WOODLAND TROUT 2014
Guilty as Charged
Regarding Woodland Brook—were I to be brought up on the double charge of sentimentality and parochialism in the watery court of Piscatorial Correctness, I would plead Guilty as Charged. And my barrister would happily inform the court that I was not the only guilty party.
Consider the words of old John Burroughs: The trail to which we had committed ourselves led us down into Woodland Valley, a retreat which so took my eye by its fine trout brook, its superb mountain scenery, and its sweet seclusion, that I marked it for my own, and promised myself a return to it at no distant day.…the prettiest thing was the stream soliloquizing in such musical tones there amid the moss-covered rocks and boulders. How clean it looked. What purity!
Paul O’Neil weighed in with this: The hurricane and its accompanying deluge made a horrible mess of our Catskill streams; they poured down their valleys under opaque curtains of rain in roaring, muddy floods. It made a mess of my house, too. The roof leaked, and when I put pans under the drips, I was impelled to endure something very like a xylophone concert. Forced into the open by this ungodly racket, I took my rod, drove five miles to the end of the Woodland Valley road and began walking upstream under the trees. I was as wet, in five minutes, as if I had fallen into a swimming pool; but I pressed sternly on and, after two miles, came upon the splendid and gleaming phenomenon I had hoped but not actually expected to find.
Under normal conditions Woodland Valley Creek betrays itself at this high point of its valley only in little skeins and trickles of water among shadowed, mossy rocks. But now it was 10 feet wide and, since there were no clay banks to discolor the water, it ran clear as crystal. The native brook trout of the Northeast had been extinct in 95% of the Esopus system for a long time—very probably since the tanners cut the hemlocks more than a century ago. But brookies, which had somehow endured year after year in the shadowed trickles of water here, were feeding voraciously in the swollen creek. They were absolutely beautiful fish with a sheen of electric blue, white piped fins, mottled backs and crimson spotted sides. I hooked them for two hours, released all but five of the handsomest, since even a hungry man could hardly deny they had earned the right to freedom, and splashed back down through the rain feeling as though I had discovered the Mother Lode.
More recently, Betty Muehleck Love had these thoughts about our lovely stream: Woodland memories will remain with me always. The Woodland brook trout Dad caught, swimming in its cold waters, lying in the sun on large bluestone rocks to soak enough heat so I could jump back in again. Covering myself and my brother with clay, and always the sound of the water rushing over the rocks as we played during the day and as we fell asleep at night. We could hardly wait to return in the spring and hated leaving in the fall.
For me, change is one of the givens in life. Change is not good nor is it bad, it simply can be counted on to happen. It is my memories that I treasure for they are of the way it was.
It was good then. It is good now. May your first cast reap a fine reward!
It was good then. It is good now. May your first cast reap a fine reward!
And since I’ve brought all this up in the first place, let me add my own two cents:
Trout for Helen and Phil
Helen’s late husband Fred simply whistled it seemed,
And lithe browns and silvering rainbows leapt into his wicker creel.
He knew the brook better than most men know their way home.
He saw his swift upstream fly as a trout would,
And so caught many.
Phil’s clan did not angle for trout, they went down to the brook
And tickled them. Stroking their flanks and bellies softly, softly,
They gulled the fish--hypnotized them,
Heaved them up onto the bank, dispatched them quickly,
And carried them home for dinner in a burlap sack.
Sometimes when I catch a few extra, I deliver trout to one or the other,
Or both of them. There are few appetites to match Phil’s or Helen’s
Liking for this fresh-caught prize. I imagine it is not just the subtle taste
Of the flesh they savor, but the delicious memories and rare evocation
Of youth that each bite brings. There is no finer meal.
Dear reader, it can come as no surprise that there is a barb at the end of my hook—though not a painful or unexpected one I trust. So that you too might plead guilty in the matter of trout in the fly fishing stretch of Woodland Brook, I ask you to send a check made out to THE WOODLAND TROUT FUND, to Mike O’Neil, 101 Rambling Road, Vernon, CT 06066.
With your help, my fellow prisoners and I will see to it that Woodland is stocked this spring and summer with the lovely trout that you’ve come to expect.
Many thanks—
Mike
