"To greed, all nature is insufficient"

Fly fishing here in Pennsylvania is an interesting intellectual departure from what I am used to. In fact, and with no experience from anywhere else in the States, I find the whole American “scene” diverting and in particular the origins and possible future of fishermen’s attitudes to their pastime and quarry. Back in September I posted a rather ragged ramble around my then recent experience at Omelas. The exerience made me curious about the idea of stocking moving waters in a general sense and want to find out what an Omelas operation actually looks like in the specific.

In the UK there are some small water trout fisheries that stock giant fish. The trout cosseted and grown on in their pens are released to be caught as quickly as possible. The water’s reputation, at least in part, rests on the size of the fish and like some quacks wet dream of a weight loss nirvana these large trout shed pounds rapidly in the absence of a carefully controlled diet and dietary supplements. Clearly there is a market for this kind of fishing, the fishermen finding some measure of satisfaction and presumably achievement in capturing the recently stocked giants (who actually get names like oft caught carp). What this satisfaction is I cannot decipher. Perhaps a lack of experience of what wild fishing can be, perhaps a lack of appreciation of the nuances involved in deceiving natives. But perhaps also this is just evidence of a snobbish mind set which is already rife in angling and particularly fly fishing. One man’s stockie is another’s wild fish and in places like the UK access to wild water, particularly in the south, is limited by both a paucity of habitat and excessive exclusion. Then again small stillwaters like Avington, Dever Springs or Tavistock do not claim to be wild. They and many like them have been created, usually from scratch, and then filled with trout. As such the fishing is entirely artificial from its very base and does not aspire to be anything else. The blurb for these places may talk about a natural experience, getting away from it all etc but they are essentially domestic waters with domesticated trout. It is like urbanites going to the city park and thinking they have had a country experience.

Accepting that my desired fishing experience should not be everyone’s desire is fine but when the stew pond mentality is transported to wild waters it takes more than a shrug of the shoulders. Filling a recently dug hole in the ground is one thing, transforming a natural water, especially a small creek, in the same way seems to me to be quite another.

Tom Chandler, a while back now, posted on the ongoing saga of some bloke called Donny Beaver who controls several stretches of pristine water here in PA which he, according to the TU, stocks with “pelletheads.” Not being able to find any information on Omelas I thought this might be a starting point to see what justification there is for the process. I had a look at the Spring Ridge Club’s website, the front for his operations. The web site from the start espouses an ethos (if that is not too strong a word for it) that says,

“Spring Ridge Club members and families believe that the conservation of pristine, world-class fly-fishing waters is imperative for the future of brown, rainbow, and brook trout, along with steelhead trout in Great Lakes tributaries.”

Ooh, that sounds good. When I moved to the page highlighting the Pennsylvania rivers and in particular a creek just down the road from here things began to go south. Now I know diddly squit about the nitty gritty of river ecology and productivity but I do know a bit about basic biology and the fact that a (very) small water like Spruce Creek is capable of producing…

“thanks to prolific year-‘round hatches and abundance of large wild trout, Spruce Creek yields hundreds of trout in the five-to-seven-pound range from its waters each and every year with several dozen topping the 10-pound mark”

…hard to swallow, especially when one considers the club only controls two miles. It really is some productivity equaled only by, well let me see. Nope can’t think of anywhere else. Switch to the grip ‘n grin page and lo and behold most of the pics that are not steelhead (from different stretches the club controls) seem to be rather large rainbows. In fact compare their pictures with that from the first UK site I linked to and the similarity is uncanny. Now the blurb doesn’t actually say that these fish are wild it just says that Spruce Creek is home to an abundance of wild fish. In a way perhaps deliberately designed to obfuscate the issue it is possible to see that the “hundreds of trout” are not the same as the “abundance of wild trout” even though a quick scan gives one that impression. At least that is what the lawyers might claim if the issue was put to the vote. In the interest of fairness and because my response is admittedly highly emotive, informed by very little hard fact, I suppose they could be wild fish but perhaps weight boosted with some additional feeding. It might not be that there are hundreds in the “five to seven pound range” but a much lesser number carefully managed by catch and release and the “several dozen topping the 10-pound mark” is really a couple of named fish (perhaps even tattooed if Singlebarbed has his way).

While writing this I noticed a full page add in Gray’s for “HomeWaters – private fly fishing close to home”. At the bottom of the page is a list of waters the club controls, a list very similar to the Spring Ridge club. And they appear to be one and the same. Looking through the glossy presentation on the site mimics both the overblown rhetoric and the numerous references to the size of fish and this wonderful bit in the questions and answers page of the ebrochure:

“Will I always catch fish?”

“Absolutely. There are no “skunk” days at HomeWaters Club.”

Really? I wonder how a wild population could be quite so accommodating. Another oddity comes from the testimonials page. Cathy and Barry Beck the photography couple whose work graces many publications not least slots in Gray’s say:

“We’ve fly fished all over the world, but some of the biggest brown and rainbow trout we’ve caught have been right here in Pennsylvania at HomeWaters.”

The comment strikes me as a strange one. There are no words used such as “beautiful,” “wild,” “relaxing,” “quiet,” “secluded,” or even any which may attract a different sort of fisherman, words like “tricky,” “challenging,” or “technical.” What jumps out from the testimonial is the word “biggest”. Isn’t it queer that the comparison to all those other places around the world (which presumably offer the very epitome of wild, pristine fishing) boils down to a simple contrast between the size of the fish caught? How does it differ from digging a hole in the ground and filling it with “pelletheads”? There is no other reference to the environment so the only positive support for HomeWaters is that you can catch big fish. Given that the Beck’s photography is typified by elegant shots of lovely places and the immaculate fish that inhabit them the thought that these photographers would support a HomeWaters type venture is odd. So I went to the Beck’s website. The slide show on fresh water fly fishing has many sumptuous photos. A number of them come from Fishing Creek, a popular Pennsylvania creek not far from Spruce Creek and the photos show very happy customers holding large browns and rainbows, far too large for a creek of this kind to support with any regularity. Naturally the Beck’s are free to do as they choose but the context for their photos seems false. I look at these people holding their gleaming wodge’s of fish flesh to the adoring eye of the camera and think, does nothing jar here; does it not strike them that something is out of synch? I would expect at least that someone remotely capable of thinking about what they have just done (achieved would be way too strong a word for it) would release the trout, look up at the small creek, the steep, tree shrouded valley and exclaim, Shrek like, “hold the phone.” As if you couldn't tell the Beck's endorsement of HomeWaters is a simple piece of back scratching as the club has "over 6 miles of private access on home waters of Cathy and Barry Beck," with supposedly another three miles coming soon. Hey ho.

There are a number of issues that rankle here (could you tell?). One worth mentioning is the ecological impact that a HomeWaters type operation may have. That is, the very nature of the fishing that Homewaters punt is detrimental to the values they purport to hold. There are a lot of studies on the impact of stocked trout on wild populations. The studies compare areas such as, but not restricted to, displacement, growth rates, aggressive interactions, survival and genetic introgression between the stocked fish and the resident wild fish. Many of these studies indicate no or very little impact on wild populations. Equally many have concluded that the scope of the studies is not broad enough to allow predictions of any long-term effects. What is also striking having revisited a great list of these studies is the good practice that abounds in them. Naturally, one might say, for scientists have to compare like with like to be able to talk meaningful about the results. Hence, in looking at the stream position taken up by wild or stocked fish, or their feeding preferences or the number of aggressive interactions, biologists have to compare size-matched fish. It would raise incredulous eyebrows if you suggested to them that an experiment, a stream manipulation exercise, should be done with giant stockies and the natural size range of the wild population. Incredulous because much of the findings would be obvious, size matters in animal interactions. Just think of going down the pub and having your elbow nudged and beer spilt all over the bar. You might turn round anger rising from your very boot tips to confront the clot who has so clumsily intruded on your peaceful imbibing. Faced with a six foot six tall, five foot wide tattooed, be-ringed archetype of a don’t mess with me biker the fight response rapidly shrivels into a small “no that is fine, my fault really, heh heh” flight response (it does with me anyway). So it is with fish. A Hindenburg of a trout heaving into view cuts right through all the fine-scaled calculations a much lesser trout may make to an incrementally larger fish. What does that do to the natural ecology of the river, not only in the stretch the club controls but upstream and downstream as these sumo fish will inevitably disperse. How on earth does this help “the conservation…” and “…the future of ….. trout?”

Re-reading this I realize that it has rapidly descended into something of a hectoring diatribe. Good. Likely this stems from my deep-rooted antipathy toward anything that smacks of a private and exclusive monopoly of a natural environment. A HomeWaters type operation is an easy target if one does not concur with the aims such organizations espouse. But despite this being the case the attitudes to the sport and the environment the sport is bound to, do lead to some interesting questions, ones worth exploring. What is the value of a sport fish; in what context do those who seek sport from a fish perceive it? Where does this lead, not only the avaricious consumption of wild waters for profit, but also the attitudes of the common man, the attitudes which have changed from trout as food, to trout as renewable resource, to perhaps, “trout” as a platonic ideal for something, though exactly what is likely nebulous and individual.

More broadly I wonder about how fishing is and will be perceived, from the ideal of the lone fisher in a vast landscape to the pampered CEO on an exclusive spring creek. I mean fishing is cruel, right? It can't have escaped your notice that there is a sizeable minority that think so (even if individually they are not yet as vocal as some well known organisations). It is after all the deliberate infliction of suffering on another. Like bull fighting really. Or torture. Would an increasingly urbanized population, divorced from the mess and muck of the fields support fishermen? Or, indeed should we not question ourselves? Are we not recalcitrant luddites, heads Ostriched into the sands, oblivious to the ongoing erosion of our anthropocentric view of nature by the rest of society?

Food for more posts.

Thomas McGuane

I sort of dismissed the crowning of Tom McGuane as Fly Fisherman of the year in my last post. Now I think about it, damn right he should get an award like this. He, along with Ted Leeson, Nick Lyons and James Babb are the best extent articulators of this thing we do. I was prompted to think about it again on reading a nice piece by Tom Chandler of the Trout Underground.

As the article in Fly Rod and Reel describing the award was written by Nick Lyons it almost makes me want to buy this edition of the magazine, almost. Anyway if you haven't read any McGuane - WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING WITH YOURSELF, jeez.

In the library

Carted from pillar to post I found myself at the library today standing in front of the magazine rack as is often the case when I am waiting. The library I hasten to add is the supermarket, a soubriquet invented by MP. He got fed up spending money on fishing magazines that are inevitably repetitive if one subscribes for long enough. So MP used to go the “library” to browse through the latest edition of X (insert title of a monthly fishing rag) – the library being WH Smiths in his case, a large store chain in the UK – and here was I doing the same thing. I was at the supermarket to pick up a prescription for antibiotics and lethal load painkillers. My broken tooth has cracked that bit more causing infection, John Merrick amplitude swelling and much pain. To say that my teeth are the stereotype of British ivory, dully yellow and chipped would not be an understatement. While they are not quite the “webwork of East European steel and brown decay” that Ratz, the owner of the Chat bar in the Sprawl, displays it would be a closer description than the pearlys I see ostentatiously exhibited every day by the youthful and vigorous denizens of this new world. Because I am a man (last time I looked anyway) the extent of this pain was magnified by the incapacity of our sex to tolerate any. I argued that the erstwhile solution to any tooth pain, large and copious quantities of Scotch, would do me just fine was rapidly shot down in flames by my, rightly, nagging wife. She sent me to the second worst place on earth – the doctor’s surgery (the worst place on earth is where I am going next week to get the tooth pulled).

Which is why I was standing in the library reading a nice little article in Fly Rod and Reel about Thomas McGuane by Nick Lyons. Apparently McGuane is Fly Fisherman of the year. I didn’t even know we had one and it smacks a little of the continuing encroachment of the packaging and parceling attitude of modern life – everything needs a banner. Still I suppose if anyone should get the recognition McGuane isn’t a bad choice nor come to think about it is getting Nick Lyons to write the article about him.

Photo courtesy: www.ssflies.com

Below FR&R was Fly Tyer a monthly I know nothing about. I flicked through it and came to a series of streamer flies that in an instance turned on the 15-Watt bulb that lurks over my head desperately hoping to be illuminated. The small article showed a couple of streamer patterns all of the same design. I would try and link to them but their website still has last month’s edition. They look a bit like the “Laid-up Tarpon bug” shown in the photo but much nicer, the tail well matched, the full hook shank used, more solid, neater, more edible. Where the main feathers were tied was the crucial point, the two pairs of matched saddle feathers were tied in as a long tail. The rest of the construction consists of some marabou tips angled back followed by some more marabou of a different colour tied on the underside followed by a long hackle of the same feather as the tail. In the photos the fly has dumbbell eyes set, I suppose, about a quarter or third of the way down the hook shank from the eye. In front of that a second hackle again the same colour as the tail, was tied and wrapped forward and then the tied off and the head whip finished. I am sure the fly is not that original and I have thought about a similar design that I had seen on Tarpon flies before. What was good about the photos was the earthy grizzle of the feathers used, the well-matched tails that imitated the beautiful lines of the featherwings I like and the simplicity of using feathers from the same cape for the tail, and hackles. I’m not sure the whole fly will maintain the same supple insouciance of the more traditional designs I have been smitten with but I’m sold enough to want to find out. And it makes me think that I can finally put to use the four or five lovely Indian hen capes I have lying around. I have a weak spot for these capes, the soft subtlety of their natural colours, their very webbiness, but the feathers are invariably too short for the large featherwings I like to tie. It would also cleverly alleviate the annoying hook hugging habit of the classically tied streamers, something I have been struggling with for some time (see previous post). They do, I suppose, look a bit like woolly buggers, but, while acknowledging how effect buggers are, I can't stand them and tying something that looks, and probably acts, like a bugger without being one has to be a plus point in my books.

It is not really in keeping with the traditional values of these kinds of streamers (as far as I know at least) but then I don’t really keep within the traditional values of fishing anyway – whatever they are.

Falling

I have been out on the river a handful of times over the last month and a bit but time and tide, as Canute demonstrated, wait for no man. Unreported trips stretch back to a couple of days at the end of September (my yearly immersion astonishingly realised) so it may be this time next year that I manage to find the time to catch up with it all.

Visitors have gone and my house is back to the comfortable shirt I like, no more wandering where to put myself around people who are not quite on the “here’s the fridge, kettle, wine help yourself” standing. Visitors may have gone but work continues to press. Not in a mundane manner I have to say as there are a few things I am working on which are exciting the little grey cells, and in turn detracting from fishy thoughts and actions. Last week in a mental hiatus, a situation I get into where I can see the shape of an idea but cannot think my way actively through to its realization, I took self down to the river to allow the great engine of the subconscious to mull and peck at the form, a process that can work wonders.

Fall fishing is still something of a novelty to me. Back in Scotland at this time of year the rivers are closed and the only fishing a few that remain open for grayling. And I wonder about traipsing through the water, careful as I am trying to spot each cleared gravel patch, swept by the metronomic beat of tails intent on actions that no fisherman should intrude. I wonder whether I should be here at all with this evidence of rampant canoodling all over the shallow pebbled benches.

A wild-eyed rainbow succumbed to my new featherwing streamer, wallowed around a bit in a fast current chute before coming to net. A somewhat lean and worn out fish, one finding it difficult maintaining its depth since escaping the pens perhaps. There appeared to be more rainbows in mid-river than usual, a circumstance possibly engendered by the preoccupation of the browns on other matters, the competition for mid-stream lies decreased.

Some smaller browns, as ever, smacked the fly, most in a wintering grey garb but one displaying the deep yellows and defined spots of a sexually active fish.

On the whole I teased numbers of fish to follow and flash, a not unusual outcome of fishing this method, some were prodigious and some ejected exclamations from me as they turned on the point of taking or took and rejected the fly in a blink of an eye to fast for me to react. One of the smaller fish smacked the fly and in doing so propelled itself and the fly from the water, for a moment the fish and the deception were suspended in the air, parallel, their courses having bisected for that brief moment of contact and now separated, eyeing each other before returning to the water.

The featherwings I used was the latest confabulation in my long running argument with these patterns. The argument itself I have mentioned before, namely I love the sinuous wiggle of the unmatukered feathers but hate the propensity of the wings to wrap themselves around the shank, particularly at crucial moments. The iteration I was trying was simply making use of short-shanked heavy wire hooks in an attempt to put a lot of distance between the hook bend and the tip of the wing. Fine (ish) wire hooks are okay for the lightly dressed versions using only one pair of matched wings but the heavier grade is a necessity when trying to counter-balance the weight of the wing as the ones I was using were made up of six matched feathers. I like the tip I read of in Bates’ streamer book about tying in a matchstick on top of the shank to help the balance. This especially works when tying the wings Carrie Stevens style along the hook shank rather than perched pert and pretty, but in my opinion much less effectively, atop. There they seem to stick out like a barn door left ajar, prominent and immovable and it takes some press of current to slim the feathers down into fishy form. Maybe this does not matter to the fish but as in all things fly tying it matters to me and my confidence in using them, an aspect that cannot be underrated. The matchstick I mentioned has to be split and shaped some fore and aft to taper the body pleasingly to a point. On that note it is worth mentioning that Singlebarbed is posting a great tying series at the moment. I note though that all the mistakes he talks about are in all the flies I tie so I look forward to the next installment with some trepidation.

A chunky brown finished the session off for me, engulfing the fly as it wriggled away from the far bank. In all I must have moved umpteen fish, a much smaller proportion actually attempted to eat the fly and a much smaller proportion still were hooked. It is something I must get better at. Having gone to the lengths of planning and then executing the cast, materialising a fish from an imagined lie, I still find it hard to time the hook set. This creek is clear and shallow and the flies themselves fish in the top foot or so of water. Glare and shadows notwithstanding the fly is often visible and yet the hit and leggo of these fish is often so fast that I am left not reacting at all. I keep telling myself that a strip strike should be the way to go yet, because many of the presentations are slack lined with the rod held at all sorts of angles a contortionist would be proud of, the better to maintain a swimming imitation in a particular band of water fluttering and swooning its seductiveness to hopefully all scaly and sundry, such a hook set is invariably not an option.

There is always something to improve on.

Winter Morning Walks

In the evening sitting with K, who is eating her apple boats, and drinking her bedtime milk, I read 100 postcards aloud. When I paused at the end of November she says “more Daddy,” mouse intent on her fruit, content. So I read,

“The long, December shadows

of the bare trees

run far away from the woods.

At sunrise, they cross a red pasture

and, though softened and torn

by stones and weeds,

strike out into the trees

on the opposite side,

leaving dark trails through the frost.”

And on through December while she carefully applies a white moustache lulling along to each short verse until her attention pricks at “Coyote” and listens more carefully to;

“A hundred yards ahead,

A coyote crosses the road at a lope,

Stops on a rise, looks back,

Runs on. It is less like

The shape of an animal running

Than the shadow of something flying.

When I get to the place where I saw it,

No tracks on the snow.”

We go to bed, her trailing elephant by a short stubby tail and me finger folded in January.

Winter Morning Walks: 100 postcards to Jim Harrison by Ted Kooster is a lovely collection and I am indebted once again to Scott for bringing it to my attention.

In Our Time...again.

Rather swamped at the moment and though I have a few posts in the offing (the usual Eccles fare and a couple of fishing trips) I am finding it hard to create the time and lavish the care and attention that is the hallmark of a TOSS post.

Ho, ho.

For a quickie I thought I would remind the few of you about some required listening. I was brought up with BBC Radio 4, it was always on in the kitchen. There were other radio stations but they played that popular music stuff, something my father would not countenance. Good thing too now I look back at it. The lack of variety wasn’t ever a problem. Through the day I was exposed to the Today programme, Start the Week, The World at One, Just a Minute, afternoon plays, PM, the News Quiz, Book at Bedtime and much more besides. I even remember quite clearly Listen with Mother. So, "are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin."

In Our Time. I know, I know. It ain’t new to these electronic pages but so enamoured am I with this series I figured why not. The new season started with a bang in September and a programme about St Thomas Aquinas. I mean really, you want good programming? How about three experts and a knowledgeable chair discussing one of the most important thinkers in human history. Since then we have had Leibniz, Newton and the invention of calculus, the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, The Dreyfuss Affair, the cause of “J’Accuse,” Émile Zola’s infamous open letter to the then French president. Last week was the Death of Elizabeth I and the subsequent coronation of James I and the unification England and Scotland.

Too staid, too fusty, too boring, not relevant enough? If you thought this you'd be utterly wrong on all counts. Find yourself a quiet, uninterrupted forty five minutes a week and indulge yourself in really high quality broadcasting, a rare commodity nowadays.

Catch it here or download the podcasts regularly via iTunes.

Caught a couple

The carp and curry outing to the local reservoir has been and gone. the fishing was average but the eating was superb.

As I said in the previous post I fished with a float on the lift but had to settle for a bulky antenna (appropriately monikered the “puddle chucker”) which took 4 AAA, not a delicate thing but I couldn’t find the float stash I thought I had hidden away in the dimmer recesses of some cupboard or other. Dope went straight to the heavy stuff with an apparently simple bolt rig which belied much more complicated fixtures on closer inspection.

Judicious application of sweetcorn and some worms, a brief hiatus and then we were both into some carp. Dope landing his first one and me losing mine after a brief tussle. We continued to lose and land a some fish for the few hours we applied ourselves, Dope outscoring me three to one in the end. None of the bronze fellows were of any size I think the largest topping out just shy of six pounds but, on my light set up at least, it was fun.

Even on a fishing social there was an interesting thing. We fished sweetcorn not knowing how much intentional carping there is on this lake and though I wished for a classic lift and lay down on my float this didn’t happen. The first fish was typical. I was watching the float, looked away briefly and when I looked back float had disappeared and the rod was spearing into the lake with all the intent of a Olympic swimmer. All the bites were like this, the float either wobbling briefly before returning to its stationary position or disappearing so comprehensively it was as if there never had been a float out there in the first place. The carp obviously knew something about sweetcorn, mouthing the hookbait briefly before rejecting (the float wobbling) or when they did pick up the bait scramming with it as fast as their little fins could carry them. Dope didn’t have this issue as the bolt rig is designed as a self hooker, carp picks up bait, moves away a little, comes up against the anchor of lead and jags the hook into its mouth. He offered me the same set up but looking at the great mass of lead and thinking of the damage it might do to my light rod I declined. The carps need for, but nervousness around corn is typical of a moderately pressurized fishery and corn is a bait the fish “wise-up” to rapidly being as it is bright yellow and not quite the particle bait some claim it to be. True particle baits (other seeds for example) are akin to trout feeding on a midge hatch, many small items from which the chaff is difficult to distinguish from the wheat and selectivity (pre-occupation in the carp jargon) is a likely outcome.

There were many carp mooching around on the surface too but not in feeding mood. The water was very warm and the clooping fish appeared more interesting in supplementing their oxygen levels than in clearing up any flotsam and jetsam. I did throw a few flies but they were resolutely ignored.

Dope has the fever again and we may try another bash at a local village pond which heaves with carp and likely gets little attention. The weather has turned distinctly autumnal though and we'll have to go soon. Real carpheads may swaddle themselves in all sorts of winter warmers but sedentary float watching while my nadgers freeze off ain't for me.