Limestone

Amid the glories of a Catskill spring and summer, life is a whirlwind of beauty and angling largesse, but it is in winter that my thoughts return to the gentle limestone valleys lying west of the Susquehanna.

I developed early an intense interest in difficult trout, angling in those formative years on northern Baltimore County’s Big Gunpowder Falls. The stream was intimate, her waters clear, and her wild browns, and for a time rainbows, darted restlessly to avoid the frequent human intrusions. I loved her dearly.

Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley offered something more. There flowed the little rivers of legend, holding a store of temperamental wild trout amid icons of angling history. This pastoral valley was the epicenter of the second great age of discovery in American fly fishing. I welcomed the opportunity to study in the classroom that had spawned Shenk, Koch, Fox, Marinaro and more!

The learning curve was steep, though I was fortunate to count the greats among my professors. I learned casting and tactics beside Ed Shenk and Joe Humphreys, talked flies with Ed Koch, and for two seasons travelled to the limestone streams at every opportunity. Finally, I relocated to Chambersburg after founding Falling Spring Outfitters and began to live the angling life to its fullest.

The opportunity to fish and daily observe the hallowed waters of the limestone springs enthralled and challenged me, for there were always new problems to surmount as our association grew in intimacy. An angler learns a great deal in those environs if he is receptive to Nature’s lessons, chief among them humility. I learned that both victories and defeats are wondrous moments in an angler’s life.

I found a special magic amid those gentle meadows, conscious of the presence of those who had gone before as I hovered behind clumps of waving grass, eyes searching for a rise. Summer brought forth every nuance of the hunt, with stream and meadow exploding in a rush of vegetation. How many rises were located first by hearing, then pinpointed by long study of the edges of land and water? Finding the trout’s hide was but half the battle, for each cast would then of necessity be planned and executed in intimate detail.

Those limestone trout offered a single chance for glory, and dozens for failure! A back cast tangled in the head high grasses spelled defeat immediately, so too a forward cast just inches off target. Hot, breezy days offered more opportunities for trout rising secretively to terrestrials, but increased the difficulties of a flawless, one-shot presentation tenfold. The memory of those days still excites me!

There were intimate joys not since encountered. A short, quick, perfect cast with a frail six to seven-foot rod, a Shenk Sculpin taken beneath a root ball by the rush of bright water and emerging with two feet of angry brown trout splashing in the morning light! Sight fishing to some leviathan obscured by moving cress and elodea until I was far too close to maintain composure.

I recall the magic of a summer evening, waist deep in cold water and greenery. Darkness was close at hand, and I was about to climb out and retire when I heard the whisper of a rise ahead. I could see only the bounty of weed beds along the right-hand bank, but I cast my Baby Cricket to that sound, and it was taken softly. The weed bed exploded in a boil and the tiny six-and-a-half-foot rod was quickly overmatched. Keeping the rod in a frightful curve, I battled the unseen foe toward the narrow, clear channel in midstream. He ran up current, buried in another, and I fought him back to open water again. It was all a flurry of constant motion and boiling water in the darkness! Somehow, the 5X tippet held, sawing through another pair of heavy weed beds and, when I brought him back to the channel that last time, I reached for the net. Five pounds of wild brown trout, his wet flanks sparkling in the last glow of twilight lay in the mesh, my hand shaking as it turned out the hook.

Such are the memories entwined in the magic of the limestone years.