We rounded the corner at the exact same time. The dense streamside foliage kept the other person obscured until we were only about ten feet apart. Happening upon someone relatively unexpectedly, deep in the woods, wasn’t the startling facet of our interaction. That was this:
“So, have you caught anything?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I replied, “a brown up top and three rainbows on streamers.”
“No,” he stated, matter-of-factly. “You didn’t catch any rainbows.”
His accusation took me aback. Not only did I indeed catch three rainbows, but they were fat, strong, and less than a quarter mile from where we stood. In a rare turn of events, I was speechless.
I think he realized that his gruff allegation was a bit off putting. “Well, I mean, I fish here every week and I haven’t caught a rainbow in this stretch of water. Maybe old what’s-his-face stocked some in the feeder creek that runs through his yard. Or, I mean, there is always the chance that the state dumped some in. But they haven’t done that in a while… I don’t know how you caught those.”
“Me either,” I offered. “But I guess I did.”
***
Fish pop up in unexpected places. With a handful of environmental thresholds as limiting factors, fish can live in and move throughout all manner of interconnected waterways. It isn’t uncommon to see a picture of a giant bass pulled out of a subdivision pond or a big tarpon caught from a canal. Fish are as resilient as they are opportunistic.
For some reason, we think that trout ought to be the exception to the rule. Rightly, we understand that trout have a relatively narrow window for survival. That doesn’t mean that salmonids are feeble and frail. They do some uncanny things and show up where they shouldn’t.
***
I had fished this stream a dozen times. Like most mountain streams in Pennsylvania, the small creek was filled with brook trout. I would always park as high up as I could, seeking solitude. From that lot, there was only one road that crossed creek upstream. I would routinely work past that point, finding more and more brookies in smaller and smaller places.
Then one day, I found something different. A small brown trout. It passed the eye test for being stream bred. The colors, the proportions, the size all pointed to a fish that was from that spot. But how? Ambitious upstream swimming? Eggs stuck to bird feathers?
Chances are there was some human influence. I looked – there was no record of Fish & Boat Commission stocking. That doesn’t mean some random person didn’t do it. Irrespective of their intentions, this little brown trout was living in an extremely unlikely spot. And chances are he wasn’t alone.
***
Even when the particular human influence is known, it doesn’t mean that we understand what the fish are doing.
In my mid-20’s I volunteered at a fly fishing camp that was held for teenagers. As important as learning about conservation and how to become better anglers, we wanted them to catch trout. We partnered with the local trout hatchery to put hundreds of fish into the stretch of river that the kids would be on that week. For the sake of diversity, I split my order between browns and rainbows.
Both species, along with some brook trout, lived in the spring-influenced river all year. Routinely I would catch all three species in a single day. But for the camp’s budget, browns and rainbows were cheaper. So that is all I bought.
A nightly activity at camp was tallying how many fish were caught by the students each day. Some of it was about bragging, but it was also a teaching moment for the students. One year, it was a teaching moment for the adults. Hundreds of trout were stocked, a 50/50 brown and rainbow mix. The teens were catching browns left and right. It took days before the rainbow tally hit a dozen.
Why? We didn’t know. We had done the same thing year after year, and never saw this result. The fish were healthy and put where they had always been put. The water levels and temperatures were consistent. Some men went down to try to catch a rainbow, with no success. The best that the biologists had to offer was “they must moved.” Some of us joked that the hatchery sold us steelhead by mistake.
***
Fish are mysterious. Admittedly, that is some of the fun. Catching that fish there adds a level of fascination on top of the baseline joy that catching a fish brings. But the thing about mysteries is that there is an explanation. The explanation might be lost to us by time or secrecy – but there is always an explanation. It adds to the wonder and the intrigue of the already enigmatic underwater world.
Sometimes the best we can do is enjoy it, even if we don’t understand why we caught what we did.
Creeks are like roadways connecting waterways in a dizzying manner. I’ve caught fish in places where those type shouldn’t have been. It’s a mystery until you look at a topography of an area. Blue lines dotting across a wild landscape in the middle of nowhere. Well, nowhere is somewhere to me and other like anglers. Its often home to me and the life that inhabit mountains with deep ravines and rutted dirt tracks. A little mud on the tire and some dust on the bottle help sooth this anglers soul. Perhaps someday we will cross paths while fishing those brooks. Perhaps..
Perhaps, indeed. Finding people on the water is more surprising than fish, though!
Enjoy your blog. Always something interesting to read here. I pretty much fish for brookies exclusively in SNP and GWNF here in Va. That’s just what I love to do. There’s nothing that irks me more than VDGIF stocking non-native rainbows and browns over top an existing native population of brook trout in streams in the GWNF. It just doesn’t seem right to me. Especially if a purely native stream feeds into the stocked stream. I’ve found browns and rainbows far up the native stream where they’ve migrated from the stocked stream. I understand VDGIF is providing sporting opportunities for all fishermen, and it’s a money making venture through the sale of trout licenses, but in the interest of preserving Virginia’s only native fish, one would think that takes precedence.
Hi Dino, thanks for the input.
That is something that every entity which stocks trout needs to consider. Native trout might not exist in stream A, but stream B could have a lot of influence from stream A throughout the year.