17 Years

"What's up dog, want some coffee?" Levi whispered as I entered the kitchen, a little groggy but full of anticipation none-the less. "Morning, sure, thanks," I whispered back. "Hell yeah," he replied, "How stoked are you?"

"Pretty stoked."

When the cicadas last came to Central Pennsylvania, I was 11 years old. I'll be 45 when the come back next. That's a lot of time elapsed, and a lot changes. I hadn't yet picked up a fly rod in 2008, in 2042 who knows what life will be like. This year the bugs came again on their cycle and my silly addicted ass trucked it westward thrice, chasing a sickness so good it can't be beat. I've raved about the periodical cicadas before; in 2021 when I intercepted the periodicity in Maryland, and last year when a dual emergence took me to Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa. When magicicadas come out of the ground, I want to be there. They make up one of the last great biomass events of the sort here in the US, and while many were constant, like the buffalo, and some were annual migrations, like the passenger pigeon, there's something extra special and enchanting about an event that occurs more than a decade apart each time. It is miraculous that we still have these bugs at all, the landscape they live under is different every time the nymphs come up. That they still come up from one of the best regions for wild trout fishing East of the Mississippi... How lucky is that? Though, I suppose the same factors that have allowed the cicadas to persist have not been insignificant in providing habitat advantages for the wild trout either. 

Levi and I stepped out into the humid, warm morning air about ten minutes later with a little bit of our gear and a lot of hope for the day. "Hold on, before we go we gotta move the bugs", I said. We were staying at Levi's good friend's, Paul and Kathryn, and they were going to take down a tree in their backyard that day. It was time for a quick rescue mission. We walked over with our phone flashlights on to see dozens of pale, ghostly looking imagos and instars on the tree trunk and low branches. We collected as many as we could and moved them to nearby bushes. When periodical cicadas first emerge they come out of the ground through simple little holes, or sometimes, through turrets of soil that poke up above the ground, small towers of their own design that are made pre-emergence in wet areas in what is presumed to be a bid to keep mud and water from getting into their holes before the emerge. Those final instar nymphs climb out and go for the closest tree or bush, shed their nymphal shuck into imagos- the last, adult stage of their life cycle -and like many emerging insects, take a little while to harden up and get ready to go about their business. They'll go from pale and soft to firm, glistening, black and orange bugs, maintaining deep red eyes through the process. We shuttled as many as we could to safety before hopping in the car to head to the river. 

Central Pennsylvania holds fond memories for both Levi and I, though mine are more limited in number and a tad more recent. Levi fished trout in the limestone region the last time the cicadas came out in 2008, I first fished the area with my good friend Michael Carl in 2018. I've since returned a handful of times to poke into places I'd fished that first time, and a few new ones. Much of Pennsylvania is still Bucolic and beautiful, with sparse populations and varied terrain. Here, the Appalachians  form a series of arching, near parallel ridges. These start near Meyersdale, and you cross or cut through about a dozen spines headed East towards Chambersburg which sits in a wide lowland with rolling hills and the classic carts topography associated with limestone. East of Chambersburg is a less defined but similarly arching range of hills, encompassing Michaux State Forest and extending, broken by the Susquehanna, almost all the way to Reading. Throughout the main crux of the ridges to the west and north are smaller versions of the same sort of lowlands that Chambersburg and Carlisle sit in, each pocked with farmland and hugged on either side by tall ridges. In many of those low areas between the ridges is where the limestoners or limestone influenced creeks live, though each audaciously cuts through the ridges at some point on their journeys toward the Susquehanna, some more defiantly than others. The Little Juniata scrapes starkly through the ridge above Barree, Fishing Creek winds tightly under the steep topography on her way toward Lamar. And then Spring Creek, toward the apex of the curve of the ridges, gently wanders through a less strip of rock between Bellefonte and Milesburg. The millennia that allowed these streams to eat through these seemingly immovable stone ridges is too substantial for our simple human minds to fully grasp. It inspires aww though, when you stop and look at the landscape for a moment. 

Though not as diverse as the southern end of Appalachia, which boast the highest diversity of salamanders in the world and the largest of freshwater fish in the country, these Pennsylvania ridges aren't lacking in life. It's no surprise given that large swaths of this land are still very wild. Though logging has occurred for decades, as well as that farming down low and a slow hum of building in some towns, much of this place is still rugged. The terrain is gnarly and thick, and one can get lost if the try. This is the one of the last places in the country that still allows hunting of timber rattlesnakes, albeit in very limited and regulated form. Indeed they're quite stable here... still, I'd love to see this archaic hunt done away with. Why mess with one of the last best places this species has as a stronghold? Up on those high ridges though, we weren't hearing many cicadas. It was early though, as evidenced by the nymphs crawling out of the ground en masse that morning. We'd need to find an area where the bugs had already been out and flying for a while. Soil temperature has everything to do with emergence timing, and some places warm faster than others. We were committed though, and with windows open and ears trained to a familiar buzz, it didn't take long to find what we were looking for. 

"Mark says the shops the guys at the shop basically told him the fish aren't on them yet and not to waste his time fishing cicadas" Levi reported as we drove between spots. "Oh yeah, it's not worth it at all yet" I retorted snidely and we both laughed. We'd just had exactly the sort of fishing we'd driven over five hours for. Not size, albeit, but numbers? Whoa did we ever have that. And we'd had it to ourselves too, leap frogging up a piece of water neither of us had fished in years with not a soul in sight. Just brown trout sucking down big bugs without consequence... until our hooks pierced their lips. It was... absurd? Deranged? What dreams are made of? All of the above. When I fished Brood X in 2021, I got a modest taste of what trout fishing the periodicals could be, with a couple absurdly fat and happy wild brown trout. This was a more complete picture, as good as you hear it is. We traded remarks and shook our heads in disbelief each time we leap frogged, both reveling in the success of timing things well enough not only to have good fishing, but beat the masses. And, so long as the shops were still downplaying things, it felt like we had good chances to find pockets of stellar fishing throughout the trip. 

Where we were for that first pound-down wasn't a big fish location, but that didn't matter. Having trout come out of every riffle and pocket to hammer our big foam dry flies was thrilling. You can certainly work through similar water with similar flies- especially early in the morning and at times when some golden stoneflies or hoppers are present, or even if there's a modest number of annual cicadas -and pick up a few fish. This wasn't that. This was interacting with possibly as much as a quarter of the trout biomass of the stretch we fished and catching a disproportionate chunk of it. The fish were giddy. I had more than one nice fish (for this place that was 13-14") charge straight upstream a foot or more in fast shallow riffles to eat my fly. This was the dream. 

We were on our way to another spot on the same creek when we received that report from Mark, a stretch I'd fished before and done well with wild rainbows and some browns. The sound out the window as we closed in on our destination and the empty pull off when we got there said we were going to step in it again. 

The storied history of trout fishing in the area of State College is an interesting one, and though many eastern trout anglers may know bits and pieces of the story I think a lot of it has been glossed over. Spring Creek has one of the more distinct histories of course. Many may be aware that Spring Creek was a brook trout dominated fishery into the end of the 1800's, when introduced brown trout began to supplant the native char. By 1950 a native trout in Spring Creek's main stem was a rare occurrence. The origins of some of the rainbow trout that exist in the now mostly un-stocked stream remain a bit controversial, though I'd argue on behalf of some being stream born given the alkalinity, relative temperature stability, and shear perfectness of both par and adults of some specimens. of course, hatchery escapees from Benner Springs and Fisherman's Paradise, and stocked fish moving up from Bald Eagle creek contribute. Anyone who wants to can see the results of this in a tiny stretch right in Bellefonte, where you can pay a quarter or two for some pellets from a dispenser and toss them into a short, closed-to-fishing stretch where trout bigger than some of the carp present in the same spot will greedily take whatever you give them. Levi, Paul and I stood on the wall in Bellefonte one day, tossing leftover french fries and watching giant trout eat them. Those fish aren't Spring Creek's calling card though. If you've heard of the place but never been, your familiarity may start and end with the existence of the famed Fisherman's Paradise section. This piece of water was bought by the state Fish Commission in 1930 for construction of a hatchery and to demonstrate and test new stream improvement methods¹. A hatchery was built four years later. With heavy stocking and stream improvement that are now known in some cases to improve fishing more so that fishery health, the place soon boomed in popularity with anglers. The regulations then imposed ended up being quite unprecedented, and even in today's ecosystem might be though of as incredibly strict. Fishing was restricted to May through July, barbless flies were enforced, wading was prohibited, and there was a small and finite number of visits you could make. Even though some of the stricter regulations haven't carried over to present day, the popularity rivals the present day. More than 44,000 angler trips were registered in 1952. Photos from that era reflect this, with a parking lot jam full and anglers standing shoulder to shoulder on the banks of a Spring Creek that looks so different today it may as well be a different river entirely. 

In 1982, triggered by kepone and mirex contamination, the commission stopped stocking trout in Spring Creek and enforced no-harvest regulations. In turn, the wild trout population, brown trout specifically, absolutely exploded. It has been said that there have been as many as 3,000 trout per mile in Spring Creek, making it very high on (if not at the top) of the list of most densely trout populated streams in the Eastern United States. That population density has changed with time, of course, having apparently increased until 2000 and being on a downward trend since. That downward trend is likely tied to development in the watershed, and PFBC notes as much:

"In other watersheds, impervious surface area has been used as a good surrogate of urban development; when imperviousness reached 7-11%, trout populations were lost. The Spring Creek watershed had 12% impervious cover in 1995, and in the upper one-half of the watershed, impervious cover was 19%. We suggest that the reason Spring Creek is still able to sustain wild trout with this degree of urbanization is the relatively large input of groundwater into the stream. Further development that increases impervious cover, reduces groundwater recharge, or both, will certainly increase the stress on Spring Creek and reduce its ability to support wild trout."²

As development continues in the area around State College, and as climate change continues, its hard to say what the future holds for Spring Creek. What remains abundantly clear to me is that it, and even some of the more marginal trout streams in Central Pennsylvania, make even the best places we have in Connecticut look like a joke. Part of that is the nature of limestone, but part of it is an indictment on what building can do. Connecticut and our rapidly dying coldwater fisheries should be a good example of what NOT to do if you want to keep strong wild trout fisheries around when it comes to development, road salt use, lack of riparian protection, over-stocking, on and on and on. 

One thing Connecticut doesn't fail with is common carp. Europe's most popular "course" fish is highly abundant in the state and isn't going anywhere. Recently, after a number of fish had been caught over the years that could have cracked the former record, someone finally clocked one over fifty pounds. Well over, in fact. At over 58 pounds, Norbert Samok's record fish is a significant achievement. Of course, Pennsylvania has carp too. The state record was caught in 1962 by an angler named George Brown. The fish weighed 52 pounds... ha! We've got you beat there, PA. I can't gloat too much though, because instead of getting the chance to fish periodical cicada eating carp, I can't really wait around in Connecticut. It turned out Pennsylvania was going to give me a challenge too, though. 

Levi and I met Mark Hoffman in Boalsburg on our second morning for our first serving of warm water cicada mania. Haze clung to the hills as the light came up, that sort of low morning humidity that suggested a very hot day was incoming. We hopped in with Mark and headed toward a place where carp, overhanging trees, deep lake shore, and periodical cicadas all overlapped. Surface disturbance was visible as we crossed a bridge over the lake on the way in. There was heavy calling as we pulled into the launch. Anticipation was high, especially for me. I know this game a little bit, I've caught some carp on cicadas. But something was going on at the ramp that put a more than slight kink in the plan. The back cove was all muddy, and in various spots on both the near and far side there was a ruckus going on. Splashing, crashing, tail slapping, jumping... these carp were busy humping, not eating cicadas. The thing with the carp spawn is that it can kind of happen any time the water gets warm. I've seen carp spawn as early as April 10th and as late as September 3rd. Sometimes that's just a few pods of fish and plenty are still happily and busily feeding away. This wasn't that, though. We motored all over the lake and for the most part found nothing but carp making more carp. It got hotter and hotter as the day went on, and though I picked up some largemouth on cicada patterns and Levi ran a little chartreuse bugger and put a smackdown on white crappie, this wasn't what we hoped for. 

As the heat became more and more oppressive, frustration boiled over. We bailed, sweaty and ready for lunch. It wouldn't be for a couple days, right as our trip came to an end in fact, that we got a shot at the carp again. We met Mark at the same launch, just hours to spare before we needed to hit the road. This time there was no thrashing and crashing on that far bank. The carp should be feeding now, of that I was fairly confident. The most confident, in fact, as the previous attempt had shaken Levi's. In fact it had taken a bit to convince him that this could be worthwhile. We motored out of the launch and rounded the corner, travelling down the shoreline where cicadas were calling their little tymbals off. It wasn't long before I saw it: a carp tipped the wrong way, with it's head up and its tail down, orange lips at the surface, sucking down one of the bugs that had so haplessly bumbled onto the lake surface. The were here....

They weren't easy though, and we weren't the only ones on the water. A few other boats were out with fly rods, all working the banks looking for targets. Any pressure can complicate things, especially with carp. These are sensitive, shy fish. Before we found a couple willing carps, Levi managed to catch one of the nicer largemouth bass I've seen in a while. Getting big bucketmouths on cicadas isn't a bummer at all. 

Largemouth bass are America's favorite gamefish. An estimated 16 billion dollars a year is spent on bass fishing. To put that in perspective, the estimated annual market for fly fishing in the US is 750 million dollars. The people love bass, enough so that they've been moved here and there and everywhere. Where we were, just one watershed divide separated us from the native range of the northern bass, but we were fishing to non-native fish where we were. Given their widespread introduction and infusion in the fishing culture, many anglers don't realize when bass aren't native where they fish. In Connecticut, neither smallmouth nor largemouth bass were present historically, and that information is relatively available to anyone who cares to look. That said, it isn't hard at all to find anglers who insist that they are a native fish. Aa great many angler believe a great many things to be true that just aren't though, that is a reality that no longer surprises me. I just roll my eyes with my lips pursed in a tight, straight line and repeat the same statements again-- "actually, the only larger native freshwater predator species in Connecticut were chain pickerel, brown bullhead, and brook trout...." It's remarkable how much of our fisheries are made up of introduced species. In much of the northeast, we're looking at as much as, even more half of the popular target species. Even somewhere like Maine, where landlocked salmon and lake trout did exist naturally, they've been scattered about in all sorts of places they never were before. We think of fishing as a way to be in nature, failing frequently to realize that what we fish isn't actually natural. 

Even the lake we were on wasn't natural. In fact, large natural lakes are essentially non-existent in Pennsylvania. The largest natural lake in the state is Conneaut, in Crawford County. At just 243 acres, it is a piddly body of water compared to the Pymatuning Reservoir just miles away, and even it wasn't immune to human alteration. In 1834 connection to the French Creek canal raised the lake by 11 feet. The geology in Pennsylvania just doesn't make big lakes, unless you count Erie, of course. I wonder how the fishing was in the river that made this reservoir we were fishing before the dam went up, and I wondered how many more cicadas there'd been before the land they lived under was flooded. What fish would I have caught here in 1685, just 20 emergence cycles ago. Would I have been catching 20 inch fallfish here? Giant brook trout? How many billions more cicadas must there have been?

What was is now gone, and there's little left to do but find a carp, put a piece of foam in front of it, and not set the hook too early. 

¹ Tom Burrell, The Express. Dec 14 2024 The Evolution of Fisherman's Paradise

² Carline, R. F., R. L. Dunlap, J. E. Detar, and B. A. Hollender. 2011. The fishery of Spring Creek – a watershed under siege. Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, Technical Report Number 1, Harrisburg, PA.

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Diquat Madness & The Proliferation of Fear-Based Rhetoric

 In April 2024, while pulling my canoe after a mostly unsuccessful day, I ran into a few environmental scientists that were curious about water levels and asked if I'd been out a lot recently. "We take it the river has fallen a lot over the last week," one posited. "Oh yeah," I replied, "quite a few feet". "Yeah, we're not always used to seeing the species we're surveying for six feet up in the trees." he said. These scientists were from a team working with the Army Corps of Engineers, and the species they were surveying for was a highly invasive aquatic plant called hydrilla. Hydrilla's presence in the Connecticut river is relatively new, with first confirmation coming in 2016 in Glastonbury. It is especially noxious, because any time a piece is broken off, it can sprout new roots and make a new plant. This makes it uniquely hard to control as manual removal is not longer an option once density reaches full blown infestation. Control is important, both ecologically and socially, because hydrilla is so prone to rapid spread that it has significant negative impacts on water quality, fish, native aquatic plants, and outdoor recreation like boating and swimming. So control in some form or function is paramount. And this crew was doing preliminary study for herbicide treatment. Work has been done for a number of years studying both the plant itself, monitoring it's spread, and testing possible methods of mitigation and control. This new project sought to determine the efficacy of herbicidal treatments, and the water body I was leaving was to be one of the first test sites on the first year. One of the herbicides in question is called Diquat, and though it's use and application at one site went without major public backlash in 2024, the same cannot be said for 2025. 

FOX61 interviewed protesters they described as "environmental activists" at the state capital as they voiced their concerns on the use of Diquat. One of those interviewed was Selina Rifkin, whose sentiment isn't an uncommon one currently "Spraying horrible chemicals that kill everything into our lakes and rivers. It isn't necessary." A Change.org petition headed by a photo of a handful of dead, floating fish, evidently European species- it looked like crucian and barbel to me -got the messengers point across. Diquat is going to kill everything, these folks firmly believe that. If this were true, there'd certainly be reason to protest it. How could the Army Corps so brazenly poison our waters, and why would CT DEEP sign off on it? 

Way back before I ever put pen to paper about fishing, or knew almost anything at all, my best friend and I dumped a bucket of Diquat is his farm pond. I kid you not, I have real world experience with this poison that kills everything. Young, dumb, and frustrated with summer weeds making it hard to fish the pond the way we wanted to, we sought weed control as a way to better our fishing. His dad got is a big ol' container of Diquat. We read the directions, didn't wear any safety gear of any sort, and did our best to distribute the whole jug's worth across the tiny bass pond. Memory serves me that it did kill off a fair bit of the heavy vegetation, and to our untrained young eyes, nothing else. There certainly was no fish kill, the pond still to this day is loaded with bass, sunfish, bullheads, and all of the wonderful creepy crawlies that those fish eat. We also didn't die, despite definitively doing it all wrong. Hearing and reading a lot of comments about this same herbicide "killing everything" seemed a tad strange. Of course, my experience is anecdotal at best, though perhaps of higher value than much of the commentary currently circulating because at least I have some actual first hand experience... but that isn't enough, not for me. So let's dig into everything we can, shall we? Let's start with the basics. How does this Diquat stuff work?

Diquat is short for diquat dibromide, or 6,7-dihydrodipyrido (1,2-a:2',1'-c) pyrazinediium dibromide. Now that sounds scary... but I'm not a chemist, and if it sounds scary so might this: β-D-galactopyranosyl-(1→4)-D-glucose. That's lactose, that's in natural milk... not scary at all, you just aren't a chemist, most likely. Chemicals always sound scary if you aren't hugely familiar with chemistry and reading chemical formulas. That's fine, neither am I, but we're going to have get a little cozy with chemistry here to understand what 6,7-dihydrodipyrido (1,2-a:2',1'-c) pyrazinediium dibromide does. Basically, it binds to photosynthesizing cells and inhibits that key processes of plant function- turning sunlight into energy. The chemical accepts electrons from Photosystem I, one of a plant cell's two photosynthetic systems. That electron is used to create a reactive oxygen species (ROS), which damages the cell and prevents NADPH and ATP production by that cell. NADPH helps make glucose, lipids, and nucleic acid, and ATP provides energy. It also destroys the cell membrane. Without these things, the cell dies. And when all of an aquatic plant's photosynthesizing cells die, it dies. That's how Diquat kills hydrilla and other plants. It than binds with particles of soil and sediment, usually leaving the water column free of detectable levels within a day or two, though it remains undegraded in sediment indefinitely.¹ Diquat is also used as a desiccant on potato crops and some seed crops used for feed. A desiccant, if you aren't familiar, is something used to dry things out or keep them dry. 

It is entirely reasonable to have concerns about how a chemical compound that completely kills a photosynthetic cell might effect other cells, including ours and the species we care about. This is especially true given that Diquat is banned by many countries and the European Union (many of the people I've seen bringing that point up are also the sort to suggest that the European Union is an overbearing, freedom less hell-scape, so that comes off as a little rich. Sorry, I call it like I see it... you can't have this both ways). Let's start with humans, since we tend to be a selfish lot....

A 63 year old landscaper in Florida admitted himself to the hospital about 90 minutes after drinking a gulp of herbicide from a Gatorade bottle. He would die soon after from multi organ failure. The medical professionals involved in his case did a brief case study highlighting it, as well as the need for further study on diquat poisoning. It doesn't read pleasantly. Upon admission, he was having uncontrollable urination, diarrhea and gastric emesis. By his fourth and final day is the hospital, effects had reached his brain. "On day four of hospitalization, the patient was noted to have new onset dilated pupils and was taken to receive a CT scan of his brain, which showed diffuse cerebral edema and toxic encephalopathy with cerebellar tonsillar herniation and mild hydrocephalus." ² Basically, in the body, the ROS previously mentioned makes hydrogen peroxide. Normally the body detoxifies hydrogen peroxide, but this reaction from the Diquat cycles over and over, overwhelming any chance of that. The case study notes that Diquat poisoning is quite rare, hence the need for further study it sites only 30 cases from 1969 to 1999 with a 43% mortality rate. It also sites that nearly all similar cases in which more than 12 grams of Diquat were consumed result in death within a few days. The same ROS that causes a photosynthetic cell to die leads to multi organ failure. Scared now? It's important to consider concentration. Of course, drinking a full gulp an herbicide that makes a reactive oxygen species and spurs cellular havoc is a potentially deadly proposition. So far no study I can find indicates health risks from exposure to a water body treated with diquat within just a few days of treatment, and that comes down to Diquat's affinity for organic molecules. After dispersion in a water body, it binds with with plant cells it kills, but also with tons of organic particles in the water column and in the sediment on the bottom. It becomes a more or less inert there, no longer present in the water column and allowing aquatic plants (hopefully the native ones, replacing the invasives killed by the diquat) to grow unabated. This is what I watched happen in that pond all those years ago. There was no noticeable evidence of a herbicide in the water just a short time after treatment. Sunlight also degrades diquat based on numerous studies, one citing a photodecomposition half-life of 1.6 weeks.³ So, without too much time passing, the science says there shouldn't be much to worry about so far as swimming, contact with the water, or consuming fish goes. Diquat is dispersed at low concentrations compared to the fatal dose and is largely undetectable in just days. It isn't recommended to drink water treated with diquat within three days, but, speaking as someone on and around it all the time, you don't want to drink from these Connecticut River backwaters anyway. It might kill you on a good day, Diquat or not. 

Onto other species... that Wisconsin DNR fact sheet makes mention of study on fish, all very Wisconsin. Walleye showed signs of poisoning when contained in diquat treated water, other game and panfish did not. Some fish kills have been recorded in diquat treated waters, especially small ponds. This is most likely a result of oxygenation, as rapid vegetation death and decomposition can use a lot of dissolved oxygen. This shouldn't be a significant problem in the Connecticut, where tides cause a significant amount of water exchange day in and day out. The bigger problem comes with macroinvertebrates, which are indeed vitally important. The same fact sheet states "...certain species of important aquatic food chain organisms such as amphipods and Daphnia (water fleas) can be adversely affected at label application rates." The Army Corps project isn't dismissive of the potential impacts on wildlife, as anyone who cares to sit and read available drafts and proposals for this project can find. Pretty plainly though, labeling Diquat a "poison that kills everything" is more than misleading... its just plain wrong. There is validity for concern with both human and environmental impacts, but most of the posts making the rounds on social media lack rigorous research, citations, or anything that would make them trustworthy. And that's just where the problems start. 

That same environmental activist interview by FOX61 than I mentioned earlier, Selina Rifkin, later on said "There could have been an educational campaign about what this is. There could have been a call for volunteers to pull it out by hand. There could have been some kind of examination of the other possibilities for getting rid of it is, this is, this is a financial option, and it's the easy solution." This is the point where I must admit, I get a little bit pissed off and say... are you kidding me? Every single thing she lists there has been done already, it takes just seconds to find that it has been done, and if anyone actually cares one iota about this issue these words wouldn't leave their mouth. There's a sign at just aviation every launch and put in on the lower Connecticut that tells me what Hydrilla is, how to prevent the spread, and has a nice little picture of what it looks like. The education is there. The Connecticut River Conservancy regularly holds manual water chestnuts pulls funded in part by grant money from the state's AIS program... I've already written about that. The volunteer effort is available. Information on why manual removal can in fact worsen hydrilla is immediately readily available with a Google search. Manual removal alone will not work. And this entire Army Corps hydrilla project has been about finding the best option to control the hydrilla through multiple means (read here). CT DEEP has also been exploring management options since at least 2021. In hours of research prior to and while working on this cursed blog post that I shouldn't have to write, I found source after source after source that partially or wholly refutes every argument being made by the Jonny-come-lately diquat protestors. We are a lazy, triggerable, reactive society that absolutely fails to find the forest through the trees time and time again. I'm not even here to say there isn't some merit to suggesting diquat shouldn't be used, I'm not convinced that it will be an effective treatment on its own. But it also doesn't take much research to make sense of this Army Corps project, why it's underway, and why they're using Diquat on a limited number of waters. Unfortunately, if you've made it this far, I doubt you're the sort that is causing this outrage. If you are though, thank you for sticking around. Please, go to your next argument, make your next comment, attend your next protest, or donate to your next cause armed with legitimate arguments instead of reactionary social media posts. Spend some time researching the topic with actual doctors, scientific papers, and as many different sources as possible. 

Media (both social and mainstream news) failed us on this one, as it has in the past and will continue to in the future. Facebook and Instagram made it easy for people to pass along inaccurate posts. FOX61 and others did a poor job of pointing out inaccuracies in the demonstrator's statements. A petition circled with a blatantly fear-mongering header image, with thousands of signatures and counting. I'm sick and tired of this; if all of these people could have put this energy and effort into being informed and taking action on invasive species, there'd be no need at all to apply herbicide on the Connecticut River. But here we are, fighting a government that's desperately trying to undue the problems we cause, then complain about, then complain about the potential solutions to, then complain about the cost of. It's all very tiring. I have very little hope anymore, but if so many as one person walks away from reading this less inclined to hop on the disinformation train, I guess I've done my part. Read as is spoken through clenched teeth while smashing my mouse to smithereens against my desk: Now its time for me to go clean, drain, and dry the canoe after another day of pulling water chestnuts on the big river, trying to beat a problem that could one day hit me right in the wallet the same way hydrilla has been.

Currently, the Diquat treatment has been postponed till 2026, reportedly for funding issues. 

¹ Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 2012. Diquat Chemical Fact Sheet, 

² Daniel M Aloise, Adam Memon, Ana Zaldiver. 2022.  Diquat Herbicide Organophosphate Poisoning and Multi-Organ Failure: A Case Report

³ Smith, A.E. and Grove, J. 1969. Photochemical degradation of diquat in dilute aqueous solution and on silica gel. J. Agric Food Chem. 17:609-613.

More: https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Portals/74/docs/Topics/CTRiver/Images/Fact%20Sheets%20-%20updated/FACTSHEET-CTRiverHydrilla-ExecutiveSummary-May2023.pdf

https://www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/Projects-Topics/Connecticut-River-Hydrilla/

FOX61 Article: https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/hartford-county/hartford/protestors-voice-concerns-over-diquat-use-in-rivers-lakes-connecticut/520-e3bc1018-b506-4f04-9795-f1c8b9d91079

Video overview of Florida landscaper case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmu48JYFTBc

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, Javier, Ryan and Dar for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Here Be Carp

From the hotel room I could hear two young anglers chatting with one of the hotel guests on the back deck. These kids were local, not guests at the hotel, but somehow in suburban Michigan I'd stepped into a prior time and these kids were biking in and fishing without getting kicked out. That doesn't happen much in Connecticut anymore, and not just because I'm not a kid anymore (debatably, I'm still plenty immature), but I'd doubt my best friend Dalton and I could have biked to such a place when we were 14 or 15 years old and not gotten the boot if such a thing existed in Connecticut. He and I did trespass a lot, often cautiously, and we still got kicked out sometimes. There was something refreshing about these kids being at least tacitly permitted on the premises of a lakeside hotel. It felt like a whisper of a former time. There was also something refreshing about these kids targeting carp. That's what they were talking about, as I listened through the all-too-sound-permeable wall. And the adult guest was poo-pooing it. "Carp? why not fish for something that actually pulls? Those are just big soggy lumps". I snorted, probably loudly enough for them to hear me. Tell me you've never carp fished without telling me you've never carp fished. They can be accused of more than a few negative characteristics, but not pulling isn't one. Of course I've had a few dullards on the end of my line, but on the whole... they pull and they pull well. And since I hadn't seen these carp yet nor anticipated their presence in the crystal clear, 90 foot deep private lake, I glanced at my prototype Atlas 4wt in the corner and smirked. It was going to get hurt, now that I had this piece of information. 

The carp's introduction to North America is one spans back a couple centuries. Though they are still broadly looked down upon today, as evidenced by that other hotel guest, they weren't always. In fact they're so ubiquitous today because they held thousands of years of history as food, sport, and ornament in Europe in Asia. Another hotel guest, Dan, told me about the large koi found in some high mountain lakes in his native California and how they'd been brought there by Chinese railroad workers during the gold rush. That's just a piece of the puzzle though, as both amur carp (koi), and more often common carp, were being brought into the US and cultivated by enterprising individuals in hopes of providing food for the masses. Inevitably, they got around. Nary a state in this union lacks common carp, withstanding Florida which, contrary to the belief of many that carp like it hot, is too warm for too much of the year to have robust and sustaining populations. And evidently these wild carp lacked the flavor and appeal that cultivated ones had, and coupled with the rapidly deteriorating quality of many water bodies across the country due to industrialization, carp fell out of favor. Not only did they fall out of favor, but their ability to survive what we wrought on native species resulted in a general disdain and even blame, and that eventually grew into a distaste and disdain to even native species that resemble the carp. The American reaction to the invasive nature of common carp was so severe it caused many to look down on fish like buffalo and redhorse that share commonalities. Though the cult of carp that I've profited from has begun to turn the tide a little on the dislike of the species, the general displeasure is still there. I've meet plenty that cringe or wince when I say I guide for carp, though many of those are casual anglers or not anglers at all. I discourage moving carp around and in some cases even encourage their removal, they don't belong here and aren't ecologically beneficial... but that certainly doesn't dismiss their value as angling sport, and I feel increasingly less bad about stabbing non-natives in the face for fun and more bad about bothering the more incumbered natives. 

In many of the places I fish in Connecticut, the water is shallow and turbid, indeed in part because of the carp. That contrasted in many ways from this lake, which was clear as can be. The bottom was sand and gravel though, which doesn't lend to turbidity. The lake was a  kettle lake that had been enlarged by a small dam. Apparently it exceeded 90 feet in depth. That  would be astounding for a lake of similar size in Connecticut, especially given the flat landscape. This was a classic kettle lake, which we do have in Connecticut though none that I know of are quite like this. These a relic of the glaciers, where large chunks of ice remained as the glacier retreated. Imbedded in deep sediment, these pieces took a long time to melt and left large depressions when they finally did. They're one of the more obvious evidences of the glacial history on this landscape, though perhaps less dramatic than remnants I'd see after leaving Michigan. On Kelley's Island in Lake Erie, the glaciers left incredible gouges in Devonian limestone. 

The water around Kelley's Island was just as clear as that little kettle lake, but there were carp out there too, I'm told. And that is no surprise. Before gawking at the glacial grooves I was watching small carp thrash the shallows of marshes in Erie County, with terns wheeling overhead making it sound like home on long Island sound, limestone causeways and canals making it look like Florida, and the carp.... I don't know what the carp made it feel like, other than that I was being followed by them. I couldn't stay away if I tried. The frothed the shallows of the marshland to a soupy brown mess. That's the turbidity I'm used to. But back in Michigan, with a little bit of waiting, I was watching fish feed in seven feet of water thirty feet away. 

The clarity wasn't all that differed from home. These carp, I'd learn, weren't fans of seeing the fly on the fall. I almost need to see it drop through the murk, but these ones would spook from it. After a few blown opportunities that resulted in fish taking of at speed as thy spotted a sinking yellow sucker spawn fly, I opted to fish an almost bait-like tactic. A cast was made a cast when fish were still 15 or more feet away. Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. 

Though I generally chose to fish a fly, I think this spot-and stalk strategy with bait or artificial is equally exhilarating. When you can see the carp and watch her movements, drawing nearer or retreating from your hook, suspense builds. Especially when she is a really big one. I watch, my heart beating more and more loudly as she works ever closer to my little yellow fly. The water is so clear that I can see her eyes and barbels working as she forages, seeking out anything that might be calorically beneficial- something my fly certainly isn't, but I could hope it would catch her eye. I dare not move a muscle as she got within six inches of the fly. She dipped and tucked into a little patch of detritus next to a rock, mouth working hard and pectoral fins waving to push her into the good stuff. That waving action swirled the water near my fly and it's lightness allowed it to tumble a couple of inches in a little whirlpool. Her left eye turned down and I could have sworn she looked right at the fly. And she probably did, because she left what she'd been digging at and with flared lips pressed right down on the fly. I waited for her mouth to close and lifted the four weight only lightly. The heavy creature responded with violence and speed, running no less tan 140 yards down the lake (Soggy lump my butt). It was then my task for the next ten minutes to subdue a creature well over 20 pounds on a rod made to catch small trout, a job it was evidentially up for despite that intent. 

Though that trip was in part a fishing break for me- believe it or not I do want to do other things more than angling -it is impossible to say no when a freshwater fish that size wanders in front of me. Yet many people do still scoff and say no, and that I'll just never understand.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

My Search For a Connecticut Moose (Pt. 2)

Opening up a game camera, turning it on, and hitting replay comes with quite a feeling of anticipation, especially when the goal it to capture a rare animal and you know one had walked through the area a time or two just before you places the camera. But that anticipation is frequently followed by minor disappointment- or at least it is for me, since I have no idea what I'm doing. My first camera pull revealed only the most elusive of animals... a half dozen shots of grey squirrels. Award winning, without a doubt. 

He's there, in the bottom left. Just peaking, seemingly aware of the camera. I won't lie it took a bit for me to figure out what had triggered the camera. And I should really re-set the date and time, jeez.... 

After a few visits to the site without anything of interest on camera and no fresh sign, I started to branch out. The initial forays were just to the surrounding areas. The two old beaver meadows I'd placed the trail cameras near weren't the only good looking habitat in the surrounding area. Just downstream was a much large, still active beaver meadow and pond. That was the first obvious place too look. Perhaps the moose hadn't strayed far but had just hopped down in elevation a tiny bit to an even more sheltered area. Emily and I did a full lap of that wetland one day, and though there was deer, coyote, and bobcat sign there were no moose tracks. On the next visit, my mother and I hiked not down watershed but up, to another small beaver meadow and a clear cut. Again, no moose sign.

Answers to how far an individual moose will range very. The state of New York indicates a broad range of five to fifty square miles. Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife says "With its great size and forage demands, the home range of the average moose in any given season is approximately three to six square miles, although they habitually wander much further." The website All About Moose sites data from Alberta suggesting that bulls have a range of 55 miles in the winter and 22 in the summer. Considering all of Connecticut is 5,543 square miles, that means I'm looking at a potential 1/100 chunk of the state for my bull (I'd found both cow and bull tracks). That's not huge but it isn't insignificant either. The question then became, should I break the habitat up into pieces I think look more suitable, or take a more random approach? One method that crossed my mind was walking and driving the easier routes and trying to find tracks where an individual had crossed the road. Though there isn't a rod grid per-se in Connecticut, there are enough roads to create a multitude of closed loops. So by driving or hiking those loops, I could at least determine if a moose had crossed into or out of them, possibly pinning one down to a confined area that it hadn't yet left. This wasn't a highly appealing strategy to me, but perhaps something I could use down the road if I found tracks that were a few days old. 

The activity lull convinced me to give the area a little rest. I pulled my cameras and it was a couple weeks before I returned. Sometimes absence is important. I try to be discrete and unimpactful, but there's no such thing as being entirely so. I know I leave smells and signs when I'm out there, and animals recognize these. So I let the woods rest, let the moose do their thing if they were still anywhere nearby. 

When I returned, it was past the first day of meteorological spring, and the weather had definitely made a turn. There was still snow on the ground, a touch more than last I'd been in fact, but it was all hard and crusted over now. It was also covered with all sorts of branches and hemlock needles from a number of very windy days. Emily and I made our way to the area where sign had been turning up most consistently before, sometimes able to stay on top of the hard snow, sometimes post-holing more than we'd like. It was a loud form of travel, and I had no illusions of sneaking up on a moose this time. I just hoped we might find tracks again. Deer sign was plenty at first, but no moose. Whitetail deer are such a ubiquitous part of the northeast woodlands today. In fact, far more so than was historically the case. When the northeast was colonized, there where whitetail deer here, but apparently fewer than today. Colonists fairly rapidly hunted these deer to near or full extirpation in many places. ¹In Burrilville: As It Was, and As It Is, published in 1856, Horace A. Keach writes "To a citizen of this town, it will not seem improbable when we suggest that the last deer of Rhode Island was shot on the margin of Wallum Lake." It was likely that the reforestation of the New England and some reintroduction efforts that allowed whitetail deer to return, and likely to levels well beyond their former numbers. Deer don't do poorly in a lightly developed landscape. They tolerate suburbia, and they especially like farms. In the midwest, where corn crop makes up tens of thousands of square miles, deer flourish. In 2020 in Pennsylvania, hunters harvested 435,180 deer according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. In tiny and developed Connecticut, there are still well over 100,000 deer. See, deer also love not being predated, and despite the complaints hunters make about coyotes and bear, we got rid of the two effective deer predators keeping New England's population in check: wolves and mountain lions. Coyote are not great deer predators, though they can take some in deep snow when the deer are post-holing and they are able to run along on top. But neither they, nor we, do that good a job of managing deer herds, to the degree that whitetail deer can be ecologically detrimental given their wide and often dense distribution. They have outsized impacts on the plants they favor to feed on, and when too numerous can clean out undergrowth in what would otherwise be more diverse and healthy forest. 

There were deer tracks everywhere in this wood, including some big ones. But eventually, finally, there it was again: that unmistakably bigger trackway of a moose. 

I decided we should follow these tracks, even though they weren't that fresh. We stood to learn a lot if we could follow this animal's movements. Like a man on a mission, step after step I followed that moose. At one point I almost lost the trackway when it went into a patch of ground the snow had thawed from. There was what I though to be a different set of prints along it, and after a bit I determined that the moose had simply bedded down in that clear patch and left it right about where it entered. The animal made a few decisions that to my mind made little sense, including back tracking on two occasions, once right on top of it's own tracks, another just a few yards off. It moved eastward but zigzagged. Mostly it traveled at the same steady pace, but at times it slowed and its path meandered more. It may have covered the ground I followed it over in much less time than it took Emily and I to- about three miles, I'd estimate. Eventually, the trackway led us to one of the biggest wetlands in the area, and that area was covered in moose tracks. I'd say we saw trackways from at least five different individuals. This was mighty encouraging. I picked a spot to put up a camera again where two individuals passed through in a logical choke point, or funnel-like form to the landscape that I hoped would force a moose in front of my camera. Following the trackways had shaken my confidence a little, though. I was less than sure another moose would pass through this spot within a few weeks. They were a little more careless and erratic in their travelling than I'd expected them to be. Of course, I don't know what made the individual we followed back track, or why it followed certain topographic contours, or why it seemed to slow when it did. If I did know that, this would all make perfectly good sense to me I'm sure. But I'm no moose. My foolish human brain wasn't evolved nor trained by life around making the same decisions that a moose has to, so I was anthropomorphizing some I'm sure. We can't help that, we think "what would I do if I was a moose", when what we should be thinking is simply "what does a moose do". In complete ignorance of what a moose does at any given time, I have to think it's path was meandering and illogical. In reality, that moose's path made complete sense... to the moose. It is under no obligation to make sense to me. 

After placing the camera, we made our own tracks out. It's very probable that a moose would look at these and think they made no sense at all. I've been followed by animals before, usually coyotes. In my mid teens I spent a lot of time wandering the woods in deep snow, and on many occasions I'd find coyote prints following my own as I back tracked not infrequently. This never worried me at all, though there are rare instances of coyotes killing. Most coyote-human interactions are extremely benign. Often, claims of coyote "attacks" wouldn't be best characterized as such, and instances of coyotes biting people as the aggressor aren't very common, though they're becoming more frequent with time.² I've never once felt threatened by coyotes. But they do follow my tracks sometimes. Why? They probably aren't hunting me, I know that. A lot of the time, I got the impression they were using my path as easier passage. The snow was light and powdery many of these occasions, such that travel would be slow going even for a light canid. My path, plowed deep as I dragged through the snow pushing stubbornly onward, must look quite inviting to any traveling animal. Perhaps it was curiosity though; I wasn't likely to spot tracks over top of mine in these woods were there not snow. Maybe I'm being followed more often than I think.

¹ I found this source through Christian McBurney's article "When Deer Became Extinct in Rhode Island" on smallstatebighistory.com, a great site with a lot of Rhode Island historical articles. The book itself is the second very old piece of locally specific literature I've now read a chunk of for the sake of one of these sorts of blog posts. It can be purchased or is available archived online and is interesting in its own right. 

² Coyote Attacks on Humans in the United States and Canada, L. A. White and S. D. Gehrt, 2009.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

My Search for a Connecticut Moose

 The late Douglas Adams will always be one of my favorite writers. Though it was his fictional work, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels were my first introduction, thanks to my father, I later found an grainy presentation by Adams on YouTube in which he read a portion of a non fiction work of his called Last Chance to See, in which Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine travel to see species on the brink. His description of a critically endangered, flightless parrot from New Zealand called the kakapo bit me hard, I had to read the book. Some time later I came across a documentary series that took place after Adams' passing, in which Carwardine was joined by Stephen Fry to revisit the places and species from the book. Sadly, in the intervening time, one species, the Yangtze River dolphin, had been declared extinct, and another, the Northern white rhino, was right on the precipice. 

I must say, I'm not a mammal guy. I've never been than smitten by megafauna or by mammals of any kind really, not in the way some people are. That isn't to say I dislike or disrespect them in any way, they just don't appeal in the way reptiles, amphibians, and fish do. But something about the episode on the Northern white rhino stirred a curiosity in me. Now, there's little chance I'll get to Africa any time soon, and very sadly in the time since that episode the subspecies has dropped to just too female individuals. The last male, an individual that had been named Sudan, died in 2018. Though scientists are trying hard to find a way to save the genetic lineage of the Northern white rhino, there is little to no hope that I'd ever get to see one in the wild. But it did make me want to see big mammals. Perhaps that's because I have an innate need to be made to feel small by the things I pursue, like I could be crushed, consumed, or trampled. There are a few things that have made me feel really, truly alive and they all revolve around that. An apt description of the feeling I get alludes me, but it is a form of excitement that nothing else has matched. It's sort of an out of control but in control feeling... something big and indomitable has the stage and is actually in control, but if I can stay quick of wit and reactive, I have just enough control to still see the show and not be killed. I get this from seeing large sharks and I get it from being in the path of violent weather. And one time I got it when a moose charged me. 

Northwest Maine is a very good place to be if you like moose, though they've never been the reason for my own visits. But they're out there. One day, solo and ambitious, I ventured from a rented cabin out miles of logging roads in search of beaver ponds with brook trout. The woods in Northern Maine are essentially a farm, patch worked by clear cuts and plots in various stages of re-growth, some re-planted with pine, others left to their own devices. They're interlaced with roads that vary in width, dryness, and ease of travel. One I happened upon had been booby-trapped by beavers. A small culvert underneath was plugged with wood and the tiny stream ventured out onto the road grade, flowing through the deep ruts of whatever truck had been through last. Astonishingly, there were tiny brook trout in those ruts. The water wasn't much more than a foot deep but they were there, rising occasionally to who knows what. So I caught wild brook trout out of a road. Just a few hundred yards past that though, I was stopped dead in my tracks by what sounded like a car driving through the woods. To my northeast was a plot that was filling in with paper birch, often a tree that will take hold first in these clear cuts. These were young trees no more than twenty feet tall and most much shorter than that, bunched so tightly that you couldn't see into the tree-line more than ten feet or so. I could see the tops of trees moving further back as something wicked this way came. That is as disconcerting a thing as I'd ever seen. I quickly backed off the road into similar tightly bunched birch of the other side, not turning my back, until I could just barely see the road. I never actually saw it, but a moose was back there, huffing and stomping around, and they say moose don't bluff charge. I figured I was out of sight so I just stayed as still as I could, trying to control my breathing and slow my heart back down to something appropriate while hoping that the breeze wouldn't give away my position. The moose moved on after a bit of pacing, and I waited until I couldn't hear him (perhaps more likely her, given the early summer time frame?) and moved on myself. That experience was a very, very exciting one. It gave me that feeling, whatever it is. I think seeing massive rhinos reminded me that large mammals can give me that feeling. So it was decided that it was very much time to see a Connecticut moose. 

CT DEEP estimates that there are more than 100 individuals in CT's established moose population. They do a fair job of remaining elusive though, as the number of sighting each year is generally much smaller than the estimated population. In a busy, developed state this may shock some but it doesn't surprise me much. Non-human animals are cleverer than we like to believe, and that includes their intelligence in keeping away from us. Not all that long ago, though, there weren't many moose here at all. Likely owing to the vast deforestation that took place not long after colonization, there were no moose in CT for better than a century. In fact, the first photograph of a Connecticut moose was taken in 1956. With forests re-growing across Massachusetts, moose were filtering south, and by present day have established themselves well despite some habitat deficiencies. 

If you're a good angler- one with a naturalist's eye -you know how to discern the habitat of your query. Knowing what the fish need and are evolved for is most of the battle. With time, discerning what makes good habitat becomes second nature. This is no different in hunting, even if that hunting is with a camera instead of a firearm. Drawing from past experiences in moose territory, everything I'd read or watched about New England's largest land animal, and available sighting information, I hit the maps. I read satellite imagery like I'd read a river. Instead of rocks and current I was looking for topography and forest age. I looked for sparse canopy, logged areas, and wetlands. I picked a spot to focus on much in the way I'd pick a stretch of river, then my partner Emily and I went there to try our luck at finding some tracks or sign. 

Though Connecticut's moose population has seen a fairly recent bump in numbers, New England's largest land animal isn't without its threats. One of the scarier risks comes from a different, far smaller animal. As warmer winters become progressively more and more normal in this part of the world, some species are taking advantage. One species, Dermacentor albipictus, is breeding and proliferating at unprecedented rates. At just millimeters in length, the winter tick might seem a poor opponent of the moose. But by the thousands their impact can be fatal. An adult moose might survive a severe infestation, but calves, it seems, are not. Data from Maine indicates the loss of almost 90% of tracked calves... that's pretty staggering. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has increased the number of cow permits to hunters to determine if lowering densities can break the tick's cycle. A changing climate compounds other anthropogenic and natural problems, and in one example of many, forces active management to preserve an iconic species that may otherwise not need any such help.

I hoped we'd get to see a robust, healthy Connecticut moose instead of one infested in winter ticks, but beggars can't be choosers. The more I read about moose the more I wanted to see one close to home. Stepping foot in the field for the first time with that specific goal in mind made me feel alive. And when, not hours later, I was looking at a quite fresh set of tracks in the snow, it wasn't an insignificant morale boost. Fresh tracks, a few piles of poo, and even two spots where she'd bedded down convinced me this was a place to put a trail camera. 

I'm not quite sure why my affinities for certain animals are so much stronger than others. Usually preference is only a thing I notice in their absence. When I'm not around any animals, reptiles and fish are my favorites, but as soon as I'm looking at a flying squirrel, well that's the greatest thing that has ever existed. This is even true of species I've claimed not to like, such as dolphins. Dolphins are a bit too much like us sometimes. They're clever and have the capacity to be sadistic, they have a propensity toward un-consensual acts, and they can be a bit mean sometimes. But put me near  a wild dolphin and I can't help but smile. They're beautiful animals, and I can't help but be happy to see them. So, though I don't call myself a mammal guy, I can't help but feel a bit more alive when I see a bear, hear coyotes calling in the dark, or look down at a big ol' pile of moose poop on the forest floor. 

One of my favorite places I've ever fished is a serene, high elevation brook trout pond in northern New England. Though certainly not alpine, or even all that close to it, it's the closest I'll feel to it within ten hours of home. The stunted pines and pale granite boulders that line the perimeter aren't something we see at lower latitudes and elevations. Nor, as I experienced one July morning, is the hypothermia that you can still get if you sit too still for too long next to one of the spring seeps that keep the pond cold and the brook trout that live there happy. The air coming off that spring had me shivering in very little time, and when I dipped my thermometer in the water it read an astounding 39 degrees! In July! But as cold, stunted, and stark as that ecosystem always felt- and indeed, there are only two fish in that pond, dace and brook trout, neither of which need much nutrients to eek out an existence -there are also some large terrestrial mammals up there sometimes. I remember coming across moose poop just the other side of the same ridge once, while prospecting for smoky quart in miarolitic cavities in the granite. It was on a very steep grade, in habitat my uninformed mind didn't at all associate with those large ungulates. But what I did expect to see up there, and would run into on my way back from that pond after that morning of catching stunning native char after getting far too cold, were bear. This was national forest, and patch work logging occurs just a step or two down in elevation. There, after a year or two, emergent vegetation dominates the small logging cuts. Some of it produces berries. The bears take advantage of that, the dead wood harboring loads of insects, and of course the large number of mindless campers, some of whom do a poor job of keeping their own food under wraps. As I popped off the steep trail back onto the logging road on my way down from the pond, a sharp "whufff" caught my attention. My eyes snapped over to the other side of the road, and at the base of a big old pine sat an adolescent black bear. He made a sort of motion that would probably have been associated with a gruff "I'll f*** you up bro" had this been an adolescent human. I raised my arms, made a forward stomp, and said "No you won't, bear". He turned is head behind the tree for a second and then glanced back with an almost sheepish look, then dismounted from the tree and took off down the hill. It wasn't my first interaction with a bear, nor would it be my last, even just that day. They're one of the more common large mammals in the northeast now, and they've done a good job of making themselves at home even in suburban areas. Unlike moose here in Connecticut, which are more of a novelty encounter than anything, bears have become a divisive issue. They're here in numbers again and that has implications on how people live. We need to know how to respond to their presence and they force us to be more aware of our surroundings and behavior. I wonder if the moose population will continue to rise it Connecticut, and is so, whether it will have similar implications and effects? 

Back in the woods after a freshly fallen snow, I broke trail to check a camera I'd put in the area with all the moose sign. There's a magic about the woods when it has a fresh coat of snow. Sound gets muffled, things feel still, and any animal's recent movements on the ground gets recorded cleanly. Out in the open mixed hardwood forest there was a crunchy layer on top of the snow that prevented me from being as stealthy as I'd have liked. When I dropped into the valley toward the meadows, and under the canopy of the hemlocks, the character of the snow changed. Down there it was a soft white powder, and my footsteps became as muffled as everything else. There were tracks here and there: deer, coyotes, red squirrel, bobcat... but this time no moose. 

No matter. I carefully made my way to the camera trap to see what may have passed in front of it over the previous weeks. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor and Eric for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Climb Out & Scream (Pt. 2)

 An unnatural waterway meets the Rock River in Colona, Illinois, just a short distance above it's confluence with the mighty Mississippi. That waterway winds eastward to the Illinois River near the just east of of Bureau Junction, population 282, and just north of Hennepin populations 741. The latter is the town that now gives the canal it's name. Formerly known as the Illinois and Mississippi canal, the Hennepin Canal and its pools and locks sit a relic of an era when boats were a vital part of commerce in inland America. It's history is a little different than some of it's nearby contemporaries, because it was in essence already obsolete by the time the first boat made transit through it in 1907. Despite some architectural significance, including being the first canal built with concrete and no stone facings, it never got the opportunity to fulfill its roll as fully intended. After more than half a century of desire for the canal, construction began in 1892, and while it was being built work was underway to make locks on the Illinois River suitable for larger vessels. With it's narrower lock chambers the Hennepin settled into life as passage for recreational vessels rather than as an artery of commerce. 

Tiskilwa, Illinois is the embodiment of small town middle America and sits near the eastern end of the canal, near Lock #10. The canal does a sort of zig-zag North of town. In 2023, the population was 728. At it's peak there weren't many more than a thousand residents, living centered around an iconic main drag in the village center. Prior to European settlement a Potawatomi village was on this site. White man filtered in and settled along the Galena Trail, a stagecoach route that takes it's name from a lead ore mineral that occurs in deposits scattered around the Driftless Region. Galena looks the part, lead grey in color and heavy, sometimes forming beautiful crystals often cubic in habit. In fact, I have specimens with galena and fluorite from Illinois in my personal collection. Lead ore in hydrothermal replacement deposits in the limestone and agriculture on the fertile flood plains drew people to Illinois and through the spot where Tiskilwa stands now. In History of Bureau County, Illinois, published in 1885, Henry C. Bradsby notes the town's official inception out of two settlements, Indiantown and Windsor, which were consolidated and took the current name in 1840: "Tiskihca. — Names of Indiantown and Windsor changed to Tiskilwa, law, February 3, 1840, 107; town incorporated". Today, there is no sense of sprawl, suburbia, or anything else of that sort in Tiskilwa, as is consuming the soul of small towns in other parts of the country. Old homes line the street grid, along with some small businesses and a museum along the town's Main Street. The railroad completed in the middle of the 19th century arcs through town, still active. Up away from the river courses the land is flat and dominated by farms. Miles upon miles of farms. Endless farms. Save for some narrow strips between fields, there are few trees breaking up the view. This was likely part of the more than half of Illinois that wasn't forested anyway, but it must look very different now. Close to town, Rocky Run and its tributaries have carved their way down into the plain. There, trees are still very much present, and evidently have long been, as Bradsby also notes: "About Tiskilwa and on the Illinois River there is considerable rich bottom lands, covered with fine heavy timber". Where trees have persisted, so have periodical cicadas. That's what brought me to Tiskilwa, a town that is not in any way on the map for fly anglers.

Lightning strikes the flat farmlands, east of Tiskilwa a ways.

To be fair, Tiskilwa just happened to be the spot that caught my attention first as Emily and I worked eastward through Illinois. I'd pinned sites all the way into the Chicago suburb of Joliet, but when once again I cracked the window a ways outside of Tiskilwa and heard that familiar buzz, that evil grin crept across my face. The bugs had brought me somewhere new yet again, somewhere I'd never have had reason to go otherwise, somewhere with history, ecology, and culture I'd not have learned otherwise. sometimes a bug isn't just a bug. 

As I walked along the Hennepin Canal under the blazing sun, it's water flowed very sluggishly but clear, with vegetation and aquatic life all over. It's remarkable how life takes hold. In one lock I observed some gar and channel catfish milling around, as well as a few bigmouth buffalo scraping algae from the canal walls. All of these fish seemed rather averse to my presence and completely disinterested in cicadas, so I didn't linger with them long. I was a bit more interested in seeing a natural water body anyway. 

My first look at the creek I'd spent time viewing through the magic of the internet and satellite imagery came after skirting around a deep slough in grass that wasn't much shorter than I. Unlike the area I'd fished in Missouri, this was a classic freestone river with runs, riffles and pools. It had gradient and chunky limestone. It looked delightfully inviting and delicious. But did it have cicada eating fish? I stayed low and slow, eyeing the greyish green stained water for signs of life- a shadow, a waving fin, a rise form. It didn't take long. From deeper, darker water emerged the hulking form of a grass carp. It sidled up into the shallows over light colored bottom, then rose to a cicada drifting by. Slowly and carefully, I made my approach. The fish held it's ground, unaware of my presence. I'd love to say it was difficult, and maybe if I'd not done this quite a few times in the prior days it would have been, but I splatted that bug down and the grasser came to it without hesitation. The fight was on. In a log filled bend pool, I battled a freshwater giant about three feet long with a graphite stick and a glorified hand line. Much like Missouri, Illinois took me by surprise with just astoundingly good and enjoyable fishing. 

I enjoy fishing just about anywhere, especially where other people aren't. I've plied the famous trout rivers in Montana, squeaked snook out of the mangroves in the Everglades, and swung up landlocked salmon in the north Maine Woods. I've battled surf on famous spots of the striper coast and waded up legendary limestone spring creeks. None of that was any better than the fishing I had in Illinois. I don't give a damn what anyone says, this was my jam. 

 

I wonder what it was like in the area where Tiskilwa stands today when what are now known as Northern Illinois brood and Great Southern Brood last emerged in tandem, in 1803. There were probably still a fair few bison working the land in Illinois then. The indigenous peoples were still the dominant cultural presence. Illinois wasn't even Illinois yet. There was no railroad, no canal. The flora would have been distinctly different from what I saw. Even the river's very course may have been displaced. There were certainly no grass carp there. How many cicadas were there? Many millions more? What fish were eating them? How did the indigenous people respond to the insects abrupt emergence?

Fly fishing is largely a silly, useless hobby until we take note of everything else going on around us while doing it. The longer I stay with it, the more clear that is to me. It would be almost wholly un-stimulating to me now were I not using it as an avenue through which to explore the sciences and history. I'd give up fishing for fishing's sake before I gave up the places it takes me both mentally and physically. Fishing doesn't matter to me as an individual anymore, not the way it did. Pursuing a bug and an invasive fish eating it took me to a tiny town in the middle of Illinois. It made me want to learn about that place and it's history. So much so that months later I was combing through a book published in 1885. I grazed information about malacologist named Charles Torrey Simpson who was supposedly born in Tiskilwa and published dozens of pieces of scientific literature, including "The pearly fresh-water mussels of the United States; their habits, enemies, and diseases, with suggestions for their protection" in the Bulletin of the US Fish Commission. I learned that to pay for the operations of the Hennepin Canal, ice blocks cut from it during the winter were sold. This reminded me of ice ponds here at home in New England, and how different our lives and the land are now from just a handful of generations ago. This is all far more interesting and important than catching a fish, in my humble opinion. That's just trivial. Not the fish- the fish is just as interesting and important -but catching it? Sometimes I do think about quitting that part. 

It sure is fun though. 

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