Streamside on Line
Volume 5 |
The
Quarterly On Line Newsletter |
Fall |
In this issue:
FFF Announces America's Most Endangered Fisheries
Notes From The Tying Bench (Bob
Molzahn)
A Perfect Day (Jack
Claypotch)
Teach Your Children (Beth
Wilson)
Fly of
the Month: The Moosehead Belle
New Members
FFF
MID-ATLANTIC COUNCIL Fly Fishing Show and Conclave
Articles, news and fly tying tips are gratefully accepted. Please e-mail them to us using the Feedback section shown on the left.
| FFF announces America's Most Endangered Fisheries |
The five fisheries and the reason each is endangered includes:
1. Wolf River, Wisconsin - Potential new mining hazard.
2. Crooked Creek, Arkansas - Existing Gravel Mining degrading water quality.
3. Big Spring Run, Pennsylvania - Improper hatchery operations creating poor water quality.
4. Snake River, Idaho - Federal Dams impeding the migration of salmon and steelhead.
5. San Joaquin River, CA - Devastation of steelhead by development, logging and mining.
These endangered fisheries represent a snapshot of the appalling state of many of America's fish habitats. The threats to species like bass and salmon, and their ecosystems, are urgent and steps must be taken now to prevent further irreversible decline.
"Several priceless species have nearly been wiped-out by habitat destruction, pollution and poor watershed management," said Greg Pitts, President of the Federation of Fly Fishers. "But more than the health of fish is at stake. The value of these fisheries, both the direct economic value to the region and the intrinsic value of the species themselves, are tremendous."
The Federation is the leading voice of education and conservation through the sport of flyfishing. These five U. S. fisheries were determined by the FFF Conservation Committee to face the most immediate danger, in the first of these annual announcements.
WOLF RIVER, WISCONSIN: Exxon is proposing to build one of the largest zinc and copper mines in North America along the Wolf River. The pristine river is one of America's best preserved waterways, flowing roughly 250 miles from its headwater lakes in Northern Wisconsin to Lake Michigan. It is one of the midwest's few remaining clean, large, whitewater trout rivers. Mine waste from the project would cover an area the size of 350 football fields and would stand 90 feet high.
"No copper sulfide has ever been successfully mined anywhere in the World," said Bob Molzahn, chair of the Endangered Fisheries Committee. "It's frightening to think we would risk this magnificent and irreplaceable waterway with a technology that is unproven, and with such a tremendous potential for environmental devastation."
CROOKED CREEK, ARKANSAS: Arkansas's famed Crooked Creek is being decimated by in-stream gravel mining. The creek is a beautiful Ozark limestone stream that flows for 82 miles, and is considered the finest smallmouth bass stream of its size in the U.S. The mining companies are gouging the landscape, taking hundreds of thousands of tons of sand nd gravel and leaving huge scars along the course of this scenic stream. A recent aerial survey found 43 gravel mines on Crooked Creek. Efforts to have the stream designated an Extraordinary Waterway have failed in the Arkansas Legislature, as have attempts to strengthen mining laws.
BIG SPRING RUN, PENNSYLVANIA: One of the largest limestone springs in Pennsylvania, which becomes Big Spring Run, is endangered by the effluent release of a trout hatchery. Big Spring Run was once among the most productive wild brook trout stream fisheries in the eastern half of the United States. But the organic loadings and nutrients discharged from 20 years of operation of a Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission hatchery has caused the near extinction of a reproducing trout population. Fishing is now mostly confined to a 300 yard long section immediately below the hatchery, leaving the remaining four miles of stream essentially devoid of trout.
SNAKE RIVER, IDAHO: A prime habitat for wild salmon and steelhead, this is a fishery on the verge of extinction. Eight federal dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers block the passage of 95% of young salmon trying to transverse them. The health of the river is so poor that every species of salmon in the entire Snake River basin is either extinct or listed under the Endangered Species Act.
SAN JOAQUIN RIVER, CALIFORNIA: Naturally spawned Steelhead in the San Joaquin River have been all but destroyed from most of their historic range because of habitat blockages by dams, extensive water diversions, and reduction in instream water quality due to development, logging and mining in upland habitats.
According to FFF President Pitts "These five endangered fisheries are important to the fishing community because of their ecological and recreational significance on both a regional and national level. If we allow these impacts to go unchecked without drawing attention to their significance, we may lose an opportunity to protect and restore these valuable fisheries for future generations."
The Federation of Fly Fishers is the voice of the millions of people who fly fish throughout the world. The Federation is dedicated to supporting fisheries research and restoration, improved water quality and flows, the perpetuation of wild fishery stocks, catch-and-release angling regulations where appropriate, and the establishment of a more adequate voice for angling interests.
The Dame Juliana League has been an ardent supporter of the FFF for a number of years and has worked hard to help build the Mid-Atlantic Council of FFF. Bob Molzahn led the FFF’s Endangered Fisheries Initiative in 1999 and will do the same in 2000. If you would like to become involved give Bob a call.
| Notes From The tying Bench (by Bob Molzahn) |
When Gil Padovani and I started emailing each other about the possibility of a new Dame Juliana League webpage I had no idea what was in store for us. You need to understand that Gil was not a member of our club. He was, however, the developer of the webpage for the Long Island Flyrodders (www.lifr.org), an organization that we have had a great relationship with over the years. My brother Dean Molzahn (who lives on Long Island), Scott Haeberlein, Shel Toombs, Joe King, and I have taken a number of trips with the Flyrodders going back to 1991. We have fished with Gil and his brother Gian Padovani, have helped the Flyrodders man the table at the Somerset Fly Fishing Show, and have really done nothing else to deserve all the help that Gil has provided us in setting up and continuing to improve our webpage. Thanks Gil. I also would like to heartily thank Gil’s son, Marco Padovani, for providing us the server space for our webpage (www.djlflyfishers.org). By the way, if you haven’t checked our webpage out you should. Not only does it give you all the up to date activities and goings on of our club but it also provides a number of important links to other websites. There is a lot of information on Pennsylvania fishing, streamflow conditions, and other fly fishing sites. If you are planning a trip in upstate Pennsylvania check it out. Lastly, if you have any suggestions for improvement of the website or additional links, please let me know (AgCloud@compuserve.com). We would like to hear from you.
Some good news, I think. The Arena Dressed Beef Plant, better known as the Meat Packing Plant, on the corner of Hollow and Pughtown Roads next to the DHFFO area, was recently sold at Sheriff’s Auction for back taxes to the Green Valleys Association. Plans are to raise funds through grant money and donations to tear the plant down and restore the property to a more natural state. This was a gutsy move by GVA and certainly one that we appreciate as this eyesore will be permanently removed. More to come on this.
As you may have heard, the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission approved a reduction in the creel limit for trout from 8 to 5 for the open fishing areas. This is good news for anglers as it should extend the fishing season by keeping more fish in the stream for a longer period of time. The League actively supported this change through involvement with the Coalition of Concerned Pennsylvania Anglers. This was an enlightened move by the Commission and we should applaud it.
The Mid-Atlantic Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers is holding its Annual Fly Fishing Show at the Pikesville Armory just off of I-695 in Baltimore on November 13-14. As a representative of the League I have been very active in this organization and would urge all our members to make the two hour drive and attend the show. Consider taking your family and combine it with a trip to the Baltimore Aquarium. Proceeds from the show support MAC’s conservation and education program. The League will have a booth at the show and members are invited to help man the booth so those of us who usually attend these events can actually partake of the show or even do some fishing on the Gunpowder River, a mere 30 minutes away. We are also sponsoring a table at the banquet on Saturday night and need folks to fill it. Give me a call if you are interested. More information on the show, nearby accomodations and directions will be sent out in the October meeting announcement.
Larry Heimes has gotten us off to a good start with our Stream Improvement Projects for 1999. Our July workday was well attended with 14 volunteers and very successful as we completed the bank stabilization project downstream of the Sheeder Mill Bridge. The August workday, however , had to be postponed because of storms and problems with getting materials delivered. As of this writing, we will need to hold a couple of workdays in September or October to get us back on schedule.
Streamflows on French Creek are a continued worry. Although recent rains have helped French Creek, it did fall to an all-time low of 5 cubic feet per second in mid-August. Any chance of holdover trout are a remote possibility. I also am concerned about fall stocking. Other streams in the area are holding their own. The Little Lehigh is low but big trout are still biting. The Tulpehocken has been erratic in flow and trout stocked in the fall of 1998 are nowhere to be seen. The best news has been the Susquehanna River which has experienced some of the best smallmouth bass fishing ever. Joe King can tell you about that, I was using the wrong fly and tippet. Later...
| A Perfect Day (by Jack Claypotch) |
Little Mooselookmeguntic was what Ben said the lake was named, one of numerous places to fish in the Rangeley Lake region of Maine. It had been a spectacular day of canoeing and fishing. I had already caught and released at least 30 trout and had probably missed three times as many strikes. Hundreds more fish had most likely fled the area at the sounds of my novice casts smacking the water behind the canoe but my brother- in law, Joe, was being very patient and helpful. I suppose it helped that he had been having tremendous success fishing as well and my flailing of line, leader and Hornberg just added humor to his day.
I had been apprehensive at first when he suggested that he, Ben, Mike and I take the canoes and drive up to spend the next day fly fishing. All of my previous fishing experience had been limited to spinning rigs and though I considered myself a decent fisherman I had never used a fly rod before. But Joe talked me into going (it wasn't too hard), Ben offered me a rod to use and we loaded the canoes on Ben's Scout "Old Bondo" and headed north.
Ben shared a few flies to use, had shown me how to tie them onto the end of the leader and given me some quick instructions on casting. I didn't catch anything for the first 1/2 hour or so but after Joe reminded me that there were no fish in the air, I stopped casting so much and soon a beautifully colored brook trout impaled itself on my fly for the first time. Things clicked and soon I was catching more trout than I had ever dreamed of and although they were small, they were the most beautiful and colorful fish I had ever seen, definitely not the hatchery stock I was used to.
Now, after five or six hours of fishing, and a relaxed shore lunch we were totally unprepared for the added bonus waiting half submerged just around the bend. Moose! I had never seen one before and the young bull standing shoulder deep along the shoreline, water running off his back and antlers, chewing happily on the vegetation he had dredged from the pond's bottom seemed as surprised as we were. I put down the paddle and retrieved the camera I always kept in my fishing vest. "Don't get too close", Ben warned as Joe and I paddled in for a better picture. I managed to get off a few frames before the bull turned and casually walked out of the water and into the woods. We sat there amazed while listening to his crashing through the trees.
Though we caught more fish that day, they were really just icing on the cake, the day was already perfect. I knew one thing in my heart; I was hooked on vacationing in Maine and perhaps most importantly, on fishing with a fly.
(Editor's note) Jack is a longstanding member of the League and this is his first article. I hope he will write many more.
| Teach Your Children (by Beth Wilson) |
Kids growing up today have a heck of a row to hoe. At the age when I was playing with dolls and watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, these kids are learning about AIDS and crack and gangsta rap. I don’t know why this is happening—lots of people have tried to blame it on TV or the divorce rate or growing up in a rougher environment or peer pressure or schools, but it seems that we are lacking a definitive answer that works for the problems of every kid. Kids seem to be miserable no matter the lot that life has handed them.
Maybe that’s the problem—life HANDS things to them, and they have no control over it. Whether the things are good or bad, they are clearly overwhelming and make kids feel that they are just giant mouths to be fed. It’s a passive life that our children are learning, and I don’t know of one person, of any age, who is happy with that. People who simply take what is given begin to behave in ways, inevitably destructive ways, that make them feel that they have some kind of control. They can produce an outcome that is of their own making instead of just waiting around for life to happen to them, but that outcome is very often hurtful or unreasonable, because the acts they perform are dangerous or stupid.
One of the best things that anyone can hand to most kids, if one is going to hand them anything, is a rod.
My son had a difficult time with life when he was small. He was hyperactive and destructive, with the attention span of a bat. It was difficult, not just because his behavior was out of control, but because he was UNHAPPY, and the more unhappy he got, the worse his behavior became. The man that I love handed the boy a fishing rod (as he ultimately did for me), and took him out with him to teach him how to use it.
Almost immediately, he became a different kid.
Fishing is one of the few activities that you can get a kid to do that has virtually no evil side effects. They are physically active, they are learning and they are having a good time. There aren’t many things that include all three of those advantages. Since I have learned this, I’ve taken a number of children fishing, or struck up conversations with kids that I find on the stream. What I find there are kids whose minds have expanded, who realize that not everything comes easily, that you have to be patient and persevere, and that even when you do everything perfectly, you don’t always get what you want, or anything at all for that matter. They are kids who understand that it is futile to try to force your will on another living being. They are kids who see more, pay more attention, sit still longer, and focus more clearly.
It’s magic.
Not that fishing solves everything—you may find that if you have a young angler in the house that there are paper cartons of rather interesting stuff in your refrigerator, and that they are often late for dinner, and washday becomes a new and exciting adventure. But any parent I know would gladly suffer these minor inconveniences to be able to live with a kid who is happier and more reasonable than the average pre-adolescent or adolescent. If those particular drawbacks really bother you, my gentle suggestion is that you may not understand what’s going on here, and maybe you need to be handed a rod yourself: you’re too focused on the things in life that make for useless stress.
Lighten up—TAKE the kid fishing. Who knows what you might learn together?
We’ve talked before about the things that fish can teach you, but when you introduce a new element, a child, into the scenario, the opportunities for learning grow exponentially. Kids look at the world differently from you—that’s why you’ve come to believe that they are from another planet, or suffered some brain damage that the doctor didn’t tell you about. When you spend time with a kid and the fish, when you watch the way they interact, and the way a kid handles the ups and downs of angling, you begin to learn what really makes the kid tick. If you care about the kid, this can be a helpful tool to use in raising them—if you don’t, it can be an amusing activity for you.
I take my niece, Holly, fishing with me quite often. I think that she began to show an interest in fishing because it was something that I liked to do, and if I liked to do it, there must be something to it. She’s a funny kid—a real tomboy in a lot of ways, but pretty prissy in others. She’ll play ball and ride bikes and get dirty with no problem, but she wants her dirty clothes to MATCH, and she’s not much for bugs and porta-potties. When you fish, bugs are a fact of life, and porta-potties are not only acceptable, but often a luxury gratefully welcomed by one and all.
I take her worm-fishing and not fly fishing, as I want her to be sure to catch something in these early ventures, and it is the rare sunnie or rock bass or even trout that can resist the lure of an earthworm. Inevitably, at the beginning, we went through the fish-feeding stage, when the fish would steal her bait because she was still learning to set the hook. This required my having to hook on many dozens of worms, because she wouldn’t touch them. Finally, I told her that, if you fish, you have to bait your own hook, or at least touch the worm. "I won’t make you put it on the hook right now," I told her, "but reach in that bucket and get one for me—I’ll put it on."
She did it. I couldn’t believe it.
Learning that you have to bait your own hook if you want to fish is a good lesson. Learning that you have to touch worms is a good one, too. That little girl screwed up her courage, suspended her squeamishness and reached right in there. It was the high point of the day—she caught several fish, but grabbing those worms is what she told her mother about that evening.
You never know where you’re going to find an accomplishment.
Modern educators talk about self-esteem, and about how kids need to feel good about themselves. I agree to an extent, but I think it’s more important for a kid to feel good about himself for a reason, and fishing affords them opportunities for accomplishment that very few other activities can. It’s not an easy thing to catch a fish—it takes some skill, some grace and the knowledge of what is the right stuff to put on the end of the line at what time, all of which the kid controls. Finding yourself with a fish on the end of your line is a concrete reward for possessing those capabilities. A kid can feel good about catching a fish, for good reasons, and even better about letting it go again. That is a solid basis for self esteem, preferable to some free-floating idea that kids are worthy because they exist: that’s an idea that even the kids don’t buy.
The things that we can teach our children at the side of a stream, lessons that seem so natural there, are often more difficult to learn in other environments. Lessons in patience, conservation, gentleness, quietness, awareness, and respect for the environment, other people on the stream and the quarry are all lessons that find very few other forums—at least, not ones that are nearly so pleasurable. It gives an opportunity for introspection of which even the most rough-and-tumble kind of kid can take full advantage without the slightest chance of looking silly or too serious to their friends. To hold that squirming life in their hand, to feel it toss their line and their rod in the attempt to escape, to know that this creature is a living being and to have contact with it in the intimacy of the catch can do more to teach respect for life than any hundreds of lectures on the subjects of violence and killing. Even if the kid decides to keep the fish, he does it with the awareness that it was once alive, and it was his decision to keep it.
I don’t know if fishing can solve the problems of a lot of kids—there are some pretty overwhelming problems out there, and some pretty scary kids. I do know, however, that when a kid hooks a fish, it’s just as likely, from my experience, that the fish hooks the kid just as surely.
I wish that all children had a clean, cool stream full of fish with which to spend some time. I wish that all children could feel the tug of life at the end of their fingers, and that the fish’s valiant fight could teach them that life is worth holding on to. I wish that all kids had a patient, quiet adult to take them out and teach them what it feels like to be at peace with the world. I wish that all of them could know that strange mix of accomplishment and gratitude that feeling skilled and comfortable in the natural world affords. I wish all kids could know these wonders, and make them part of their lives. All I can do to fulfill these wishes is to take a few children on myself and give them the chance to know what I have learned myself.
And maybe you can, too.
(Editor's note) As you may have noticed in past editions of STREAMSIDE, Beth is a prolific and talented writer. Given all the problems with youth these days this article certainly strikes a chord.
| Fly of the Month: The Moosehead Belle |
Our good friend Gian Padovani created this fly on a trip to Maine in 1985.
|
Hook: Mustad 9672 #4-12 Thread: Black Tail: Yellow saddle hackle barbules Body: Scarlet red floss Ribbing: Flat silver tinsel Throat: Yellow saddle hackle barbules Underwing: Mallard flank feather dyed ginger Overwing: White Marabou |
| New Members |
We extend a warm welcome to our new members:
Jack, Matt, and Sean Kane
Chuck Sloss
Bill Tomon
Biff Rugh
and look forward to seeing them at upcoming meetings.
| FFF Mid-Atlantic Council Fly Fishing Show and Conclave |
| MID-ATLANTIC COUNCIL FEDERATION OF FLY FISHERS -Fly Fishing Show and Conclave- November 13-14, 1999 Pikesville Armory, Baltimore, MD 2 Miles East of Exit 20, off of I-695 VISIT THE LEAGUE’S BOOTH!! Tackle Vendors, Fly Tying Demos & Classes, Fly Casting Instruction, Seminars, Christmas Gifts, Bucket Raffles, Books, Clothing, Rod Building Demos & Much, Much More ADMISSION: $5.00Call 610 469-6365 for information
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