Woodland Trout Fund

Here are a couple of little ditties from WCA member Mike O'Neil (aka Boreegard, aka The Troutmeister). Every year around this time Mike inspires the faithful to open their pocketbooks so that the Woodland Valley Stream can continue to be stocked with those beautiful brown trout. Here are Mike's fishy tales. If you feel inclined to donate the mailing information is at the bottom of this post.

Woodland Trout 2010
An Old Fish Tale

I will relate a tale of the summertime brook, in hopes of loosening your purse strings a bit to help us stock trout in Woodland Brook, and in hopes of amusing you.

“TRUDI TICKLES A TROUT—One summer, as the water in the brook got lower and lower because of the draught, some of the boys dammed up a corner of it with rocks and made a respectable little wading pool. It was deep enough to let the kids dog paddle and an adult sit in it up to his chin and cool off. Trudi and her husband Ettore were down there one afternoon when they spotted a big trout scoot under a rock. Trudi, before she went off into the world to make her fortune, grew up along this stream, as did her daddy before her, so she knows it pretty well. And as a girl, her daddy taught her how to tickle trout and she got very good at it. To tickle a trout, you spot one under a rock or an undercut bank. Then you put your hands in the water real real slow and stroke its sides and belly. This sort of hypnotizes the fish and allows you to do what you want with it. Nowadays, if your intent is to scoop it out of the stream, take it home and eat it, you're breaking the law, so it's a practice that's pretty much fallen by the wayside.
Trudi's husband Ettore began learning to fly-fish this summer and he attacked his new hobby with high purpose and energy. I imagine the pursuit of salmo with a fly became the overriding topic of household conversation. So it was only natural that Trudi, given an opportunity, would jump at the chance to show her spouse that there are other ways to catch a trout that don't require a feathered hook. And though it had been a good forty years since she'd last mesmerized a trout, there are certain talents that simply do not leave a person. In the next few minutes, under the incredulous eyes of her fledgling fly fishing hubby, Trudi set about tickling a seventeen inch brown. She knelt down on the rock where the fish was hiding, reached under and leaned over the edge. She found the quarry. Delicately, delicately, she began to stroke its sides. The big fish began to relax, and then the whole thing fell apart. In her concentration, she'd leaned over too far, and with an," Ah shucks and be danged," on her lips she tumbled into the creek, arse over teakettle, as the valley old-timers would say. Zing went the trout upstream, and damply home trudged Trudi with Ettore.

JIM TAKES A SMOKE BREAK—About a week after this, Jim wandered down to the wading pool in the late afternoon to contemplate nature and to smoke a cigarette. He too has known the brook all his life, but seldom had he seen anything quite as bizarre as what happened next. Finishing his Camel, he tossed the still smoldering butt into the stream, having been taught as a young lad by Smokey the Bear that such an action was a fine way to prevent forest fires. From under Trudi's rock the big brown trout surged out, leapt in the air and dove upon the floating butt, thinking it was something nice to eat. As fast as he could, Jim hurried back to his cabin, The Grand Hotel, grabbed his fly rod and tackle, and returned to the site, where now two other neighbors stood—innocently contemplating nature in the late afternoon.
"Hey, watch this fellows," Jim said as he tied on a big white fly and began presenting it as artfully as he could. For the next ten minutes he floated it above the rock, beside the rock, below the rock, even under the rock. Nothing happened, and his audience began to grow restless.

There are times in each sportsman's life when the temptation to act, well, unsportsmanlike presents itself. And—let us admit it--there are those few occasions when we actually succumb to weakness. It wasn't so much that Jim wanted to catch this particular trout, as it was that he wanted to prove that it existed in the first place. For his audience was casting dispersions on his veracity and his description of the cigarette chomping brown. Well, that's not true; he did want to catch it pretty badly. So, putting down his rod he motioned the two kibitzers to wade into the water and join him next to the rock. They reached under, found that indeed the fish was there, and for the next few minutes tried as best they could to grab it and pull out from under. The trout was doing its best to resist and escape. But in the end, Homo sapiens won out over Salmo trutta.
Jim felt sorry for this fine trout—one of the bigger ones that had been stocked in the brook that spring—and decided that it should be released. But, try as they might to revive it, the poor fish kept going belly up. Apparently the rough treatment it'd received had been too much for it, and it just gave up the ghost. Women trying to tickle it one day, and nicotine and mugging the next—no trout was built to withstand that sort of abuse.
That evening he invited the audience and several other friends over to his place where he cooked that trout in the biggest cast-iron frying pan he could find in the old kitchen. The trout was so big that he had to cut its head and tail off to fit it into the pan. They feasted in candlelight around the big oak table. It was delicious, and not a scrap was left.
There's a moral to this story, surely two or three, but I leave it to you to find the one you like the best."

Now every word of what I’ve just related is true, mostly. As Huck Finn said, “I only stretched it a little, where necessary, for art’s sake.” And it is true that we need some help from you to be able to stock the Fly Fishing section of the brook, as we’ve been able to do annually since 1965. Would you please make out a check to THE WOODLAND TROUT FUND in the amount you feel the stream deserves, and send it to me—Mike O’Neil, 101 Rambling Road, Vernon, CT 06066.
Many Thanks,
Mike