeptics will see and believe, and all will mourn the loss of our finned protagonists, begging to trade a blinding societal ego recognized for an irreplaceable ecosystem so ignorantly sacrificed.□

*Originally published in The Rural Virginian

A CELEBRATION OF RIVERS: THE PASSAGE OF TIME

In a moment—a flash in time—a decision was made. A portion of the cobblestone streambed broke free, sprouted fiery wings, and, in a twinkling second of serendipity, broke the water’s surface and engulfed the disheveled form of an olive-bodied Elk Hair Caddis that had fallen out of my vice the night before.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    I look back on that moment often, never embellished, but as it happened on a favorite, medium-sized native brook trout stream in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The water was running low and slow through a thick August afternoon in Virginia. I could not have been older than 13, but a devoted and starry-eyed fly tyer and fishermen thrilled to have taken my first fish on a self-tied fly.

    I have since (as I would advise all to do) made many more new memories on this favorite stream—casted to familiar rocks and plunge pools, and even found familiar fish in homey haunts. But as they say, “a man never steps into the same river twice,” for he is a changed man for the experience; and I never did.

    Rivers change, too—constantly. High water and flood events, and even the daily coursing of normal water flows, alter the streambed—moving gravel, debris, stones, and sweepers. Bedrock and boulders are eroded. The Grand Canyon itself is the life’s work of the once-strong Colorado River. It is the nature of flowing water.

    When I look back upon that treasured memory, I can vividly recall the physical geography and divine design of the pool where it occurred. It sits at the foot of a steep bank, just a small pebble’s throw from a cobblestone trail. An oak tree towers over the pool’s middle, its sprawling roots creating an undercut bank that sits three feet above the water’s regular height—a product of springs, rainfall, and runoff.

    The pool begins as many do in the Appalachians, with two stones that split a current into four seams—the first of which runs along the steep bank, while the other splits the pool long-ways. The two run a good distance—maybe 20 feet—before converging in the tail and spilling over into the next. It is best approached across from the steep bank, on a gravel bar inhabited by sycamore saplings and mountain daisies.

    That image stays fresh in my mind because the scene is revisited at least once every year, and while the rocks and the bank and the oak and sycamore trees are all still in their place--as I am when I return--the river is, alas, different. The water that grazed the flanks of that five-inch brook trout when it rose to my poorly-presented fly, and that swirled around my ankles as I released it, was fleeting.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    In a flick of the trout’s tail, the river water escaped with the moment, downstream, to mix with warmer water and brine, and flush the gills of smallmouth and striped bass and mackerel, leaving its gentle impression wherever it roamed.

    The impression it left on me is romantic, inspiring, and all-consuming. It inspired a musing that found its way with words, which eventually served as a springboard for a writing career and a growing passion for fly fishing that have together carted me all over the East Coast in search of a similar high.

    Today, I have been blessed to have fished a variety of waters in locations near and far, including many places I call “home,” where I often share the passing of time--and the riffles, runs, and eddies about my feet—with the riverbed and cobble stones. And while I continue to spout words of fish and rivers and wildernesses, the river has etched its own words into the rocks as part of the continuation of the story of creation and nature.

    For that very reason, one of the places I have visited on this ongoing adventure, the Catskills Fly Fishing Center in the Catskills Forest of New York, features a path paved with stones from visitors’ home waters as a celebration of such journeys through water and time; for all of us that have known the romantic relationship with rivers and fish have a story to tell much like this one.

    This summer, one of the stones from that favorite stream of mine in the Blue Ridge made its way into the Catskills to gather with others to tell a story. Such a story is not to be read, but comprehended through an intimate relationship with nature. And in that it will be known that part of that story is our own, written on our souls by the very same current patterns that touched the rocks in a moment shared on a freestone mountain stream where it all began.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

AMERICAN PUBLIC LANDS A SPIRITUAL TRADITION

Modern society has convinced the outdoorsman in me that I was born too late.  The rivers that I frequent are suppressed in spirit, their wonder restrained to their actual dimensions by urban sprawl, highways, and water treatment plants.  When I take to the field, I thirst for the refreshing experience of new waters; but I lust for those places tucked away, out of sight, lost in nature—where their essence extends for miles through some black hole of the mind, never threatened by development or the idea that they might, in some dimension, end.

The mighty Saco River at low water, crawling through a White Mountain valley.  Photo by Matt Reilly

    Development.  My parents know what it means.  Their age is told in their memories.  There was a time when Charlottesville, Virginia was not a city, but a town.  Before Walmart and Sam’s Club took their anarchical perch above Route 29, farmer Matheny tended to his cows on the grassy pasture behind a blackboard fence and an illusion that things might never change.  The Rivanna River, in the gulley behind Walton’s culturally-obese babies, coursed higher and stronger through the rolling hills of the Piedmont, its lifeblood not yet stolen by the host of housing developments to come, its finned inhabitants still unrestrained by dams.

    I hear these memories as a young child.  Fear briefly enters and exits my mind.  What will the world look like when I am grown?  But at 8 years old, as far as I know, things don’t change.

    I eventually learned my lesson.

    The woodlot that was destined to be subdivided behind our newly-furnished house was just large enough to be reminiscent of Maine’s “Big Woods” that I had learned of in Field and Stream.  If I walked along the length of the creekbottom, in the shadows of towering ridges, I could escape with the perception of total isolation.

    One spring, I happened upon a stream of moderate girth.  I returned countless times in following seasons, slinging spinners and flies to feisty panfish and pickerel. 

    One day I was startled by the sight of two houses.  Both were under construction; and their backyards had torn into the woodland veil protecting my secret gem, revealing it for all to see, eroding the banks, and slowing the current.

    Sour and cynical over the soiling of my stream, I retreated into my mind to a place where rivers run free and woods seem endless, where constant human activity does not hamper the wildlife activity, and the flora is ornamental by God’s design, rather than that of a landscaper.  It was from this experience that I began to crave wild lands removed from human occupation.

    By the time I earned my driver’s license I was a passionate fly fisherman, completely lost in the sport; and my search for new water took me to where my childhood fantasies existed in actuality—the Shenandoah National Park, where my dad had taken me to grouse hunt and trout fish at a very young age.  Now, with the means to transport myself, I set off into the Blue Ridge when I yearn for the tug of a sprightly brook trout.

    I drive west; and as the roads turn from pavement to gravel to dirt to nothing, and the hardwoods close in above my head as I’m intertwined into the deep, meandering hollows where the freestones run, the shackles of society and modern, complicated life disintegrate into the air.

    I can fish my way through the gorge that the Rapidan River flows through in consensual ignorance.  In my mind, the Park does not end, but extends forever in every direction, as does the river; and the fish in its watery depths are virgin natives—refugees, like me.

    When a brook trout comes to hand, my suspicion is upheld.  The fiery brilliance that adorns its belly and pectorals, the olive river rock along its back, accented by strong blue and red bull’s eyes make me believe that they are a purity in nature, a stronghold of all that has been lost in the world, safeguarded, hidden in the bottom of a mountain stream. 

    But alas, I know this illusion is false.  The trout in my hand is a species endangered by a host of man-made threats; and its range retreats into the mountaintops yearly.  However, unlike the Piedmont stream of my childhood, this one is protected, forever sealed from peripheral development by 197,000 acres of federally-protected land.  To the brook trout, and to me, that thought is full of hope; as it is a symbol of like-minded individuals concerned with the state of the environment doing their best to secure recreational areas and wildlife havens for future generations, to preserve our spiritual haunts.  In a word, it is a promise:  For as long as I, and my children, live, places like Shenandoah will be protected and cherished by sportsmen.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

BROOKIE FEVER

The outdoor lifestyle is ruled by the seasons, and the seasons by traditions.  There is no tradition that enraptures me more than spring on a native brook trout stream.

A sprightly Virginia brook trout.  Photo by Matt Reilly

    Trout do, on occasion, live in ugly places, despite the popular sentiment.  Sewage-contaminated rivers and spillways thick with ground up baitfish and full of big brown trout come to mind.  Brook trout, however, do not—at least in my experience. 

    Their necessary fondness for clean, healthy, and cold water predetermines for them a life in the Appalachian Mountain streams, where they serve as groundskeepers of natural beauty and ecological vitality.  Their absence from such streams is a sure sign of a declining environment.  They are a product of their surroundings; and so it is no wonder that they are the most beautiful of fish. 

    In the dead of winter, when trees lie dormant, the ground hardens, the air chews at your extremities, and the vibrant color of a mountain empire is a faint memory tumbling somewhere downstream, brook trout hold fast to the pigments of God’s generous paintbrush from the bottom of the streambed.  Life resides within the river.

A picturesque plunge pool in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  Photo by Matt Reilly.

    As spring arrives, the air livens and color springs from water.  Dogwood, redbud, rhododendron, magnolia, mountain laurel, trillium, bluebell, and bloodroot take over the understory, accented by the faint green of budding hardwoods.  Grass, mountain daisies, and ferns cover the sunlit stream banks as the water warms.  Insects hatch and embark on their life’s journey; the brook trout become more active.

Mountain Daisies.  Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Anglers from Shenandoah, the Blue Ridge, and all over dream of these first signs of spring.  For spring is a strong emotion in the mountains—a sharp contrast to the doldrums of winter.

    It is during the spring months that brook trout will readily take a well-presented dry fly, and it is perhaps experiencing the combination of such pleasant purity and the overbearing gamut of hues and aromas present in the mountain landscape, culminated in the brilliant flanks of a quivering trout, that so accurately summarizes our reason for being anglers in the first place.  It is, at least, why I declare the beginning of the year on a brook trout stream.  I hold few stereotypes, but I can safely assume that where there are brook trout is home to me.

    Those with brookie fever are many, varied, and seemingly unlikely. 

    It is no secret that brook trout are a small quarry.  Three and four weight fly rods are common tools.  Streams are often just a few feet wide, and the fish rarely exceed 10 inches in length, though there is the ever-alluring opportunity for fish in excess of 12 inches.

    Regardless, it is mostly true that anyone with an inkling of Appalachian heritage has a fondness for the sprightly brook trout.  Even the most dedicated of big fish nuts can find excitement in the fish, both for the challenge and the opportunity.

    Though they are not especially selective feeders, brook trout are renowned proponents of the old Reverend Maclean’s philosophy on fishing, allowing no person lacking the particular set of skills required to catch them to do so.

    These skills include--first and foremost--stealth.  The vast majority of brook trout streams are skinny, clear, and full of pockets of water holding several fish.  Keeping a low profile, minimizing false casts, maintaining drag-free drifts, and walking softly are necessary skills.  Successful brook trout fishermen are bona fide Blue Ridge ninjas first, anglers second.

Approaching the fish from behind a boulder shield.  Photo by Matt Reilly.

    The typical brookie fisherman spends more money on flies and tippet material over the course of the first two months of spring than the total worth of his or her own rod.  The tightness of cover and challenge of presentation is just another aspect of small stream fishing that adds to the fun.  There are no official testaments to my sanity, but I have often caught myself (on a good day) chuckling when my fly wraps around a limb on my last false cast.

    Gas and energy are equally expended resources.  For the small trout, a dedicated angler’s vehicle is stocked with marked gazetteers and guidebooks detailing even the smallest of mountain trickles, and the “good” fishing often doesn’t start before at least a half-hour hike upstream over rugged terrain.

Wild, beautiful fish in a wilderness setting is the essence of brook trout fishing.  Photo by Matt Reilly.

    Brookie fever is an affliction difficult to justify or explain except by the emotions experienced in the act of discovering it.  Such an unlikely target is the drive behind hundreds of miles of anxiously explored dirt roads; miles of rough mountain hollows navigated on foot; countless around-the-next-bend expeditions; and bruises, skinned knees, stubbed toes, thorn bushes, and mosquito bites sustained.  It is the focal point of our momentary distraction from civilization, and the medium through which we comprehend the grace of the natural world as it was meant to be.

*Originally published by The Rural Virginian

SPORTSMEN--TOGETHER IN A WORLD OF WOUNDS

A sense of distant familiarity filled the brisk mountain air as my brother, Phillip, and I sliced a path through it with boots and fly rods, following rocky switchbacks and clambering over fallen trees along a footpath aimed at an intimate Blue Ridge hollow.  Irrigating the gorge 1,000 feet below was a favorite and well-known brook trout stream, but our sense of adventure was renewed, our minds overtaken by anticipation, as our feet treaded a course to a foreign stretch.  Fishing together has been rare since the pursuit of a college education relocated me 200 miles to the south, and so it seemed fitting to choose a venue of tradition for the day that we broke the fast.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Gurgling Appalachian Mountain water joined our downward venture when a narrow gut nuzzled the hillside trail.  An unnamed creek, a tributary beaded by lucid, globular pools, captured our passing fancy and required an impromptu plying with flies. 

    We split up.  Shortly, the modest trickle yielded a half dozen fiery-flanked brookies of respectable size, and I retired my preliminary efforts to the overlooking path, excited and ready to continue on to the main event.  Phillip was still fishing as I took a standing perch atop a rock mound to reflect and wait.

    A bluebird sky illuminated the forest floor, warming the ground and lighting diamonds on the riffles and runs of the brook trout’s home.  The warmth of spring tugged at young hardwoods, at the ground, drawing renewed life and its tell-tale buds of green from the ragged nooks of an otherwise harsh landscape.  There was not a road in sight, nor a human who was not diligently cracking away at a hungry trout.

    The air is stimulating and humbling in such places, tucked away in the folds of the developing world.  For a moment, I was comfortably engulfed by the emotions of wilderness, the unstudied potential of new water, and the impression that their influence was unrestrained. 

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Yet, I know too much.  As Aldo Leopold explained, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”  The water we were scheduled to meet by afternoon is plagued by the adverse effects of acid rain deposition, by no fault of the fragile brook trout or the caddisflies or the equally iconic black bears of the mountain setting, but by fault of humans in the adjacent, polluting, coal-producing region.  Regular water quality monitoring and treatment loan the native trout their health.

    Less than 24 hours prior, a press release landed in my inbox detailing the recently sealed fate of the Ozernaya River in Russia’s Kamchatka.  Gold was discovered in the headwaters of the river in 2004, and in 2013 plans to develop access roads and a road mine were made, stealing the “pristine” designation from the largest spring creek valley in the world.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate voted to support a budget resolution that would allow state governments to take over control, auction, or sell all federal public lands, except for national parks and monuments.  Sportsmen and women are undoubtedly the strongest advocates and defenders of our public lands.  Following the announcement that the number of Americans involved with hunting and fishing had dropped from approximately 40 million in 1991 to 34 million in 2006, this recent bout of immorality in the Senate is particularly ominous for the future of America’s outdoor heritage.

    On a more local level, New Mexicans are engaged in an ongoing, fist-clenched battle against Senate Bill 226, which threatens to eliminate their access to public waters.  Should the amendment, which contradicts the rights to public waters spelled out in the state’s constitution, be passed, New Mexicans will be stripped of their right to wade, float, or fish navigable, public waters which are bordered by private property.

    Incomparable and dwarfed in “ecological education” to Leopold, my foundational education mirrors his own.  I am an outdoorsman, and in reflecting upon the deeply personal relationship that I have with the outdoors I know one thing—that the stewardship and the quest for ecologically sustainable systems that I challenge my purpose in life with is a direct result of that foundational outdoor education, and that the future of our sports, our public lands, and our Earth rely upon the ongoing recruitment of such passions.

    Between the lines of the tense reports on issues that threaten the health of our environment and the access we currently enjoy to our woods and waters are the voices of sportsmen.  We know there are no “quick fixes” for these short-sighted, progress-guised adulterations, and understand our obligation to defend our natural resources tooth and nail against such baneful human activity.  Hope for the future resounds in those voices, united in a world of wounds.        

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

CASTIN" & BLASTIN": THE BLUE RIDGE MIX

Today was a successful day, to say the least.  

    I met Phillip at his house in Charlottesville and drove to a small brook trout stream in the Blue Ridge, arriving around 8 AM.  After a short hike, we collectively took 40 brook trout over the course of two hours--all, for the most part, on the wonderful little nymph I will show you all how to tie in the near future.  Be on the lookout.

Photo by Matt Reilly

Photo by Matt Reilly

    After returning home and hitting the local pharmacy for some discount fly tying materials, I hit the woods with my 20 gauge pump shotgun for the last hour and a half of light.  Fishing manager of Orvis Charlottesville, Jeff Greendyk, and I, have been devising a plan to learn how to dye fly tying materials--squirrel tail in particular--and I needed materials.  

    In the first ten minutes in the woods, I busted three squirrels holding tight on the forest floor.  They scattered, and I dropped each on three consecutive moving shots.  A triple, on squirrels, for half a limit of the gray bushytails.  

Photo by Matt Reilly

    Another 45 minutes of stalking put me in position to take another squirrel.  From the base of a ridge, I closed the distance to the scurrying and pouncing on the ridge crest quickly, by hopping and skipping in bursts, imitating the noise made by a moving squirrel.  The first shot was presented when an alarmed gray pounced from the trunk of an oak into the branches of another.  And as he was scrambling to establish footing, I dropped him with a swinging report from the 20 gauge.  The next peeked around the base of another oak tree, presenting a head shot that didn't go unclaimed.  Down went another batch of materials and food.  The third held tight on the forest floor for about 30 seconds before making a mad dash up the nearest hickory tree.  I ran forward ten feet before he began his assent up the trunk, which I interrupted, taking a quick knee and firing a quick rising shot.

Photo by Matt Reilly

Photo by Matt Reilly

    With a half hour of light left, I got all the squirrels cleaned and quartered, and landed the tails and one skin in the freezer covered in salt for preservation for dyeing at a later date.  

    To round off the productivity, I was offered two work opportunities--one regarding Adventures Afield, as a column, and another in production fly tying.  More to come on those opportunities!