PROPOSED REGULATION CHANGES TO SOUTH RIVER FORETELL EVOLVING FISHERY

Thanks to the persistent, concerted efforts of local anglers, the South River Fly Shop, and the Shenandoah Valley Chapter of TroutUnlimited (SVTU), Waynesboro’s urban trout fishery currently awaits the August 18^th Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF) board meeting, where votes will be taken on two proposed regulation amendments that will alter the river’s fishing opportunities and potentially improve an evolving fishery.

South River Fly Shop guide Reed Cranford with a 25" brown from the South River Delayed Harvest Area.

    One amendment would replace the existing delayed harvest designation on two miles of river from North Park to Wayne Ave., with catch and release regulations.

    The second would adjust the existing 16-inch minimum size limit for trout and artificial lure-only restriction on the 5.5 miles of the South River Special Regulations Area, extending from the North Oak Lane bridge to a point 1.5 miles above Rt. 632 (the Shalom Road bridge), to a 20-inch minimum and a fly-fishing-only designation, more than doubling the amount of fly-fishing-only water in the state.

    Virginia’s delayed harvest system limits anglers fishing waters designated as such to artificial lures only, and requires catch-and-release, except for a window from June 1 through September 30 –when waters are too warm to hold stocked trout—when harvest is allowed and bait is permitted. So the question of delayed harvest versus catch-and-release year-round is dependent upon water temperature and quality.

    The proposed amendments’ position on DGIF’s schedule is a result of several years of advocacy from the local angling community, mobilized by SVTU and the South River Fly Shop. In 2012, the groups approached DGIF with the suggestion of making the proposed regulation adjustments to the South River. In defense of the existing delayed harvest management system, they were met with the argument that the river becomes too warm in the summertime to effectively hold over stocked trout populations.

    In response, SVTU and South River Fly Shop hatched a plan to mobilize their voice.

    “After a while, we decided to show public support by drawing up a proposal and getting signatures from anglers,” said Kevin Little, co-owner of South River Fly Shop. “That got us on [DGIF’s] radar.”

    Right on cue, in September of 2013, Tom Benzing of James Madison University presented at the Mountain Stream Symposium II a five-year (2008-2013)water temperature study of the South River aimed at assessing the river’s potential as a sustainable trout stream.

    In 2011, while the study was ongoing, Rife-Loth Dam, which was installed in 1884 above what is now Wayne Ave. and the upstream boundary of the South River’s delayed harvest stretch, was bulldozed.

    “The old dam was backing up and warming cold spring water coming in from upstream,” said Little. “And because it was a top-release dam, it was overflowing warm water.”

    Benzing’s study shows that the removal of Rife-Loth Dam restored normal daily fluctuations of water temperatures downstream, buffered by the restored influx of cold spring water. Furthermore, it proved that the water temperature from springs in and above downtown Waynesboro were suitable as thermal refuges for trout.

    In the spring of 2016, DGIF took notice.

    “There is a strong proposal in downtown for changing the delayed harvest designation to catch-and-release,” said DGIF Region 4 Fisheries Manager, Paul Bugas. “And we’re noticing increasing demand for more fly-fishing-only water.”

    After several years of static, this nudge from the public is getting DGIF on board.

    “We’ve sampled at the end of May and before stocking begins in October and found a good number of holdovers in downtown, which leads us to believe that some better holdovers under new regulations,” said Bugas. “We’re trying it.”

    Bugas also recognizes the potential benefits of the minimum length increase on the upper South River above North Oak Lane, which he says has few fish over 20 inches long, currently: “It will [essentially] make it illegal to take fish from an area that is still under development.”

An angler prospects the banks of the upper South River in the summer. Photo by Matt Reilly

    The debate over the appropriate regulations to spur growth in the trout fishery within the South River could be called unanticipated by those with historical perspective on the river. “If you told me in 1975 that we’d be haggling over trout regulations in downtown Waynesboro, I’d laugh in your face,” said Bugas. “Back in the ‘70s, a doctor from Virginia Tech was investigating fisheries downtown, and he found sunfish, a couple carp, and some suckers, and that was about it.”

    Needless to say, the folks that call the South River dear like the change they’re witnessing.

“This river could be every bit as good as the Elk River in West Virginia,” said Little, a West Virginia native, himself. “God alone did 90-percent of the work. We’ve just gotta’ do the 10-percent to finish it.”□

*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

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

"STILL"

Time machines have as of yet not been invented, but cars have a century been in popular utilization, and I have found them to aptly serve a similar purpose, without sacrificing the experiential value in “getting there.” Given the right route, one can hop in a car, drive a few hours, and find themselves in the midst of a culture minutely varied, but so as to suggest the loss of a few decades of what they call forward progress. I have found this to be true of most routes leading out of Megalopolis and adjacent developments and into the North Woods.

Photo by Matt Reilly

    It’s commonly said that life is slower in the south, but I’d offer New England as more qualified for the classification. A northerly latitude lengthens days in the summer, and fewer people and less development breeds fewer distractions from some of the last remaining expanses of true wilderness left on the East Coast. A sporting culture permeates deeper in the day-to-day, compared to its relative absence in more urbanized localities.

    One such route recently transported my time machine and I to a township called Second College Grant, or “The Grant,” as it is referred to by citizens of nearby Errol, New Hampshire and others geographically related.

    With a population of zero, The Grant is more of a resource investment than a town. In 1807, its 27,000 acres were donated to Dartmouth College. Thereafter, the property has been actively logged to provide scholarship funds for students, and well-managed for public outdoor recreation. As such, it carries all the time-ago drama of a working northern forest.

    Unless you happen to be one of the oft-manipulated, Dartmouth-associated gate key-bearers, the gravel road that traverses the property is restricted to foot-travel. Therefore, much of the interior remains rugged wilderness.

    The Grant’s main road parallels the Dead Diamond River, which is the largest unstocked native brook trout stream in the state, and plays host to some of New Hampshire’s last remaining mythically proportioned brook trout.

    The river still has brook trout, but not like they’ve been written about finning the dark pools of the river in centuries past. Recent years have seen the illegal introduction of smallmouth bass in the Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge downstream, and the resultant invasion of the bass upstream into brookie territory.

    Black bear, moose, deer, squirrels, and various other creatures thrive on the property. One could argue that active logging keeps up a healthy population of grouse, individual members of which seem to be so isolated as to be relatively unafraid of approaching humans, and which mystify my upland bird-deprived Virginia sensibilities upon every encounter.

    “Our grouse situation is still pretty good,” are the words that ground me.

    Another route took my time machine even further into the past.

    Kokadjo, Maine is a town of a trading post with one worker, no gas station, and a famous brook trout and salmon stream. KOKADJO. POP: NOT MANY are the words that greet the traveler, and I fear the plurality of the word “many” might be a subtle overstatement.

    13 miles by logging road north of Kokadjo sits a small homestead of old sporting camps on SpencerPond, owned by husband and wife—Dana Black, a registered Maine guide and lobsterman, and Christine Howe, also a registered Maine guide with an environmental education and a history with the EPA.

    That I ended up on their doorstep was by chance and grace, but I quickly found that my time machine had done its job satisfactorily. Among the Spencer Pond Camps, there is no electricity or running water. Just kerosene lanterns, a wood stove, a well pump, and a solar bag for washing behind the ears as is often necessary when bushwhacking through northern forest as I do every day, these days. And so there is room to wonder about the way life used to be and other things of rival romance.

    Between the camps and the closest incorporated establishment sit thousands of acres of “big woods,” complete with unnamed, walk-in brook trout ponds, and a population of bear and moose that easily outnumbers people.

    In talking about fishing, Dana, who is learning the art of fly fishing, told me of the brook trout pond fishing in the area.

    “Maine still has pretty good pond fishing for brook trout,” he said.

    Maine is widely held as our nation’s last foothold for vital populations of native brook trout, and so it struck me that I had been encountering the word “still” a little too often, and it made me nervous. To paraphrase the great conservationist, Aldo Leopold, given the chance to go forward or go fishing, I’d quickly choose fishing, but I fear the world is developing in the opposite direction.□

*Originally published in the Rural Virginian

RIVERS I WON'T WRITE

I hate calling fly shops. It takes a remarkable quantity of suppression to overcome my do-it-yourselfing nature and query a local expert for directions to success on foreign water that they’ve come about the hard way. And yes I know that’s what they’re there for.

Photo by Matt Reilly.

    The bulk of it is that my transient identity as a writer makes the dilemma all that much worse. I regularly set people straight on my life’s priorities—I’m an outdoor writer, which means I’m an outdoorsman first, a writer second. I’ve expended a substantial number of days--relative to my age--putting boots on the ground; finding the out-of-the-way, hidden spots that fish all the better for it; putting people on fish; and going out of my way to make sure those special places remain little more than carefully-crafted vignettes reserved for close conversation. What this more or less boils down to is that I have a darn-near medical aversion to shedding light on secrets, on pieces of this beautiful Earth somehow not already run over by human meddling, and to stepping on the feet of those locals who appreciate those spots on a regular basis or make their living revealing them to others in confidence.

    But, until I make the professional leap into the pool of the latter type of individual, who I have profound respect for, I resort to making money off of words and photographs of waters. A little ironic, isn’t it?

    I have a formula.

    This summer, the destinations I’ve chosen to write about are the furthest things from secrets I could find without writing the article another writer wrote for last month’s edition. The prime locations require a good deal of footwork to access, with the hopes that those willing to invest sweat are the kind to respect and protect the resource. However, though there may be plenty of existing information, I’m almost as allergic to writing about places I haven’t experienced thoroughly as I am giving away secrets. So, I spend my working days on the water taking photographs, flipping over rocks, fishing, and taking notes on said water, and my after/off hours fishing the places nearby that don’t have established fishing pressure and that I won’t tell you about.

    So yesterday I called the fly shop. With more than ten miles of water, not including tributaries, to check out in four days, I needed a logical place I could start with some kind of confidence. I talked to the young guy on the other end of the line like I knew him, because, at least as a fly shop worker, I did.

    “Don’t tell me any secrets, but do you have any suggestions as to good water on the…?”

    The question’s prefix is a formality. Having worked in a fly shop, I can say with confidence that you don’t give away any kind of true secret to a customer unless you’re on a first-name basis with their entire living family and attended some of their late relatives’ funerals. But you have your good information that a customer can tank to the bank and finish the day with fish-slimy hands. The young guy responded in such a way.

    The positive thing about out-of-town and first-time-on-this-piece fishing pressurers is that they live the tourist effect. You know the kind. Like how Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello may be the most popular spot in all of Charlottesville, but as locals, we have our own favorite haunts. What’s more, tourists sometimes randomly happen upon local gems that even some locals didn’t know about. It’s a real grab-bag, and there’s notable room for varying first impressions that either will, or won’t draw them back.

    And so it is with rivers and fishing them for the first time, and reporting on them, as I do. One day spent on a piece of water hardly serves as an accurate representation of a fishery. In the absence of streamflow gauges, you can’t precisely discern normal flow, water clarity, or temperature, and you surely don’t know where the best fish are, but you’ll go to Monticello until you realize you can get more Charlottesville elsewhere.

    So I invest as many days as I can to get a picture of the fishery for myself (however accurate it may be), and use that picture to qualify the opinions of local experts, guides, fly shop workers. There is no room for dishonesty in journalism.

    Thus, in fishing, I resort to cherry-picking, running-and-gunning, and pausing to put my time in where I think I should. That is, for now, and you may read about those rivers. But this time tomorrow I’ll be getting off an unnamed creek I spied on my way back to camp yesterday, with a head full of stories from rivers I won’t write.□

*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