By Chuck Stranahan
Angler’s Journal, 2-3-21 edition
Somehow the modern translation of that 13th century middle English poem quoted above is less than the original. The lyricism and nuances are lost. It is reduced to a statement, and loses its beauty.
Some things are like that. They’re too easy to lose by neglect, ignorance, or default: old poems and trout streams, for example.
And as I wait, every February, for the first budding of leaves and the sounds of migrating songbirds when they return, I think about such things as the beauty of spring and the beauty of old poems. I think of the beauty of trout streams, too.
I can’t enter this season without thinking of the days, long since passed, when I studied English literature in college. I was young and idealistic, in search of truth and beauty and not too concerned about how I was going to make a living. I thought I’d somehow divide my time between writing, teaching, and fishing, and in some unexpected ways that’s how it worked out.
I never thought I’d leave the field of education early to open a fly shop, but that’s what I did.
I was living in the sparsely-populated mountains of northern California. I taught in a two-room and later a four-room schoolhouse. There was great hunting and fishing at my door.
When rural school financing and my career took some sledgehammer blows from the legislature, I thought: This is where I want to live, regardless. So I opened a fly shop.
I already had some background as a fly tyer, having put myself through grad school tying flies for accounts including Orvis and Walton Powell.
As an undergrad at San Francisco State, I found some relief from the pressures of academic life at the Golden Gate Casting Club ponds in Golden Gate Park. The mentors who took me under their collective wings there shaped the sport, brought it into the modern era.
I couldn’t have carried a better legacy into my first fly shop, Hat Creek Anglers. I was already a commercial fly tyer. The friends I made at the Golden Gate Casting Ponds fished the area and gave their support. I got involved in the wild trout program on Hat Creek and learned about wild trout management.
Flash forward a few years: in 1986 I moved to Montana. 1987 was my first full season running a fly shop in the Bitterroot.
That spring there was hardly any snowpack. I was new to the area and listened with concern when the locals worried about an impending low water season.
And truth be told, that was a dismal water season. The fishery suffered. By late summer you could cross the river and get little more than ankle-deep in tepid water at Bell Crossing.
And, truth be told again, the Bitterroot wasn’t on a par with Montana’s more famous rivers.
I regretted making the move, but determined myself to make the most of it. There was much to learn, and much to do.
The first conservation project I got involved in was spearheaded by Marshall Bloom and the still-young Bitter Root Trout Unlimited. That effort resulted in regulating the flows from Painted Rocks Reservoir to meet the needs of agriculture and the river’s fishery.
The next conservation issue was protecting the river’s fishery. That was familiar territory from my time at Hat Creek. Overharvest, particularly of native cutthroats, was taking a toll. In those days a good fish from the river was a twelve-incher.
I still like the feel of a hot twelve-inch rod-bender putting up an energetic fight, but today they’re just average – at the small end of average, at that.
The fishery we enjoy today didn’t just happen. Some dedicated people brought what they could, and pulled together to work with the agencies for what we now have: one of the best fisheries in the state of Montana, and home to viable populations of native Westslope cutthroats and the endangered bull trout.
While I’m eager with anticipation for what it might bring, this spring and the coming season will not be without challenges: Will there be enough water to fish? That’s not up to us.
Will we take good care of the fishery that we have? Like the essence of an old poem, we can lose it through ignorance, default, or neglect. My hope, as we wait for the coming spring, is that we won’t. And that is up to us.
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