The Northwoods Report
Fragile Miracle

Just on impulse, I turned left in Germania to avoid road construction, and found myself driving out of the village south-wards. A large yellow sign appeared: "Pavement Ends." As always, this gave me a thrill. I‘m not enough of an unrecon-structed romantic to believe this means I‘m entering an eighteenth-century wilderness populated with Seneca Indians paddling birch-bark canoes, but I always feel freer, more self-sufficient, when I see such a literal sign that I‘m leaving modern life behind. Secretly, I feel my synthetic clothing is out of place, and I should be wearing buckskin.

On this particularly Monday in May, it was chilly enough that, even in the car, I had a flannel shirt over my customary t-shirt. A stiff breeze tossed the trees, and riffled the surface of a beaver pond I was passing. I slowed to look, spotting the distinctive silhouette of a little blue heron cupping its crooked wings to land. But my subconscious had a destination in mind. It was not fishing weather, not with this wind heralding an approaching cold front, but my subconscious did not know this. Fish, it demanded.

Several promising stretches of the Germania Branch beckoned, but my soul yearned for the familiar beauty of my favorite spot on the upper Kettle. I pulled off just before the rickety wooden bridge and geared up. As I hiked down the dirt road to Jake‘s Pool, my last trip here, almost a year ago, dominated my mind: A single trout, small, thin, and parr-marked, from the "king" lie of this once-incredible pool. This shocking experience had goaded me into more active environmentalism, alerting me to how fragile my beloved Pennsylvania Wilds were. I surveyed the pool with a mixture of apprehension and appreciation. The water flowed deep, wide, and clear; Flowers dotted the grassy meadow with color; Birds sang, and a distant rumble marked a drumming grouse. But were there trout?

My favorite fly, the X-Caddis, dropped lightly on the water again and again, probing a current seam, floating along the sheer bank, briefly circling in the eddy behind a rock. Halfway up the pool, a hit! Was it a trout, or one of the chubs that had taken over trout lies in other parts of the Kettle last year? I‘d never know. I approached that ―king‖ lie, a downed tree diagonal to the current. I missed another hit right off its downstream point, then another a foot or so up the log. Finally the wind died momentarily and I dropped the fly so it drifted into the center of the log‘s face, and I hooked a trout. No yearling this time, this one was a good seven or eight inches of colorful, healthy wild brook trout. As I released her, I felt cautiously optimistic that the other hits I‘d gotten had been siblings of hers.

I fished the next pool up without incident; unless one counts dropping my flex-light in knee-deep water and getting soaked retrieving it. I fished the rest of the afternoon shivering as the wind cooled my sopping flannel shirt, but not caring in the least. Bypassing a section of creek littered with blow-downs and edged with brambles, I waded in again at K-Kamp. There I saw the only indication of other human beings since the day-old tire tracks in the private road when I hiked in: A friendly Labrador from a camp across stream was puttering around in the shallow tail of the pool, giving me a wet, doggy grin. Droplets flew from his wagging tail, but he was content to let me go my own way while he went about his own recreation.

I worked cautiously upstream. Despite the headwind, I managed to get a few casts to go where I wanted them, without disturbing this wide, still pool. I knew there were some fairly deep pockets in what looked like uniformly shallow, uninteresting water. The further upstream, the faster the water, as the bottom grew rockier and the flow was constricted by a grassy islet. I was amused for awhile by a flicker commuting between this islet and the left bank, for some reason known only to him. Was he taking the Lime Sally Stoneflies that I was seeing from time to time or the sparse Mayflies and Caddis that were also hatching?

Fish were taking them. I suddenly realized that, amidst the riffles of that wide current, there were trout noses poking out, greedily gulping the insects riding the surface. Which insects? Bless wild brook trout, they are seldom selective, and the X-Caddis is usually magic for them. It certainly was this time. I worked up that run getting one hit after another, missing most of them. The ones I hooked were mostly yearlings and two-year-olds, bright and feisty, with a salting of larger trout to give me an unexpected tussle. Each one I looked upon as a miracle, confirmation of Nature‘s marvelous ability to heal her own injuries, to bounce back from bad years and mankind‘s abuse. Each one I released with my blessing: To go forth, prosper, and multiply.

I approached the lair of my old friend Mr. Big Brookie with reverence. Certainly nothing could have harmed him in his deep, cold den. Other trout were rising upstream under the bridge, but I dismissed them, stalking the big one carefully, the wind requiring a closer approach than I liked. The cast had to be right in the current running a couple of inches from the bridge abutment, drifting drag-free above him, to tempt this wise old trout. With caution, timing, and luck, I did everything right, and he rose with a splash. Some minutes later I cradled my old friend for release: Still not much longer than a foot, but fatter than ever with colors that no artist will ever find on a palette.

How can one top that? I couldn‘t. I climbed out and headed back to my car, which was within sight of the bridge. On the way, I picked up the only litter I‘d seen all day, a glass bottle at the edge of the parking area. Away from the protection of the stream banks, I felt the full chill of the wind. I stripped off my waders, got in my car and cranked up the heater.

Upstream, Leetonia Road along the Kettle‘s headwaters was churned to a muddy mess by drillers‘ vehicles, and I dodged construction trucks, backhoes, and tank trucks of the ominous fracking fluid. The road verges were decorated with surveyor‘s flags and signs. The litter so conspicuously absent downstream was all too prevalent here. Dirt-smeared men in yellow hard-hats gazed at me as I drove past, obviously from a different world than theirs. Here the water was discolored, and the faded "Wild Brook Trout Heritage Waters" signs were an ironic reminder of just how fragile Nature and her miracles really are. After experiencing those miracles directly that day, I knew that, however hopeless the fight may seem, I will continue doing whatever I can to pre-serve Nature, to give her room to work those miracles. After all, in over a half-century of searching, I‘ve never found a purpose for life more compelling than dry fly fishing for wild brook trout.

--Rabbit Jensen--
Summer 2010 Issue