Sedition and Pockets
Member
- Jan 2, 2020
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Winter is my favorite season for trout fishing. The tourons are snug in their big city homes in the flatlands. The tube hatch is months away. The old men are tying flies and most of the serious outdoor folks are still in hunter mode. I've been hoping for good conditions for sniping a few big fish. The weather finally got right this week (read drizzly and gross, but not too much sky water at any one time), so I made a run up to Coal Country to fish a dirty little secret of a creek in the poorest county in the United States.
A little local color. There are a lot of levels of squalor out there. The normal stuff I grew up around in the network of incorporated trailer parks in my home county. Now, mountain squalor is another level, the kind that requires a multigenerational commitment to shitting where you sleep. Coal country squalor is nth degree mountain squalor. The economic and physical conditions that Americans are living under in 2020 are fucking eye opening, if you care to look.
It's definitely time for some new wading boots. I've thoroughly roached out the current pair.
There's nothing impressive about this creek on the surface. It belies the oft-stated belief of dreamy eyed fly fishing mystics that trout don't live in ugly places. This is not wild and scenic water. It's a glorified ditch cutting through an economic apocalypse zone. Due to the vagaries of geology/soil composition (the ground doesn't perc) and political economy (coal companies are and always have been bastards), it is neither possible to install septic fields, nor is there any county-wide municipal sewer system. As a consquence, most homes simply have straight pipes that flush their sewage directly to the creek. This is the only place I fish where I ALWAYS wader up.
Fly fishing for trout and fly fishing for big trout are two only somewhat related disciplines. Targeting large fish is its own separate game. It makes greater demands of anglers. We must be willing to submit ourselves to unpleasant, often borderline unsafe conditions, frequently at times that any human would prefer to be abed. The test of skill is greater. Stealth in the approach becomes more essential. Casts must be more accurate and line handling more precise. Detailed knowledge of trout feeding and holding behavior becomes more important; large trout do not behave like run of the creek fish. Most of all, it takes a psychological commitment to the likelihood of failure. Fishing deliberately for big trout means accepting that what you're probably not going to do is catch the fish you're after. This wasn't one of those trips, though. I laid them the fuck out. My biggest obstacle was finding a way to fit fish into my normal landing net when they were longer than the net bag, so I ended up dragging around a boat net for my second sesh.
Cheers y'all!
Claire
A little local color. There are a lot of levels of squalor out there. The normal stuff I grew up around in the network of incorporated trailer parks in my home county. Now, mountain squalor is another level, the kind that requires a multigenerational commitment to shitting where you sleep. Coal country squalor is nth degree mountain squalor. The economic and physical conditions that Americans are living under in 2020 are fucking eye opening, if you care to look.
It's definitely time for some new wading boots. I've thoroughly roached out the current pair.
There's nothing impressive about this creek on the surface. It belies the oft-stated belief of dreamy eyed fly fishing mystics that trout don't live in ugly places. This is not wild and scenic water. It's a glorified ditch cutting through an economic apocalypse zone. Due to the vagaries of geology/soil composition (the ground doesn't perc) and political economy (coal companies are and always have been bastards), it is neither possible to install septic fields, nor is there any county-wide municipal sewer system. As a consquence, most homes simply have straight pipes that flush their sewage directly to the creek. This is the only place I fish where I ALWAYS wader up.
Fly fishing for trout and fly fishing for big trout are two only somewhat related disciplines. Targeting large fish is its own separate game. It makes greater demands of anglers. We must be willing to submit ourselves to unpleasant, often borderline unsafe conditions, frequently at times that any human would prefer to be abed. The test of skill is greater. Stealth in the approach becomes more essential. Casts must be more accurate and line handling more precise. Detailed knowledge of trout feeding and holding behavior becomes more important; large trout do not behave like run of the creek fish. Most of all, it takes a psychological commitment to the likelihood of failure. Fishing deliberately for big trout means accepting that what you're probably not going to do is catch the fish you're after. This wasn't one of those trips, though. I laid them the fuck out. My biggest obstacle was finding a way to fit fish into my normal landing net when they were longer than the net bag, so I ended up dragging around a boat net for my second sesh.
Cheers y'all!
Claire
