Deeper Truths: In pursuit of native trout in ancient streams
There are deeper greens than the intense summer sun would bely. They sway in the cool breeze under the mixed hardwood and hemlock canopy. There is a coolness here in the damp. The sun's intensity is mottled on the forest floor. It casts back and forth with the trees, sending probing light into the depths of the pool. The plunging water is both picturesque and practical–the aeration it creates disperses down stream.
I haven’t always done this type of fishing. Hell, I haven’t always fished. Fishing was a temporary diversion as a kid but as an adult I lived on a fantastic trout stream for the better part of five years before I met Cody and a fly rod found my hands. And now there are those amongst my friends who would say I prefer the big stream fishing, throwing big dries to bigger rising Browns. There is an appeal and ease to pursuing these introduced fish and, subsequently, I spent the majority of my fishing time in their pursuit. A few beers on the bank waiting for the heat of the day to subside and the hatch to take off is a soothing tradition. The rise of caddis and mayflies, drying their wings in the film before taking to air, is akin to a religious experience. Hundreds of thousands, millions of bugs flying upstream, bobbing up and down, hovering then dropping quickly all according to their kind. The surface of the water roiling with rising trout in the twilight is indescribable. Each gulp on the surface is a target, quickly vanishing in the current as I unfurl fly and line.
But there are deeper greens on these primordial streams, flowing from their ancient haunts. They are the products of seeps and springs fighting forth from the limestone heart of these mountains. The water breaks from the darkness, sometimes in drips, sometimes in small runs, before linking and merging into a stream of substance, albeit minor compared to their more substantial low country brethren. In their diminutive presence there is an isolation, which is far less common on bigger streams. In the clefts of these mountains there is a holiness, an otherness, which is unavailable in the trappings of society–here there is a loneliness in which our self is blurred into the natural.
And in these streams there are gems.
This is the domain of the Brook Trout, the native fish in these watersheds. They harken to a time before the anthropocene, before man’s manipulations, before dams took hold of mightier rivers, and channels were dredged to control their flows. Finding them in these streams is a testament to the stream’s water quality and overall health. Mottled like the light breaking through the trees above them, Brookies lay behind rocks, skittish, but aggressive, sheltering under sodden logs, and in the depths of every plunging pool.
Emily, my love, got our friend Ethan to make me a Brookie rod. It’s a custom fiberglass rod as unique as the haunts of these native fish. And at a length of seven feet, it is well suited to work the brush choked creek banks. It is a reflection of its application. In a nod to nostalgia and timelessness of fly casting, it bears J. W. Young and Sons reel. The old click and pawl reel from Redditch, England balances the weight of the rod in a way that leaves mass produced equipment wanting. I like to think of its presence on these streams as an affront to the lordly types with private streams and restricted access. These are wild fish on wild tributaries in wild places. They are not necessarily approached easily or from roadsides. They are sought, pursued, and in this chase there is respect. What they lack in size they compensate with spirit.
While the very presence of waders–”breathable” or otherwise is unbearable in this heat, the humidity inescapable, it is the pursuit of these native fish which offers a reprieve from the sun’s rays. The gently swaying overstory bears the burden of the sun’s intense oversight. On these small streams I find sanctuary, an individual who learned to fly fish on bigger water sheltered on humble tributaries where style is exchanged for stealth.
Brook trout here are skittish and may only give you a single shot at acceptable fly presentation. If you bumble into their pool or line of sight, they dart off and remove themselves from contention. If they strike your stimulator and don’t eat it, the chance of them rising again is low. And so with care, these waters are picked apart. Behind a rock here, the line of an eddy there, the edge of a log, or the rock at the head of a plunge pool. They are shadows betrayed by the probing light through the canopy. The holes cut into the pools reveal them, darting here and there, recovering their secrecy in the cracks of darkness, impenetrable by those rays.
And so we travel up the stream. Cody takes one pocket or pool. I take the next. We work silently for hours. Each refuge is picked apart, from the subtle to the most obvious. When dry presentations seem to be ineffective, we resort to a dropper. There is a method to this; it is understood. Whether it be Cody, or Kevin, or Emily, or Dan. One spot then the next. The best streams provide their own differentiation, almost imperceptible boundaries between fishing spots, where one angler knows their turn has expired and the other’s begun.
The splashes are deceptive. Some fish strike at the fly but refuse to take, others take with abandon. An aggressive set may set a small Brookie to wing, while other bigger fish are felt in the butt of the rod. The biggest surprises are those ancient types in these primordial streams–brutes of fish who bear the responsibility of prolonging their species’s presence here. These fish demand a respect best communicated by giving them the reel. The scream of an old click and pawl under the tension of a small stream titan is a sight, a sound to behold. We don’t often use a net, but every time I’ve left it in the truck I have wished I had had it.
The deeper greens of these gorges and plunge pools bely deeper colors elsewhere. The red belly of a Brookie bleeds down into their lower white-trimmed fins, especially as the spawn approaches, colors out of place in an otherwise spartan environment. The same red meets yellow and blends into greens reminiscent of the forest canopy above. Their black mouths seem the only part of their small frames truly suitable to the shadows in which they lurk.
It is these deeper colors which keep me coming back, braving the mosquitoes and biting flies. The pursuit of these beauties has transformed me into a creature who pours over maps looking for streams. The topographic lines guide me. I seek water compressed by gorges, rivers squeezed between ever tightening lines on a map. Elevation change means plunge pools, and those pools mean fish of consequence.
In these places I’ve found reprieve from the trials of life. The trials from which alcohol and substances provide mere temporary diversion. The flows of these streams are of an epoch ignorant of the struggles of the anthropocene. They rise from a time before man cut the earth to human purpose. Ebbing and flowing, these waters, and the Brook Trout they contain, remind of a time before human enterprise left a polluted mark, a time before industry and acid rain. Where we encounter them, a window to a simpler time is open to us.
We pursue the depths of our existence in these wild places. The reprieve from the heat drew me here, but the solitude bewitched me. Not only in the sun-pierced surface of the water, and the Brook Trout that dart within, but in the slow shift of the trees on their limestone floor. There is a connection to the water, as it breaks over structure, I find both temporary and timeless. It demands attention and the inherent white noise divorces us from whatever might exist out of earshot.
Thus we continue further upstream searching for those deeper greens, deeper pools, and deeper truths.
