Streamside on Line

In this issue:

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When a woman becomes pregnant, her doctor refers to her pregnancy as "gravida." If she is pregnant for the first time, she is a "prima gravida", and every pregnancy thereafter is numbered to keep track of how many times she has been expecting.

The earth has been a mother many times over, growing and nurturing creatures and plants, filling with new life every spring. No one can say for certain how many times she has done this—her gravid times are innumerable. All we know for certain is that she does it every year, and has since mankind itself was young.

To go fishing in this gravid time, the early spring of late April and early May, is to see her in the first blush of her fertile state. It is the time of the nymph, the bud, the bloom, the early flirtation that will lead to a mate. Everything is new, and showing off its color before progressing to its deep green fullness. Everything is excited and refreshed. The fisherman stands in the stream that still clings to the chill left there by winter, but which is warming day by day to the touch of the leaf-dappled sunlight, and all around there are the sights and sounds and smells of a pagan world wild with the drives of spring.

I went out to fish the other evening, an evening warm and promising a good hatch, the mayflies charmed from the water’s surface by the seduction of the first 80 degree day. It was the first evening too hot for chest waders, and attaching the fly to the leader was difficult because my fingers were damp with perspiration and the surrounding humidity. Finding easy access to the creek was still possible, as the weeds and the foliage had not grown up to block the little-used path completely, but new growth foreshadowed an impending obliteration of the easy way in. I was mad for the water, not merely to get a line in, but to savor its coolness in the heat of the early evening.

Anxious to be about the business of fishing, I was still not too rushed to savor the flowering purple things that lined the path, or the new ferns uncurling in the shadows, grateful for what they pledged, both for the evening and for the next few months of warmth and life.

Entering the stream cautiously, knowing that the trout had felt a bit of pressure during the day when other, not-so-duty-bound anglers who had played hooky from work or school to wade this water and put their flies out in the current, I again feel the familiar and pleasant anxiety of wondering if I am sufficiently camouflaged to lull the spooky beings close to my hook. Just as I am beginning to feel too ungainly and foreign to even hope to blend in, a pied-brown sparrow sets down in the water by the stream bank about six feet from where I stand and proceeds to bathe, as carelessly as a baby, in the shallow water. I watch completely delighted, as the bird’s presence so close to where I stand encourages me that my fellow streamsiders find nothing threatening or unnatural in my being there. The bird splashes in a delicate but exuberant joy for a long time, and then shakes itself dry and wings off across and up the stream, and I find my heart happy just to have witnessed this little sliver of its life.

I reach down into the clear flow surrounding my feet, and pick up several stones to find out what is there. The undersides of the rocks are loaded with both mayfly nymphs and cocoons of caddisflies. I pull one of the cocoons off, fascinated with this little structure. The caddisfly builds its cocoon from a silky, sticky stuff like other insects, but weaves minute stones into it, some barely bigger than grains of sand, so that the whole thing is covered over with little pebbles. It is beautiful, really; a little mosaic jewel clinging to the rock. The growing pupae inside, tipped with shiny, jet-black beads on both ends or the most remarkable chartreuse in the middle, is also distinctively jewel-like and pretty to look at. Fly tiers have tied dozens of variations of both the pupae and the case, and I think that there is such a bonanza of caddisflies on this stream that they must work well. I’ll have to sit and do some at the tying table when I get home to bring with me next time.

I sometimes think, when I am here or in the presence of other anglers, that I really should learn the names of the things that surround me. Fly tiers and fishermen who know the Latin name of each species of insect earn my respect, because I have yet to learn many of their colloquial English names.

"What was hatching tonight?"

"Oh, some little brown thingies with sort of silvery wings."

This sort of exchange brings wry grins and serves to reinforce the idea that, when most women speak of insects, a bug by any other name is still a bug. I would like to learn to call these tiny creatures by their given names, just as I would like to learn the names of all the birds and flowers and creeping things and even the fish that surround me on this spring evening. I know them by sight, though, and by habit, just as they know each other, and I comfort myself that maybe I just have a different kind of knowledge that doesn’t necessarily conform to the designations given by men. It’s a rationalization, yes, but one I can live with and that harms no one.

Some of us were just meant to enjoy things on a less cerebral level…

What I am enjoying on this evening is the absolute industriousness of my companions on the water, the way the earth and its creatures have attacked the job of re-creation with such energy and passion. Every creature but me is busy, and as I roll cast and mend line over and over, casting to rocks and under hanging tree branches, I realize that I am the laziest thing here, even though I am constantly moving. It is as if the trees themselves are straining into the sky, the earth is pushing food into their roots, the insects are feeding the earth with their offal, and the birds are twittering and darting, giving instruction to the whole process. I feel the whole environment pushing up and out, stretching beyond last year’s grasp to grow again.

A flaming red cardinal lights deep within the branches of a startlingly green tree. It is the time of crayon box colors, exponentially replicated and charged with life.

Slowly I feel the winter stiffness slipping from me, and I am beginning to feel easy and familiar again, both here in this world and with the rod in my hand. I am beginning to hear the beat that measures the cast, and feel the rhythm of the line as it travels back and forth and shoots from my hand across the water. The current swirls around my legs again, and I feel safer and more agile in its flow with every minute that passes.

It’s amazing how much you forget over the winter, like you forget the face of a lover in a long absence, no matter how strong a passion you feel. I never consciously forget how much I love to do this, but sometimes I forget the visceral and emotional reasons why this is so important to me.

Part of the earth’s rebirth is the rebirth within myself, as one of the earth’s creatures, that comes about when I find my way back to the water after a long winter season. I am part of her return to life and her new growth. I feel the hum of fertility and birth in the palms of my hands and the insides of my eyelids, and in the back of my nose, where the smells of new life all around me unfold like flowers in the sun.

How many times has the earth done this? It matters less to me how many times it has already been accomplished than it does how many more times it will be, at least in my presence, and how often I will be allowed to stand as the midwife’s companion as the earth gives birth to herself again.

It doesn’t get much better than this. We have members that are actively involved and contributing to the success of our club. I took a count of the members that have helped with stream improvement projects, contributed to STREAMSIDE, manned our outreach tables , instructed or helped with fly fishing course and have provided services in other ways. This past year, forty percent (40%) of our members have contributed in some fashion. This is a fantastic percentage and everyone who has been involved should be congratulated. If I could list everyone I would, but I can’t. Our Board has been exceptional in everything they have taken on and Gil Padovani, our webmaster, has done a fabulous job on our website in all respects.

We are a member club of the Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) and they have also come through in a big way. We applied for and received $2500 in funds from FFF and the Mid-Atlantic Council for the streambank restoration project that is part of the slaughterhouse demolition project. These funds were matched by an anonymous Green Valleys Association (GVA) donor to make the contribution worth $5000. Wow!!

Our club has also made donations to the French and Pickering Conservation Trust and the Chester Valley Sportmens Association. CVSA stocked about 250 large brown trout in the French Creek Delayed Harvest FlyFishing Only area in May. Reports from our members are that fishing has been excellent in French Creek since the middle of May when these brown trout were released. However, fishing was not very good at all before their release even though the PA Fish & Boat Commission stocked the stretch with 1200 trout, 90% of which were rainbows. My theory is that many of the rainbow trout that are stocked early in the season flee French Creek’s Delayed Harvest area within two weeks after they are put in. Rainbows are an anadromous species and like to move, especially downstream. Couple that with 20 fisherman tromping through a 0.9-mile stretch day-in and day-out for a few weeks and you would leave too. Brown trout, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as flighty and will hang in the spot they are stocked for a much longer period of time. The Commission’s biologist claims that most trout fisherman like to catch rainbows because they are easier to catch and better fighters. Maybe so, but if the trout don’t hang in a delayed harvest area, who cares. Frankly, I would rather see smaller, less aggressive, harder to catch brownies rising than no trout at all.

Finally, French Creek Outfitters is moving to the old Superfresh store in Valley Forge Mall in Phoenixville on Rt. 23 as this article is being written. Their new ad it will be in the next edition of this newsletter. In the meantime, I apologize for any inconvenience it might cause.

Have a good summer and maybe I will see you at an upcoming stream improvement workday.

When Bob asked me to put an article together for the summer edition I started thinking about some of the questions that I have been getting from several members. I also realized that not everyone has had an opportunity to read the Vision Statement and Objectives for the Stream Improvement Program. These items as well as a photo album of past projects are on display at club meetings throughout the year. The vision statement and objectives below were drafted in 1998 and form the framework of our program. All of our projects are gauged against these 5 objectives and to date we have been very successful in meeting them.