The title may seem hyperbolic. But the torture, though mostly of a mental nature is real. Don’t get me wrong. When I’m sitting at home in the Pittsburgh suburbs, many miles from my beloved limestone trout streams of Central Pennsylvania or the laurel ensconced mountain brooks of the Laurel Highlands, I’m game for all manner of research. I’ll pre-game the season by overindulging in state-published lists of wild trout waters, trusty guidebooks, atlases and google map searches until my head spins. I love research and it’s a great way to pass the time and prepare when I can’t actually fish.
But when I finally get a chance to set out for the water… well then it’s different. I want to know I’m headed for a sure thing. I don’t want to drive the 3 hours to scout new water for the day to find out it’s a bust; all driving and no fishing. I’ve had those days. And though I’m more mellow about it now, there was a time when I found it to be quite frustrating.
Enter The Old Ranger…
Part of the issue is that my father, self anointed as “The Old Ranger” is quite solidly in the “It’s just nice to get out” camp. Years ago, as an impatient young man that just wanted to get on the water and fish I dreaded the words; “I was thinking we could head to <insert region> and drive around and do some scouting. There’s this stream that I saw and maybe it has some trout”.
Why? Why would we want to do that? What possible reason could there be? Why would one drive around for hours, occasionally disembark the car, machete through man-eating multiflora rose bushes or walls of rhododendron or climb over guard rails on rural highways to plummet to almost certain injury down a snake infested rock covered cliff to check out some stream that may or may not have fish?
There were a few quite grueling days back then. Days that I felt like a prisoner in a mobile prison thinking about how we could have just gone somewhere that we knew about. Somewhere that was a sure thing. Somewhere familiar. Comfort food is what I craved. Good old reliable comfort food in trout stream form. We could be fishing right now.
I still have nightmares. I am not even joking. The recurring nightmare is something like this. The Old Ranger picks me up to go fishing. But first he needs to cash a check at Uni-Mart. After that we make a wrong turn and instead of turning around we just drive around at random trying to find a different route, we get further and further from our destination. Then there’s a required stop at a road-side fruit stand or diner. These stops always result in our fishing party becoming inexplicably separated when the fruit stand or diner is somehow connected to a major vacation resort or industrial complex of some sort with labyrinthine passages and hidden regions. Things get weirder and weirder, the destination always further and further away.
Nobody I ask can point me in the right direction. Either I don’t have access to phone or if I do I can’t make it work. Eventually we find our way to the stream, but invariably the sun is setting as I try to rig my rod in the gathering gloom. I’m holding my hands up to sky trying to find enough light from the fading sun to tie a fly on. Time is running out. The whole day has been wasted. Then I wake up in a cold sweat. The dream isn’t always the same but it is variations on that theme.
The Other Side of the Coin
In spite of the recurring anxiety dreams brought on by forced exploration in my formative years, I can now (albeit a bit grudgingly still) see the value of this activity. Many places that I now fish and enjoy are places that my father and I scouted out together almost entirely at his urging. I’m a creature of habit and it’s good to have someone kick me out of the rut from time to time.
Even knowing that it yields dividends I can still resist scouting. I can feel myself settling into the comfort of the familiar sure thing. But when I can bring myself to scout and explore new and unknown places, I’m almost always happy that I did.
A compromise that I’ve come to is that I try not to combine fishing and scouting on the same day. If I’m going to do some scouting I find it mentally easiest to just devote the entire day to it. That way I’m not anxious about getting on the water. I’ve accepted that it’s a day to just relax, be mindful, and submit to the exploration as its own activity.
My most recent scouting adventure with the Old Ranger happened just this past week. He’s recovering from knee surgery and is not able to risk being on the water at this time. So I took him for a drive to check out some water. And surprise, surprise it was quite fruitful.
We learned that one stream we’d fished about 30 years ago and enjoyed quite a bit, now had an extensive posted stretch and wasn’t a great destination any longer. So that saved me some wasted driving and heartache later in the season.
On a more positive note, another stream we hadn’t seen in about 30 years was doing better than expected with a new rail trail along a portion and now with Class A wild trout status and no harvesting of the wild brown trout.
So even though it was slightly painful to set the rods aside for the day, it was time well spent that will be paying dividends all season long and for seasons to come.
Hopefully I will remember that lesson this time.
P.S. I know this link was given in the Tenkara Angler Level Line Podcast Ep 14 post but I figured I’d give it here again for anybody looking to do some trout stream exploration in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission Trout Stream Classifications
There are four useful PDF documents there as well as an interactive map.
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