American

Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing

The

Fly Fisher

Karen KaplanPresident

Gary J. Sherman, DPMVice President

Andrew WardVice President

James C. WoodsSecretary

William E. AndersenFoster Bam

Peter BowdenJane CookePeter Corbin

Deborah Pratt DawsonE. Bruce DiDonato, MD

Patrick FordRonald Gard

George R. Gibson IIIGardner Grant Jr.

James Heckman, MDArthur Kaemmer, MD

Karen KaplanWoods King III

William P. Leary IIIJames Lepage

Anthony J. MagardinoChristopher P. Mahan

Walter T. MatiaWilliam McMaster, MD

Bradford Mills

David NicholsRobert A. Oden Jr.Erik R. OkenAnne Hollis PerkinsLeigh H. PerkinsFrederick S. PolhemusJohn RedpathRoger RiccardiFranklin D. Schurz Jr.Robert G. ScottNicholas F. SelchGary J. Sherman, DPMWarren SternRonald B. StuckeyTyler S. ThompsonRichard G. TischDavid H. WalshAndrew WardThomas WeberJames C. WoodsNancy W. ZakonMartin Zimmerman

James HardmanWilliam Herrick

David B. LedlieLeon L. Martuch

Parker CorbinBailey HallingbyWoods King IVAlexander Kinsey

John NeukomAlbert NicholsDavid E. Nichols Jr.Ben Pastor

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Catherine E. ComarExecutive Director

Yoshi AkiyamaDeputy Director

Sarah FosterDevelopment Associate

Peter NardiniCommunicationsCoordinator

Samantha PitcherMembership and Events

Coordinator

Shane QuintanaGallery Assistant

Patricia RussellAccount Manager

Becki TrudellPublic Programs Coordinator

Paul Schullery

George R. Gibson IIITreasurer

Conservation, Canada,Creativity

From The American Turf Register and SportingMagazine Vol. II (Baltimore: J.S. Skinner, ), .

Jason M. Scott

Sara WilcoxDirector of VisualCommunication

T I thought I saw ahuge trout. I was on the coldestmorning walk of the season thus

far, in-the-teens-Fahrenheit-degrees cold,walking on the rail trail through farmland,stopping to turn around at the streambridge. As I hung over the railing, I saw amassive fish dart around the bank cor-ner—except I probably didn’t. Surely thissomewhat skinny, cow-trodden waterwould not hold a fish like that. It was prob-ably some quick-moving, water-dwellingmammal. I just wanted to see a fish.Now I’ve come in from the cold to

write notes to our Winter issue, whichfeatures articles by others who want to seefish, articles based in the even-coldercountry directly north of us, and articlesabout a couple of creative types for whomour sport is an inspiration.After trout populations declined in the

s, a group of concerned citizens creat-ed the Batten Kill Watershed Alliance torestore trout habitat and river dynamics.Cynthia Browning, BKWA’s executivedirector, explains her organization’s work,and schools us on convoys and bunkersthrough helpful photos and illustrations.“The Batten Kill Watershed Alliance ofNew York and Vermont” begins on page .BKWA’s conservation work made

Browning a natural choice to present at lastyear’s Deborah Pratt Dawson Con servationSymposium. Beginning on page , we’dlike to share two symposium presentationswith you: Browning’s “The Testi mony ofthe Trout: River Wood Is Good,” whichcomplements her piece about the organiza-tion itself, and Michael S. Cooperman’s (of

Conservation International) keynote ad -dress, “Lessons in Conser vation.” Now, onto northern North America:

John Buchan—biographer, poet, histori-an, journalist, critic, publisher, holder ofpublic offices, governor-general of Can -ada—was one of Scotland’s most popularwriters, well known for his thriller TheThirty-Nine Steps. He was also an angler.In “John Buchan: Angler and Governor-General of Canada” (page ), KeithHarwood explores some of Buchan’s per-sonal fishing history.I love a good fish story, and as we (well,

some of us) contemplate our complicatedrelationship with fish, this one hits all theright notes. In a Telling Tails piece, “TheBig Fish at Fraser’s” (page ), Hoagy B.Carmichael takes us to the Grand Casca -pedia to recount an adventure, a moment,and a particular salmon.The past couple of years, we’ve used the

Winter cover to feature a painting fromour collection. This year Stanley Meltzoff ’soil painting, Deal Pilings: Rooting forShredders, starts our journal run.Executive Director Cathi Comar’s notes onthe artist, “A View Below the Surface,” canbe found on page . And in this issue’sBatten Kill Beat, Peter Nardini interviewsBill Oyster: rod maker, engraver, fishingguide, and creator of what is by far thelargest school of rod making in the worldtoday. You’ll find this Q&A, “A Modern-Day Bamboo Master,” on page .Stay warm and fishwishfull.

K AE

the American Museum of Fly FishingJournal of

E. M. BakwinFoster Bam and Sallie Baldwin

Austin and Meg BuckMark ComoraJane Cooke

Jon and Deborah Pratt DawsonGardner Grant Jr.

Tim HixonSummerfield Johnston

Karen KaplanPeter Kellogg

Robert KleinschmidtGeorge Matelich

Robert McGrawBradford and Pamela MillsDavid and Margaret NicholsThe Orvis CompanyLeigh and Anne PerkinsEric and M. C. RobertsRobert and Karen ScottNicholas and Jean SelchRichard G. TischTed TurnerPaul VolckerDavid and Jade WalshAlan and Nancy Zakon

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Will AndersenWilliam E. Andersen

Bill AyersMichael BakwinDick BeattiePeter BowdenTom Davidson

E. Bruce and Denise DiDonatoChris DorseyDavid Ford

George and Beth GibsonTim GrellJim Head

Paul Tudor JonesArthur and Martha Kaemmer

Bill and Francesca Leary

Christopher MahanWilliam and Lynn McMasterPeter Millet, MDTeresa and Robert Oden Jr.Erik and Jennifer OkenHenry M. Paulson Jr.Stephen and Roberta PeetJohn RedpathWilliam RowleyFranklin Schurz Jr.Warren SternRonald and Joan StuckeyTyler and Francis ThompsonAndrew and Elizabeth WardLarry WrightWoods and Wendy King III

Josh AlexanderStu Apte

Gregg BelldockRobert and Debbie BruckerPeter and Lillian Corbin

Anthony DavinoTom EvansJon FisherJon Gibson

Philip HansteenJames and Susan Heckman

Harry Hill

Charlie KaplanKharlovka Company LimitedCarmine LisellaAnne Lovett and Steve WoodsumWalter and Pam MatiaJoseph R. PerellaJack PittardSouth Holston River LodgeGeorge Van HookPat WelshKen WilsonJames Wolfensohn

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Kathleen AchorEditor

Sara WilcoxDesign & Production

Sarah May ClarksonCopy Editor

space for FSC info

Stanley Meltzoff: A View Below the Surface . . . . . . . . . . Cathi Comar

John Buchan: Angler andGovernor-General of Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Keith Harwood

The Batten Kill Watershed Alliance ofNew York and Vermont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cynthia Browning

The Batten Kill Beat: A Modern-Day Bamboo Master . . . Peter Nardini

Voices in Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lessons in Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael S. CoopermanThe Testimony of the Trout: River Wood Is Good . . . . Cynthia Browning

Telling Tails: The Big Fish at Fraser’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hoagy B. Carmichael

Museum News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Contributor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

: Deal Pilings: Rooting for Shredders. Oil on board, .Accompanied article in Sports Illustrated. Donated to AMFF byDr. Gary Sherman and Lyn Kohls, .

The American Fly Fisher (ISSN -) is published four times a year by the museum at P.O. Box ,Manchester, Vermont . Publication dates are winter, spring, summer, and fall. Membership dues includethe cost of the journal () and are tax deductible as provided for by law. Membership rates are listed in theback of each issue. All letters, manuscripts, photographs, and materials intended for publication in the jour-nal should be sent to the museum. The museum and journal are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts,drawings, photographic material, or memorabilia. The museum cannot accept responsibility for statementsand interpretations that are wholly the author’s. Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be returned unless postage isprovided. Contributions to The American Fly Fisher are to be considered gratuitous and the property of themuseum unless otherwise requested by the contributor. Copyright © , The American Museum of FlyFishing, Manchester, Vermont . Original material appearing may not be reprinted without prior permis-sion. Periodical postage paid at Manchester, Vermont ; Manchester, Vermont ; and additional offices(USPS ). The American Fly Fisher (ISSN -) : amff@amff.com : www.amff.com

: Send address changes to:The American Fly FisherP.O. Box Manchester, Vermont

Laurie Zimmerman

Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation

The American Fly Fisher (publication number -) is published four times per year (Winter, Spring, Summer,Fall). Editor is Kathleen Achor. Complete address for both publisher and editor is The American Museum of FlyFishing, P.O. Box , Manchester, VT . The journal is wholly owned by the American Museum of Fly Fishing.Total number of copies: , (average number of copies of each issue run during the preceding twelve months; ,

actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date). Paid/requested circulations (including adver-tiser’s proof and exchange copies): , (average; , actual). Free distribution by mail: (average; actual). Salesthrough dealers and carriers, street vendors, and counter sales: (average; actual). Free distribution outside themail: (average; actual). Total free distribution: (average; actual). Total distribution: , (average;

, actual). Copies not distributed: (average; actual). Total: , (average; , actual). Percent paid and/orrequested circulation: .% (average; .% actual).

A S M (–) wasborn, raised, and educated in New York City. Upon com-pletion of his undergraduate and graduate art degrees,

Meltzoff became an instructor at Pratt Institute. A few yearslater, he was called to duty and worked in Italy as an artist andjournalist for the U.S. military publication Stars and Stripes.Upon returning to New York at the war’s conclusion, Meltzoffwent back to teaching, but left it in to work as an illustra-tor. Many of Meltzoff ’s works appeared in national advertise-ments, on the covers of paperback novels, and on the coversand inside pages of magazines such as Saturday Evening Postand Scientific American. Throughout the s, his work waspopular and well received.Beginning in the s, Meltzoff was able to merge his talents

as an artist with his passion for the ocean. As a young child,Meltzoff spent a great deal of time swimming and diving alongthe shores of nearby New Jersey. By the end of the s, he was

an ardent scuba diver, spear fisherman, and underwater pho-tographer. His diving exploits inspired the next phase of hiscareer, and Meltzoff began to produce a series of works featur-ing fish under the water—the first of this genre. His powerfulre-creation of saltwater fish species—appearing in NationalGeographic, Outdoor Life, and Gray’s Sporting Journal—expandedhis audience greatly.Meltzoff received many awards for his artistic achievements,

and he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall ofFame in .The artwork of Stanley Meltzoff is held in many private and

museum collections throughout the country, including the J.Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the National Gallery of Art(Washington, D.C.), and the American Museum of Fly Fishing,to name a few.

C CE D

Stanley Meltzoff:A View Below the Surface

Drifting Blues. Oil over gouache on canvas, ca. .Donated to AMFF by Derby Anderson, . Three Permit and Crab, The Ring. Oil over

gouache on canvas, . Donated to AMFF byDerby Anderson, .

Stanley Meltzoff in his studio. Imagesupplied by Mike Rivkin. Copyright

Silverfish Press.

T of Peebles,situated by the banks of the RiverTweed in the Scottish Borders, is

home to the John Buchan Story, a smallbut beautifully laid-out museum dedicat-ed to the life and work of John Buchan.Buchan was one of Scotland’s most popu-lar writers, best known today perhaps forhis thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps (),which was subsequently turned into afilm in directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Buchan was not just a novelist, however,but a biographer, poet, historian, jour-nalist, critic, and publisher, as well asholder of several public offices, includingthat of governor-general of Canada(–). He was also a dedicatedangler. During his lifetime, he wrotemore than a hundred books, includingan anthology of angling verse, MusaPiscatrix (), while he was still a stu-dent at Oxford. It is a matter of muchregret that he died at the young age ofsixty-four before he had time to com-plete his book on his fishing experiences.

Only two complete chapters of thiswork, provisionally titled Pilgrim’s Rest,survive and are appended to the Englishedition of his autobiography MemoryHold-the-Door (American title Pilgrim’sWay), published posthumously in .

It should come as no surprise thatBuchan was a keen angler when you con-sider that he was born at Perth, on thebanks of the River Tay ( August )and spent most of his childhood holidaysat his grandparents’ farmhouse in thevillage of Broughton near Peebles inTweeddale. The photograph above of anangler with his gillie salmon fishing onthe Tweed at Kelso would have been afamiliar sight to the young Buchan.However, it was not on the middle reach-es of the Tweed near Kelso that Buchanbegan his angling apprenticeship, but onits feeder streams and burns around thevillages of Broughton and Drumelzier.Like many young boys, both then andnow, he started out fishing with a worm,as he tells us in Pilgrim’s Rest:

At the age of nine my only lure was theworm. I could not cast a fly properly,and on the lower waters I made myselftoo conspicuous. But in those little hillrunlets rush and heather provided anatural cover, and the fish were inno-cent things. I would drop my worm in apool and let it float down the hiddenstream until there came a check and asmall trout was swung high over myhead. If it came off it was as often as notlost in the thick herbage.

The young Buchan sometimes caught upto four dozen fish in a day, althoughnone exceeded half a pound and weresubsequently fried for breakfast in oat-meal. In those early days, Buchan did notpossess a creel and would stuff his catchinto his pockets or thread them throughthe gills on rushes. It wasn’t long before he graduated to

fly fishing on the Powsail, a stream thatjoins the Tweed below the village ofDrumelzier. His fishing rod consisted ofthe top two joints of his grandfather’s

John Buchan: Angler andGovernor-General of Canada

by Keith Harwood

Salmon fishing on the Tweed at Kelso.

Keith Harwood

salmon rod, a basic reel and line, and acast that was “far too coarse for slenderwaters and bright weather.”Nonetheless,fishing upstream with a couple of simplydressed Black Spiders and using shortcasts, he caught plenty of trout averagingthree or four to the pound.While studying at Glasgow University,

Buchan wrote one of his first articles,“Angling in Still Waters,” which was pub-lished in the Gentleman’s Magazine of. In the article, Buchan takes us fish-ing for trout on a beautiful June morn-ing to the upper waters of the Tweed.Fishing upstream with a team of threewet flies—a Grey Spider, a Teal, and aWoodcock—he soon catches a troutweighing a little more than half a pound.Shortly afterward, he catches a fish ofapproximately a pound on his tail fly. Healso experiences the loss of a big trout,which took the fly on his middle dropperand dashed into the reeds and brokehim. And so the day wears on until it istime to return for supper. It is a charm-ing article enhanced with beautifuldescriptions of the scenery and wildlifeand is well worth seeking out. As well as fly fishing, Buchan was not

averse to using unconventional methodsof catching trout when conditions dictat-ed. In low water, he sometimes resortedto “guddling,” or “tickling,” as it is more

conventionally known. Heclaimed to be an expert gud-dler and was adept at scoop-ing out trout with his barehands from below stonesmidstream or from underdeep-cut banks. He evenadmits to participating inthe highly illegal method of“burning the water” forsalmon and being arrestedby the bailiffs.

Then there were the localpoachers. For them troutwere small beer; their quar-ry was the salmon out ofseason. They would net orspear the big red fish in theautumn streams, and saltthem down for winter use.The thing was in defiance ofthe law, and the water-bailiffs were always on theirtrail, so that there weremany affrays by the water-side which ended in brokenheads. I have assisted in“burning the water,” whichwas a favourite pursuit ofSir Walter Scott’s, andapparently in his day notillegal. It was an excitingbusiness, for the shallowswould be reddened bytorches made of barrelstaves dipped in tar, and

wild figures with a three-pronged fork,called a leister, speared the fish as theyblundered upstream. Once I was arrest-ed by the bailiffs along with others, butin consideration of my youth wasreleased with a hearty kick!

This incident, which occurred when hewas just sixteen years old, stood him ingood stead in when he put himselfforward as a parliamentary candidate forPeebles and Selkirk. He had the supportof the poachers to a man!While a student at Oxford University

(–), the young Buchan discov-ered the charms of fishing the dry fly onthe Windrush, a tributary of the Thamesnoted for its trout and grayling fishing.During the long summer vacations, hespent a great deal of time exploringScotland, where he would take up quar-ters in a shepherd’s cottage. There it washis custom to rise early, write for five orsix hours, and then go fishing until thesummer midnight. He was also a fre-quent visitor to Ardwall House, thehome of Lord Ardwall near Gatehouse ofFleet, where he fished and shot in thebeautiful Galloway countryside.After leaving Oxford, Buchan moved to

London intent on a career in the law.However, in spite of living in a greatmetropolis, his love of the countryside didnot diminish, and he shared a rod with fel-low Scotsman, Andrew Lang (author ofAngling Sketches, ), on a little dry-flytrout stream in Hertfordshire, where hespent many pleasant Saturdays. Following a spell in South Africa

(–), where he worked on the staffof Lord Milner, the high commissioner,Buchan returned to the law in Londonand wrote a book on the taxation of for-eign income. In , he married SusanGrovesnor and became a partner in thepublishers Thomas Nelson & Son. In theyears before the First World War, Buchan

Cover of John Buchan’s Musa Piscatrix,published in .

Burning the water. This nineteenth-century (c. ) image by F. Seyton wasengraved by William French and hand colored. From the author’s collection.

Jon Ward-Allen

often fished with his business partner andOxford contemporary Tommie Nelson atAchnacloich on Loch Etive and later atLærdal ( and ) in Norway, whereNelson rented a farmhouse and stretch ofthe Lærdal. It was here that Mrs. Buchanhad the distinction of catching the earli-est sea trout ever caught in the Lærdal.Unfortunately, John and Tommie did notcatch as many fish as they anticipated.

During the First World War, Buchanserved as an officer in the IntelligenceCorps, eventually becoming director ofinformation in . After the war, hebought Elsfield Manor in Oxfordshire andbecame a director of Reuters and later thedeputy chair (). In later years, he wasmember of parliament for the Scottishuniversities (–) and high commis-sioner to the general assembly of theChurch of Scotland ( and ). In, he was created Baron Tweedsmuir of

Elsfield and was appointed governor-gen-eral of Canada, a post he held until hisdeath on the February . Much of what we know of Buchan’s

fishing expeditions in later years comesfrom the writings of his eldest son,Johnnie, the nd Lord Tweedsmuir, whowas born in . John Buchan’s box ofsalmon flies, which is now housed in themuseum in Peebles, is a clear indicationthat he embraced salmon fishing as wellas trout fishing. The box contains a selec-tion of fully dressed flies, including anumber of Jock Scotts in various sizes, aLady Amherst, and a large Akroyd, a flypopular on the Tweed.After the war, the Buchans spent most

summer holidays in Scotland, either inthe Borders or the Highlands. In ,they stayed at Letterewe, where Buchanand son Johnnie fished Loch Maree,famous for its sea trout. The following

summer they were guests of GeneralStronach at Kinlochbervie in Sutherland,where Buchan and his host had consid-erable success with the salmon, as theyounger Buchan recounts in Always aCountryman ():

My host and my father caught theirsalmon skilfully and methodically. Myfather, for all his slight figure, couldthrow a salmon fly thirty yards and usea heavy greenheart rod all day. He wasone of the finest salmon fishers that Ihave ever watched. The rod appeared todo his work for him.

It was here that Buchan taught his son,then age eleven, to fly fish for salmon,and it wasn’t long before young Johnlanded his first fish, an -pounder, fromLoch Ghabhaig Beg.In , Buchan, his wife, and Johnnie

made the long trek up to Shetland where

John Buchan, c. . From the George GranthamBain Collection, Library of Congress Prints andPhotographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-.

John Buchan’s salmon fly box, courtesy of theJohn Buchan Story in Peebles, Scotland.

Malcolm Morrison of the John Buchan Story

Three-hook sea-trout fly tied by the author.

Keith Harwood

they stayed on Unst as a guest of theReverend Charles Dick, an avid fisher-man and a friend of Buchan’s from hisuniversity days. On Unst they fished forsea trout. Charles Dick eschewed the useof fancy flies and stuck to one patterndressed in different sizes. However,Buchan and his son frequently changedflies until they found a pattern the fishwould take and, as a result, they outfishedtheir host and took a number of sea troutfrom the voes, the best around pounds.According to Johnnie, their most success-ful fly was a three-hooked sea-trout lurewith a long Eton-blue wing, silver body,and red tail. The following year, theBuchan family holidayed on the Isle ofMull, where they had fishing on the littlespate river, the Lussa, noted for its salmonand sea trout. According to his son, it wasBuchan’s habit to have his rod ready and

his cast soaking by breakfast time. Hewould spend the morning writing, and attwelve o’clock he would put down hispen, take up his rod and net, and go downto the sea pool. He would fish for an hourand rarely failed to bring home a seatrout. The family returned to Mull againduring the summer of and rented afishing lodge overlooking Loch Bà.During July , Buchan and son

ventured to the remote Faroe Islands insearch of sea trout. While there, theystayed with the Danish governor and hisfamily, who arranged their fishing trips.It was in the Faroes that Buchan caught alarge sea trout of ½ pounds on a three-hooked lure. A day or two later, whilefishing a loch from the shore, a sea troutestimated in the teens of pounds rolledover at his fly, but in spite of his repeatedattempts, Buchan failed to catch it.

According to his son, the memory of thatfish lived with him for the rest of his life.

In , Buchan moved to Canada toassume his new role as governor-general.Not surprisingly, while living in that vastcountry blessed with myriad lakes andrivers, Buchan availed himself of everyopportunity to sample its fishing. Thefollowing February, Buchan embarkedon his first tour of the country, where hewas later joined by Johnnie, who wasrecovering from amoebic dysentery con-tracted while working in Africa. Duringthe tour, they spent three days at a fishingcamp in the Laurentian Hills in easternOntario, where between them theyaccounted for more than trout. Laterthat summer, they traveled to theCanadian west, where they fished for thehard-fighting Kam loops trout and forsteelhead and salmon on Vancouver

Loch Bà.

Keith Harwood

River Lussa.

Keith Harwood

Island. While in Vancouver, Buchan wasmade chief of one of the native tribes andgiven the name Teller of Tales. In hisautobiography, there is a wonderful pho-tograph of him in native headdress.It was the summer of when

Buchan embarked on a tour to theCanadian Arctic, an area that he was par-ticularly keen to explore. The tour startedat Edmonton and reached as far asAklavik in the Northwest Territories, call-ing at every Hudson’s Bay post on theway. Buchan was enchanted by this vastwilderness, and on the return journey,the Buchans stopped at Tweedsmuir Park(a national reserve established by theBritish Columbia government in ),where they camped and trekked for tendays and fished for salmon and trout.One of the highlights of Buchan’s

time as governor-general was the visit ofKing George VI and Queen Elizabeth toCanada in May . After spendingthree days at Rideau Hall (the governor’sofficial residence in Ottawa) with theBuchans, the royal couple embarked on atour of the country escorted by MackenzieKing, the prime minister of Canada.Buchan felt that this leg of the tour wasbest left to the Canadians and took him-self off to fish the Cascapedia River inQuébec.Before his death in , Buchan made

one last fishing expedition with Johnniein the summer of to Maligne Lake in

the Rockies. It is poignantly recalled byhis son in Always a Countryman:

My father and I had many golden fish-ing days together. They started twentyyears before when I caught my firsttrout in Kilbucho Burn. The last was onMaligne Lake in the Rockies, where themountains soared upwards from thelake shore, with their sparse covering oftall lean pines thinning away to barestony summits. The lake was so clearthat we could see the bottom anywhere.We caught four trout and those werenot large.

From catching his first trout age nineto his last trout almost fifty-five yearslater, it is clear that angling played a veryimportant part in the life of JohnBuchan. Not only did it provide welcomerelaxation from the stresses of ademanding career, it also provided himwith a great deal of inspiration in his lit-erary works. References to anglers andangling occur frequently in his novels;even his most famous, The Thirty-NineSteps, contains a chapter titled “The Dry-Fly Fisherman.” But that, as they say, isanother story.

�

The author would like to thank thestaff of the John Buchan Story museum

in Peebles, Scotland, for their help in thepreparation of this article.

. John Buchan, ed., Musa Piscatrix(London: John Lane, , second BodleyHead anthology).

. John Buchan, Memory Hold-the-Door: The Autobiography of John Buchan(London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., )and in the United States as Lord Tweedsmuir(John Buchan), Pilgrim’s Way: An Essay inRecollection (New York: Houghton MifflinCompany, ).

. John Buchan, Pilgrim’s Rest (append-ed to Memory Hold-the-Door, ), .

. Ibid., .. John Buchan, “Angling in Still

Waters,” The Gentleman’s Magazine (vol. ,July–December ), –.

. Buchan, Pilgrim’s Rest (appended toMemory Hold-the-Door, ), .

. Andrew Lang, Angling Sketches(London: Longmans, Green and Co., ).

. Susan B. Tweedsmuir, John Buchan byHis Wife and Friends (London: Hodder andStoughton Ltd., ), –.

. Lord Tweedsmuir, Always a Country -man, rev. ed. (London: Robert Hale, [originally published ]), .

. Ibid., –.. Andrew Lownie, John Buchan: The

Presbyterian Cavalier (Edinburgh: Canon gate,), .

. Lord Tweedsmuir, Always a Country -man, –.

Maligne Lake.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malignelakereflection.jpg.

Accessed July .

The Batten Kill Watershed Alliance(BKWA) was created in topromote good stewardship of the

river and its tributaries in both New Yorkand Vermont. BKWA is fulfilling thismission through investments in the riversystem and public outreach. The forma-tion of the group was motivated bystakeholder concern about a decline inthe trout population in the s, prob-

lems with bank erosion and channelinstability, and conflicts between riverusers and landowners. BKWA has achieved significant success

through projects to restore trout habitatand improve river dynamics; the alliancehopes to continue this work. Such pro -gress has been possible through public andprivate funding, but just as important hasbeen BKWA’s network of partnerships.

By , scientific studies in New Yorkand Vermont had identified both () alack of cover and shelter and () poorriver dynamics as factors compromisingtrout habitat. The BKWA board of direc-tors therefore decided to concentrate ontrout habitat restoration, which took theform of installing structures of wood andstone to address both issues. Cover andshelter means protection from predators,

The Batten Kill Watershed Alliance ofNew York and Vermont

by Cynthia Browning

All photos and sketches by Cynthia Browning unless otherwise noted.

Figure . This sketch gives a side viewof a convoy: a whole tree sunk in apool, weighted down with stone. Thisprovides a complex system of coverand shelter within and around thestructure.

Figure . A downstream look at theBatten Kill with a new convoystructure in the foreground.

Fisheries biologist Scott Wixsomwalks toward the distant excavator.

floods, ice, and hot weather, which is par-ticularly important for small- to medi-um-sized trout (the populations that hadshown the most significant decline). Thisprotection comes from large trees in theriverbed, large stones, deep pools, over-hanging trees, and undercut banks. Poorriver dynamics can mean an overwideand shallow river with little cover, whichcan cause bank erosion in high waterbecause of central deposits of stone thatthe ordinary current is too weak to move.BKWA and its partners have installed

structures of wood and stone designed toprovide cover and shelter and to improveriver dynamics. These structures can takea variety of forms. Two types that haveproven effective in providing protectionfor the fish are convoys and bunkers. Aconvoy (Figures –) has one or morewhole trees sunk into a pool, weighteddown with stone. A bank bench orbunker (Figures –) is a way to rebuild abank to protect it from erosion while stillallowing floodplain access and creatingcover and shelter for fish beneath oralong it. These are often installed alongthe outside of a curve. They improve riverdynamics by creating a narrower anddeeper main flow in the channel. State and federal agencies in both New

York and Vermont have provided the sci-entific expertise to design and supervisethe implementation of the projects andmonitor the results. BKWA provided out-reach to landowners and municipalities.The local ties of neighbor to neighbor andlandowner to landowner that the alliancefosters are a big part of what has made thiswork possible, because almost all of theriverbanks are privately owned. BKWAalso administered the projects: getting sur-veys done, applying for permits, gatheringmaterials, and supervising contractors. Inthis way, the commitment of local stake-holders facilitates the application of scien-tific expertise to solving problems. These projects have been proven to

increase the trout population in restoredsections (Figure ). Scientific monitoringof the first project site in Vermont acrossfive years showed a percent increase innumbers of trout compared with thatriver section before the project and withsections of the river that had no structuresinstalled. All of the project work improveshabitat for the brown trout population(Figure ), but it also makes the river bet-ter for native eastern brook trout (Figure). The improvements in cover and shel-ter and in dynamics make the aquatic andriparian habitat better for many otherforms of wildlife, from insects to turtles tocrayfish. In fact, increasing the stability ofthe river channel can make the habitatbetter for the people whose homes androads are along the banks.

Figure . A convoy structure next to a Route embankment in low water. Withoutthis structure, the riverbed offers little significant cover and shelter.

Figure . A fisheries biologist supervising the start of a bunker.

Figure . This basic bank structure can function two ways: A bankbench will be wood and stone, filled with dirt and gravel, and plantedon top. A bunker will have an internal roof of trees and stone so thatthe water still flows in and out of the wood structure underneath.

Figure . The bunker structure beginningto take shape, with trees laid down.

Figure . Bunker trees roofed over with slate.Dirt and bushes will be added next.

Figure . A view of a bunker from the river the following year,showing the bushes and trees planted on top and how water

can go in and out of the wood along the bottom.

Starting at the Route bridge inArlington, Vermont, to Route inSalem, New York, BKWA has now com-pleted seven projects in Vermont and sixin New York. Each project site usuallyinvolves installation of structures asappropriate along a section that may vary

from to , feet. The alliance hasinstalled hundreds of wood and stonestructures—not creating isolated spotswith good habitat, but raising the pro-ductivity of the fishery over significantstretches, along with improvements inriver dynamics that will help the river to

create better habitat naturally. BKWAhopes to continue this initiative with in-stream projects to jump-start the recre-ation of good trout habitat. In the longrun, the key will be to grow large trees onthe banks everywhere—trees that will pre-vent erosion and eventually fall into the

river to form cover and shelter. BKWA hasalready planted thousands of trees. Moreinformation about these projects can befound at www.bkwa.org.Federal and state agencies in both

New York and Vermont obtained fund-ing for these projects, and those publicfunds were crucial to implementation.BKWA has also raised private funds, butwithout the public funds it could nothave made so much progress in trouthabitat restoration of the Batten Kill.The BKWA board has directors from

both New York and Vermont. The over-head is very low: the only staff is theexecutive director, and there is no office.The organization’s resources are investedin the river. The alliance has proven thecapacity to mobilize resources and toengage landowner participation in help-ing this river system to heal itself.I have been involved with BKWA since

the initial stakeholder meetings, servingfirst on the board and now as executivedirector. I believe that this may be one ofthe most important endeavors that I willbe part of in my lifetime. Please considersupporting this dedicated group in theirmission to restore the productivity of theBatten Kill fishery and create a betterfuture for the river and the people wholove it and live along it.All the fish in the river will thank you.

�

Cynthia Browning is executive director ofthe Batten Kill Watershed Alliance. Formore information on how BKWA helpsrestore fish habitat or how to support theirwork, go to www.bkwa.org, or contactBrowning directly (PO Box , Arling ton,VT ; [] -; bkwaexdir@gmail.com).

Thanks to all our BKWA partners:private landowners and alliance mem-bers; municipal governments in theBatten Kill watershed; Green MountainNational Forest; U.S. Fish & WildlifeService; Ver mont Fish & WildlifeDepartment; New York Department ofEnvironmental Con servation; the OrvisCompany; Clearwater, Adirondack, andSouthwest Vermont Trout Unlimitedchapters; Trout and Salmon Foundation;Wash ington County (New York) Soil &Water Conservation District; BenningtonCounty (Vermont) Conservation Dis -trict; and National Fish and WildlifeFoundation.

Figure . A fisheries biologist weighing and measuringsmall brown trout during a fish census. These are the

trout that really need the cover and shelter.

Figure . A nice native brook trout caught in the Batten Kill. Thesetrout benefit from the habitat improvements. Photo by Jim Henderson.

Figure . A big Batten Kill brown trout. Photo by Chris Alexopoulos, USFS.

T that Bill Oyster witnessed fly fishing, hewas growing up in the northwestern town of Powell,Wyoming. Ironically, it wasn’t until he moved to the

warmer climate of north Georgia that his obsession with thesport really took hold. Bill would often hike for miles, alone, andcamp along the crystal-clear trout streams of the Appalachianwilderness. With trout in his backyard, Bill soon discovered thatit was only a half-day drive to the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlanticto pursue sea trout, redfish, and tarpon. In other words, he wasliving in a place that could keep even the most enthusiastic flyfisher entertained year-round. While attending the University of Georgia in Athens, Bill

met his wife, Shannen, who would be a large part of his successin turning his passion into a career. Soon after leaving collegeto compete as a professional road-racing cyclist, Bill marriedShannen, and they moved to Gainesville, Georgia. Just after the Olympic Trials, Bill suffered a career-ending fall whiletraining. Suddenly he had time and energy to spare and pouredit all into his fly-fishing interests. He spent time doing anythinghe could in the fly-fishing world, from tying flies at the tradeshows to teaching casting and guiding for area fly shops. Still in his twenties, Bill took an interest in bamboo fly rods.

He loved their beauty and history and hoped to obtain one forhimself. The more he learned about bamboo, the more hebecame intrigued by the craft. At that time, there was no onearound to mentor his interest in rod making and no Internetwith its endless stream of information. So it was through a smallstack of dusty books and countless hours of trial and error thatBill slowly, using traditional techniques, put together his ownstyle. Each rod produced was a bit better than the one before,and his experience in all manner of fly fishing (as well as hiscasting knowledge and abilities) quickly put him on the roadto creating classic rods that could satisfy a more modernexpectation of performance. His art training led to an aesthet-ic that set a new standard for the kind of beauty that could beachieved at the highest end of the niche market. Many hours are spent at the engraving vise creating hyper-

customized rods for clients around the world. When he’s notcrafting rods for customers, Bill shares his craft through theOyster rod-making school. Drawing on his own experienceand struggles with all techniques and methods of rod con-struction, he has created what is by far the largest school of rodmaking in the world today. Each year, more than a hundredstudents travel from around the world to spend a week withBill and, using his techniques, complete their own rods. Whennot working, Bill often leads groups of clients on fishing expe-ditions to some of the most exotic and beautiful destinationsin the world, where they put their creations to the test. Thesedays, Bill and Shannen run their production shop and rod-making school in the quaint north Georgia mountain town ofBlue Ridge, where they live with their two small children,Cutter and Veronica.

What were your beginnings in fly fishing? Who got you into it?I really just stumbled into it on my own. Nobody in my familyhad any interest in fishing, but I was captivated by it from my ear-liest memory. I first saw fly fishing as a kid growing up in north-west Wyoming. At the time, I wasn’t too impressed, as my Zebcoand can of worms seemed to do the trick just fine. It wasn’t untilcollege when I picked up a fly rod to chase the trout in northGeorgia that I was really struck by not just how effective it was(and not very at first), but how beautiful it was as well.

Why bamboo?I have always had what you might call an artistic sensibility.The romance of a bamboo rod, a wooden sailboat, or a classicmotorcycle—it’s not something you can explain and certainly

A Modern-Day Bamboo Master

Bill Oyster. Photo courtesy of Oyster Bamboo.

not something you can justify. It is either something that stirsyour senses or it isn’t. For me, it was and still is.

Are there any rod makers who have influenced your technique? For me it was every rod maker who ever wrote a book. I’ve readthem all many times over. I think that Everett Garrison’s book[A Master’s Guide to Building a Bamboo Fly Rod, with Hoagy B.Carmichael ()] might top the list. It made the wholeprocess seem like such a serious and impossible undertakingthat I had to give it a try!

What do you do differently than everyone else?Strangely, I think the biggest difference between me and otherrod makers is that I don’t take it too seriously. Fly fishing and flyrods should be fun. Yes, I am serious about always trying tomake the finest fly rods I can, because to me that is fun. I don’tmind if others like different styles or use different methods. I’mnot interested in debating tapers or plane-sharpening angles. Iknow what works for me and enjoy every minute of it.

How did you learn to engrave, and what goes into that process?Early on I experienced a demand from my customers for person-alization. I took a chance on myself and traveled to an engravingschool in Kansas to see if it was something I might be able to do.Fortunately, it stuck. I talk directly to customers and combinetheir interests and history with my experience to design and cre-ate custom engravings. I sometimes spend upward of a hundredhours designing, drawing, and cutting the most elaborate pieces.

What is the creative process that you go through when mak-ing fly rods?It all starts with the customer. I need to know how and where heor she will use the rod and if there is any strong preference in rodaction or feel. All of the practical considerations come first. Onlythen do we discuss aesthetics. First and foremost, the rod mustperform properly, consistently, and reliably. Otherwise, I mightas well paint a picture instead! Some people are only looking fora simple and understated style, and we are happy to comply.Many of our more complicated rods are ordered as heirloompieces, and my engravings are based on highly personal ideasthat will stay in that family for generations.

Of the fly rods that you have made, which is your favorite?There is no question that it is the first rod I ever made: #. Ittook me six months of trial and error, reading and rereading,head scratching and cussing, but I finally achieved somethingI had dreamed about for years. I’ll never sell this rod. It’s myfamily heirloom.

What was it like fishing with and making a rod for PresidentJimmy Carter?I guided President Carter again in September, and it’s alwaysthe same: highly rewarding, thoroughly enjoyable, and morethan a little stressful. He is, after all, a serious dry-fly man, andthose big boys aren’t always looking up on demand. He’s a hellof an angler, though, and we always get a few to the net. Therods were originally purchased as a fund-raiser by the CarterCenter. The idea they had was that he would autograph the rodbefore I varnished it, he would fish it for awhile, and then itwould go to auction. However, after fishing that first rod forabout thirty minutes, he decided that a new rod should becommissioned because the one in his hand wasn’t going any-where! It was a real honor for a young guy from a one-red-lighttown working all alone (at that time) in his basement!

Were there any challenges or adversities you had to overcome?Well, starting out as a twenty-something-year-old kid in the

Deep South didn’t help me fit the stereotype for a bamboo rodmaker. None of the big guys in the industry really gave me thetime of day back then. That’s when I decided that I wouldn’tspend too much time worrying about what others thought ofme. Instead, I set out to make rods that were so fine, worked sowell, and looked so good that it didn’t matter who made them,or where. That still pretty much sums up our business philoso-phy, although with my gray beard, things are getting easier! Infact, all of the closed doors I experienced when starting out iswhat led me to teaching rod-making classes. I found that reject-ing the enthusiasm of would-be rod makers just plain felt bad.That wasn’t the feeling I wanted mixed up in my life’s work.Instead, I decided to find a practical way to make people feelgood. To this day, I’ve helped more people complete their firstbamboo rod than anyone in history, and that makes me feelgood. See how that works?

What is your favorite fish to go after? Do you prefer chasinghard-to-find fish and experiencing the different places youcatch them in or staying local and going after the footballrainbows in Georgia?I will fish wherever I have the opportunity and have certainly spentmy share of time harassing the local trout. However, like any drug,a real junkie always needs more. This year alone [], I’ve fishedfor trout and stripers in Georgia, bull reds in Louisiana, big brownsin Patagonia, and tarpon in the Keys. In October I’ll be heading tonorthern Argentina for golden dorado, and in November it’sAndros Island for bonefish. I am an addict through and through.

Any special memories from the rod shop or people youencountered?The shop is my home; where I sleep is less important.Employees, friends, and fishing buddies are one and the same.My wife handles the business end of things from her office, mykids do their homework sitting in bamboo shavings, our dogssniff everyone who walks in. This is where we hang out on ourdays off and meet up when we go out. This place and the peo-ple who frequent it are what allows us all to live the life we want.

Are you making it a family affair? Have you taught your kidsto fly fish? Have they shown interest in picking up the rod-building torch?My kids enjoy fishing like most kids naturally do when giventhe chance. I am careful not to push them too much, because Idon’t want to chase them away. I would love it if they choose tocarry the torch someday, but only time will tell.

What are your thoughts on fisheries conservation?I’ve seen firsthand the effects of development, deforestation,pollution, and overcrowded waters. It’s a problem we’ve all cre-ated and must find a way to manage. Mother Nature simplycan’t keep up if we continue in a thoughtless and careless man-ner. Still, there are those (fishermen even!) who act like there’sno tomorrow and take without giving. It’s a problem for sure,but one that could be managed if enough people would stopthinking about their tomorrow and instead think about theirchildren’s. Rant over.

OK. One rod, one reel, one fly, and you’re on a desertedisland. What do you take? Hmmm, an island, must be salt water, gonna need to eat. An -foot, -weight Oyster bamboo (solid built for durability) withmy trusty Tibor Signature Series reel and a good old ClouserMinnow. Let’s go fishing!

P NC C

T ’ Deborah Pratt Dawson Conservation Symposium, held – March inManchester, Vermont, was an exciting weekend of presentations and movies featuring conservation organiza-tions and their use of modern technology (or in some cases, its absence) to further efforts to improve and pre-

serve fisheries and fly-fishing waters. This symposium gave the museum the opportunity to work with our core con-servation organization alliances (American Rivers, Atlantic Salmon Federation, Batten Kill Watershed Alliance,Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, and Trout Unlimited) and create a platform for the sharing of project information.In an effort to reach a wider audience, we posted segments of each March presentation on our website, and we

have received positive feedback from our online visitors. The museum also wants to reach out to others who mightprefer the written word, so a portion of this journal issue is devoted to two of these presentations: one prepared bykeynote speaker Michael Cooperman of Conservation International and the other by Cynthia Browning, executivedirector of the Batten Kill Watershed Alliance. Both Cooperman and Browning discuss important insights for thoseundertaking and evaluating conservation projects. We are sure these features will inspire your support of conservation efforts near and far.

C CE D

Voices in Conservation

T for thewonderful introduction. Duringmy professional career in applied

conservation, I’ve had the good fortuneto work on a number of projects thathave developed into significant conser-vation issues. For example, during myPhD studies at Oregon State University, Iwas working on a couple of lesser-known fish—the Lost River and theshortnose suckers—when a drought hitthe region. The government agencyresponsible for dividing water amongvarious competing needs had to, bypower of the Endangered Species Act,prioritize water delivery to protect theendangered suckers as well as the endan-gered salmon that lived down the riverfrom the suckers. Very limited waterwent to irrigation. As you can imagine,this was not a popular decision amongsome members of the community. Later, when I went to the University of

British Columbia, I happened to be doingresearch on sockeye salmon migrationright when sockeye salmon populationsin the Frasier River—which supportsmultimillion-dollars-a-year commercial,recreational, and tribal fisheries—crashed, and we had the so-called mys-tery of the missing fish. Again, contro-versy arose when the government agen-cies responsible for sockeye manage-

ment shut down, or greatly reduced, allthree parts of the sockeye harvest. A final example is my current work in

Cambodia. This is a rapidly modernizingcountry grappling with the trade-offsinherent in building big hydropowerdams that will fuel economic growth butgreatly affect the freshwater fish popula-tions: a fundamental diet staple that pro-vides about seventy-five percent of theprotein consumed by Cambodians. In all of these cases—suckers, salmon,

and the tropical fish of Cambodia—there’s more than ample finger pointingand chest pounding among governmentbiologists and resource managers, com-mercial fishing interests, first nations andother social groups, academics, andnumerous vested citizen interest groups,such as irrigation councils. I have learneda few lessons along the way that I wouldlike to share with you today. I’ve tailored my comments to address

two main topics. First, I’m going to talkabout three strongly interrelated techni-cal issues that I think of as the forgottenstepchildren of the restoration projectcycle: () stating a project goal up front,() acquiring pretreatment data, and ()conducting posttreatment evaluation.Second, I will address communicationand share some thoughts with you aboutwhat I really think matters when it

comes to protecting natural systems,which is getting the nonfishy folks of ourcommunity to actually care about thesame thing that we care about.Everyone here who is a part of the

world of restoration likely has experi-enced “the thrill”—that moment whenthe backhoe rolls off the truck and theperched culvert gets torn out, or you puta shovel into the earth to plant a tree inthe riparian zone, or you knock a treedown and convert it into river wood. Butone of the things that is frequently miss-ing from these sorts of stewardshipefforts is an explicitly stated project goal.It might sound silly, but it is important tohave a clearly defined goal. In some cases,the goal is self-evident. You remove theperched culvert in the hopes that you willallow fish passage and thereby open upnew habitat. In other cases, the goal is notobvious. Do you repair a degraded anderoding riverbank to provide flood pro-tection? Or are you there to stop down-stream siltation and improve down-stream water quality by cutting off thesupply of sediment? Or are you there toincrease the abundance of aquatic insectsthat serve as food for the early life stagesof fish? Or are you there to increase theabundance of fish? or the size of fish? Thesame kinds of questions can apply toriver-wood projects. Are you doing this

Lessons in Conservationby Michael S. Cooperman

project to increase fish populations byimproving young-of-the-year survival?Are you trying to increase the localabundance of adult fish? Are you tryingto improve the size of the fish to improvea trophy fishery? Are you trying toimprove the abundance across an entireregion to recover an at-risk population?It might sound academic, but the realityis that stating the goal of your project isthe only way to know if you ultimatelyattain your goal. Clearly articulating the goal of an

effort serves two additional purposes.First, it helps to avoid unintended mis-communication among project partners.My good friends at Ducks Unlimited andTrout Unlimited will readily agree thathealthy watersheds are important fortheir concerns, but it should be obviousthat they won’t always approach projectsexactly the same way or with the sameinherent biases or anticipated goals.Similarly, when a local watershed councilcomposed mostly of farmers and live-stock ranchers comes together with a con-servation group like the Nature Conser -vancy, they might all agree right away thatyou need to fix a given problem, but theymight not agree on what the goal of thatfix is going to be. Ranchers and farmerswill want to protect their investments,whereas the Nature Conservancy is likelyto want holistic ecology. By stating yourguidelines and goals upfront, you canavoid miscommunication and hurt feel-ings down the line. Stating project goals up front also

serves in helping to organize the pretreat-ment data collection, the second of thethree often-forgotten points that I want toemphasize. It’s important to truly under-stand what you have before you start tin-kering with things. Put simply, how canyou be certain if your efforts have had aneffect if you don’t first know what you hadat the beginning? Pretreatment data aretypically neither expensive nor time-con-suming to collect but can be invaluablewhen determining whether you success-fully achieved your goal. If you’re spend-ing money to make more or better fishhabitat, don’t you want to know if you’regetting more fish? Let me illustrate thispoint with an example from my ownwork, which will segue into the third ofthe key technical issues: posttreatmenteffectiveness evaluation. While at the University of British

Columbia, my professor and I werefunded to do an effectiveness evaluationof stream restoration works in the B.C.interior. Specifically, I was tasked toassess whether the efforts that had goneinto restoring nearly eroding river-banks were contributing to the goal ofmore sockeye salmon. The idea of the

bank restoration efforts was to make theriver channels narrower and deeper sothat less of the surface area of the riverwas exposed to direct sunlight, therebylowering summertime water tempera-ture. Unfortunately, no one measuredwater temperature or channel dimensionsbefore the restoration efforts, so I couldnot determine if the channel was narrow-er, deeper, or cooler than it had beenbefore. I knew that the rivers were at leastsomewhat narrower because the restora-tion placed large amounts of wood androck into the channel, but did this changechannel erosion and deposition processessuch that the projects were rebuilding thefloodplains? Or did the amount that thechannel narrow exactly equal the amountof the supplies that were dumped into it?We could not answer this questionbecause we didn’t have pretreatment dataand therefore couldn’t do a true posttreat-ment effectiveness evaluation. Similarly,for the question “Do we, or will we, havemore fish?,” my answer was a simple “Ihave no idea.” We didn’t have a reliablemeasure of the number (and its year-to-year variability) of fish that were presentbefore the restoration effort. All told, therestoration program had spent severalmillions of dollars, yet we could notdemonstrate success. I don’t believe my emphasis on pre-

treatment data and posttreatment evalu-ation is a bunch of ivory tower hooey,and I’m not alone for calling it an essen-tial part of the restoration process. Whythis emphasis? Effectiveness evaluation isthe best way to learn about what workedand what didn’t. Then you can reuse yoursuccesses and you can evolve your failuresto get to the success. This falls squarelyinto the mission of today’s symposium.The American Museum of Fly Fishingputting itself forward as a data repositoryfor restoration efforts is a wonderful stepin the right direction toward collectivelearning about projects that have worked,sharing techniques, and learning fromour failures. I applaud this effort, and Ihope that it gets legs and survives.Moving on from these three technical

points, I want to focus for a moment onthe idea of communication, becausewhat I have learned in my work is thatscience, even when done correctly, is buta small part of the conservation equa-tion. Conservation is really a question ofsocial policy and communal will, not aquestion of technical science expertisealone. After all, you’re not really manag-ing fish, you’re managing fishermen, andyou’re not really managing the water,you’re managing how the water is beingused by people. Herein lies what I call theascendancy of communication. Somepeople call it education.

Getting the story of the wonders ofrivers and oceans and all they have to offerto people out into the public is essential.Rivers and oceans need all the friends theycan get. But communication is more thansaying simply, “Wow, this stuff is cool.” Inmy work at Conservation International,we focus on the idea of natural capital.What is natural capital? It’s the realizationthat healthy, intact, sustained natural sys-tems provide human society with a wholelot of services that are worth a whole lotof money. Healthy watersheds that caninclude things like forest and hill slopes,hydrologically connected wetlands, andrivers that are dynamically connected totheir floodplain are great for modifyingflood potential. If you just leave someparts of the watershed intact, you may nothave to spend a king’s ransom on engi-neering flood control or postflood recov-ery efforts. Healthy wetlands withinwatersheds will help regulate water flows.Like a sponge, wetlands can absorb waterwhen water is abundant, and then slowlyrelease it as the landscape dries out. So ahealthy watershed can actually providesustained water flow through the drysummer months. That’s really good forirrigated agriculture. Those flows will alsokeep water temperatures lower to avoidsummertime spikes. So the recreationalfishery and the associated economic ben-efits to the community survive. Communicating the power of rivers as

“natural capital” is an outstanding meansfor motivating conservation and steward-ship, and by and large, it can work in justabout any location. In conclusion, whatthe museum is attempting to accomplishthrough its conservation archive is power-ful, useful, and timely. Clearly, we have alot of citizen science and social interestgroups that are out there trying to protectthe resources that we all love. I applaudthe attempt to bring that informationtogether, to learn what works and whatdoesn’t work, and to help us communi-cate the power of these efforts.

�

Michael S. Cooperman, PhD, is a fish andfisheries ecologist with Conservation Inter -national. He is the lead investigator on theHot Fish project, a comprehensive researchprogram exploring how freshwater fishes ofthe tropics will respond to warming watertemperatures and the consequences forhuman food security. He is also co–princi-pal investigator for CI’s program to describethe natural history and ecology of socioeco-nomically important fish species of Cam -bodia’s Tonle Sap Lake and the design oflong-term monitoring and managementplans related to changing land-use practicesand large-scale hydropower developmentwithin the lower Mekong River watershed.

[“The Batten Kill Watershed Alliance ofNew York and Vermont,” which offers anoverview of BKWA’s work, can be found onpage . This article will cross-referencesome of the illustrations and photos foundthere. —.]

T of trout habitatrestoration based on scientificanalysis and grassroots participa-

tion. It takes place in the Batten Kill, astoried trout river in Vermont and NewYork that experienced a decline in thenumbers of trout, especially small- tomedium-sized brown trout, in the s.Local stakeholders and federal and stateagencies came together to study the habi-tat to discover why this might have hap-pened. It was determined that all habitatconditions were good, except cover andshelter. Projects were developed to in -crease the cover and shelter in the river byinstalling structures of wood and stone inboth states. Scientific monitoring hasfound increases in the trout population inthe sections where the habitat restorationstructures have been installed, and thefish seem to use structures that incorpo-rate a lot of wood the most. In the short run, the Batten Kill

Watershed Alliance (BKWA) and itspartners plan to install habitat improve-ment structures wherever we can as longas we can obtain funding. But in the longrun, the solution is to have woodedriverbanks so that the river naturallyrecruits large trees to provide cover andshelter in decades to come, and goodriver dynamics so that the wood stays inthe channel. We will also be working toeducate landowners in river stewardship,protect existing wooded banks, and plantmore trees.

THE PROBLEM IN

The Batten Kill is one of only fiverivers managed as a wild trout stream inVermont. Native brook and wild browntrout reproduce naturally. No trout havebeen stocked since the early s. The

fishery is currently under catch-and-release regulations. In New York, Depart -ment of Environmental Conservation(DEC) Region biologists have deter-mined that the Batten Kill has the sec-ond-best natural reproduction of anystream from Rensselaer County toCanada. The river is still stocked in sec-tions in New York.In the s, the Vermont Batten Kill

experienced a decrease in the number ofwild brown trout. Electro shocking fishcensus studies showed a steady decline inthe number of fish, especially small- tomedium-sized brown trout. In NewYork, a study by the DEC confirmed thatthe catch rate had declined.

THE STUDIES AND THEHYPOTHESIS IN

Both New York and Vermont initiatedstudies to determine the likely cause of thedecline in trout numbers. Because offunding obtained by the late Senator JimJeffords, studies were particularly thor-ough and intense in Vermont. All aspectsof Batten Kill trout habitat were studied bystate and federal scientists, including waterquality, chemistry, and temperature; habi-tat inventory; diseases; spawning; foodsupply; and geomorphic analysis. Theonly habitat condition that was not foundto be good was cover and shelter.Cover and shelter means protection

for the fish from predators, floods, ice,and hot weather. It is provided by theriver habitat through deep pools, largerocks, undercut banks, overhangingtrees, and large wood in the riverbed. Asmuch as percent of the streambedshould be providing this; in much of thelower main stem of the Batten Kill inVermont, it was as low as percent.Similar deficiency was found in the riverin New York. Why might this deficiency of cover

and shelter have developed? There is nodefinitive answer to this question—weonly have speculations. Photographs of

the river from the s through the s,when the fishery was more productive,show banks that overall have fewer treeson them than we have now. It is possiblethat during the log drives on dammedmill pond sections of the river into thes, enough logs escaped to form coverand shelter structure in the river. It is pos-sible that until the Red Mill Dam in WestArlington was taken out in the s,impoundment raised the water level andpool depths a considerable distanceupstream during the summers, also slow-ing dynamics and retaining wood. It ispossible that expansions of infrastructureand agriculture that led to straightening,channelizing, and berming of the river inplaces resulted in a kind of fire-hose effectthrough which wood in the river is shotout into the floodplain or flood channel,rather than retained in the main channelto provide cover and shelter.One thing that is known for sure is that

as the popularity of canoeing and kayakingon the river increased in the s, somepeople went down the river cutting andsometimes removing overhanging trees,preventing them from following their nat-ural course of entering the river and pro-viding cover and shelter. Landowners havealso done this. Canoe rental owners andother floaters are now encouraged to justtrim the minimum needed of a fallen treeto allow safe passage. One final speculation arises from

observation of the aftermath of TropicalStorm Irene () in the Batten Kill. Thevolume of wood brought into the river bythat flood has to some extent functionedlike a pulse of potential cover and shelter.Before Irene, the last tropical storm to hitthe Batten Kill may have been . If thatstorm also brought a pulse of wood intothe fishery, that cover and shelter wouldhave been gone by the s. Whatever the cause of the lack of suf-

ficient cover and shelter, our mission isto use current knowledge to restore theBatten Kill habitat for trout and for otherwildlife. Figure shows a good riverbedcross section with wooded banks, access

The Testimony of the Trout:River Wood Is Good

by Cynthia Browning

All sketches and all photographs by Cynthia Browning of BKWA unless otherwise noted.

to the floodplain, a structure with deepas well as shallow areas, and retention ofwood in the streambed. Figure shows a healthy pattern of

curves that allow the river to create vari-ations of velocity: fast and erosive on theoutside of the curves, where trees may bepulled down into the current, and slowand depositional on the inside of thecurves, where gravel bars may form. In Vermont, the hypothesis was that

the primary habitat problem was insuffi-cient cover and shelter—the habitatcharacteristic that is especially importantfor small- to medium-sized fish whosenumbers had experienced the greatestdecline. There has been some straighten-ing and channelizing of the Batten Kill inVermont in places, but overall, it retainscurvature and the basic pool/riffle pat-tern that constitutes healthy and stableriver dynamics. There just isn’t enoughcover and shelter, especially from trees inthe riverbed.

Figure shows a poor riverbed crosssection: a wide shallow channel withouttrees on the banks. In some areas, therewould be berms blocking access to thefloodplain as well. The shallow flowdeposits stones and gravel in a centralbar, driving the erosive force of the cur-rent into the banks. Figure shows a poor pattern in a sec-

tion of the river straightened, channel-ized, and sometimes even bermed toprotect roads, farm fields, or residences.This can create a kind of fire-hose effectin high water, through which woodentering the channel tends to end upshot out into the floodplain or floodchannels instead of retained in theriverbed to provide cover and shelter.But there is an additional problem inNew York from the dysfunctional effectof “stream improvement structures”installed decades ago. These log-and-rock structures were angled to form a Vacross the river with the point of the V

facing downstream. The idea may havebeen to create small pools and to protectbanks, but the effect in high water was todrive the erosive force of the current intothe bank. This led to significant bankerosion—as much as feet in someplaces. Arrows in the sketch show thecurrent driven into the bank by thedeflector structures.In the New York Batten Kill, a similar

deficiency of cover and shelter wasfound, but the deflectors have resulted inmany sections of the river that are over-wide and shallow. When the riverbed hasthat structure, the shallow spread-outcurrent does not have a volume andvelocity of water strong enough to movethe stones coming down the river.Deposits create bars within the channelthat can result in directing the currentinto the banks; the banks of dirt and veg-etation are more erodible than the com-pacted stones. Within such wide shallowareas, there are typically no pools, no big

Figure . A good riverbed cross section.

Figure . A healthy pattern of river curves.

Figure . A poor riverbed cross section.

Figure . A poor pattern in a human-altered riverbed.

rocks, no wood—no cover and shelter atall, and ongoing bank erosion creatingproblems for landowners. Before addingcover and shelter, the dynamics of thesesections of the river must be remediated,using natural stream-channel design togenerate better pattern and cross-sectionmorphology.Therefore, the restoration approach in

New York has been to install structuresthat allow the natural river dynamics tocreate a deeper winding current first,which may naturally result in the forma-tion of pools or the collection of woodydebris. Alternatively, we may go back tothe sites later to install cover and shelterstructures when there are better places toput them.

RESTORATION PROJECTS: THROUGH THE PRESENT

BKWA obtained public and privatefunding for projects designed and super-vised by fisheries biologists in bothstates. Administration of the projectsinvolved contacting landowners, per-forming surveys, applying for permits,purchasing materials, hiring contractors,and working with municipalities. Allriver work was done under the guidanceof the scientists in both states.

Vermont

In Vermont, the fisheries biologistsdirected BKWA to develop projects inthe lower Batten Kill in Arlington, wherethe decline in the small- to medium-sized cohort of brown trout has beenmost significant and the cover and shel-ter is insufficient. A variety of structuresof stone and wood have been used invarious combinations along differentsections, but ultimately two have turnedout to be particularly useful to the trouthabitat and river dynamics. One kind is avane of stone and wood, and the other iswhat is called a convoy structure of stoneand wood. It turns out that structuresinvolving wood placed in pool areas areparticularly useful to the trout. Thewood creates complex protected cham-bers to protect fish, facilitates sedimentsorting, and provides habitat for aquaticinsects.

Figure . Log/rock vane.

Figure . The construction of alog/rock vane.

Figure . Log/rock vane constructionunder the supervision of Scott Wixsom ofthe Green Mountain National Forest.

Chris Alexopoulos, GMNF

Chris Alexopoulos, GMNF

Chris Alexopoulos, GMNFLog/rock vanes (Figure ) can be

placed at the outside of a curve in anexisting pool or on alternating sides ofthe channel to pinch the current into adeeper winding pattern. Figures –show the construction of a log/rockvane structure under the supervision ofScott Wixsom of the Green MountainNational Forest (GMNF). It is prettyclear that Wixsom gets up close to besure that the structure is properly builtand secured. These photos show thework in a section of the river upstreamof the confluence of the Green River andthe Batten Kill in West Arlington.Figures and show complex log/

rock vane structures, the first againupstream of the Green River confluenceand the second upstream of the conflu-ence with Benedict Brook. Like almostall of our structures in both states, thesecame through the flooding of TropicalStorm Irene and show collection ofadditional branches and wood fromthat. The first is a bank structure that isexposed in lower water, and the secondis in deep water at the outside of a curve,providing cover and shelter year-round. Another structure that has proven to

be very useful to the trout is what I call aconvoy (see page , Figure ). This isbuilt by sinking a whole tree into a pooland weighting it down with bouldersand slate. Sometimes two or three treesare used if they are relatively small. Allthe branches and roots in this structurecreate a complex variety of spaces foruse by different-sized fish, and it is notnecessary to disturb banks to anchor it.Figure on page shows GMNF’s

Wixsom walking downstream to jointhe excavator working on additionalstructures. The roots of the convoy treesare in the foreground and the branchesin the distance. The stones can be seendimly through the water. Figure onpage shows a convoy in a long narrowpool area near the Route embank-ment at the point of the lowest waterlevels of the year. Both photos are ofwork in a section some distance belowthe West Arlington covered bridge.When this work is planned, the struc-

tures are designed to take advantage ofpool areas, or springs or tributariesentering the Batten Kill, and of existingboulders or wood in the river. We have

Figure . Close-up supervision of log/rockvane construction.

Figure . Complex log/rock vaneupstream of the Green River confluence.

Figure . Complex log/rock vaneupstream of the confluence

with Benedict Brook.

now installed habitat improvementstructures in various sections from abovethe Route bridge at the ArlingtonRecreation Park down to some distancebelow the West Arlington covered bridge.We have skipped some sections, and insome areas we have installed only a fewstructures based on the opportunitiesthat the river presented, or considera-tions related to infrastructure, property,or swimming holes. We have covered sev-eral miles of the river in West Arlington.

New York

In New York, we have installed mostlylog/rock vanes and bank stabilizationstructures. As discussed earlier, the riveris often so shallow and wide that thereare few pool areas in which to installcover and shelter structures. We mustfirst install structures that function tonarrow and deepen the main flow of theriver within the existing channel. The aimis to create a dominant river flow that

curves back and forth through the chan-nel, deeper and narrower than before,creating better pool areas. Then the rivermay be able to collect wood that entersthe river naturally instead of shooting itout into the floodplain. Later we may beable to go back and install cover andshelter structures in pools that were notthere before. We have to remove the old dysfunc-

tional “deflectors” before installing thestructures to improve the river dynam-ics. Figure is looking upstream at adeflector downstream of the confluencewith Murray Hollow Brook in Shushan/Jackson that has driven the current intothe bank, causing erosion in the fore-ground. Figure is looking downstreamat another deflector causing the samekind of erosion and channel wideningbetween the state line park and the Route bridge in Shushan. We used log/rock vanes in New York to

create a narrow, winding, deeper main cur-rent of flow. Figure shows Joe Driscoll of

Washington County Soil, Water, andConservation District viewing a struc-ture that was put in thirty-six hoursbefore Tropical Storm Irene hit. Otherstructures can be seen in the distance.Also in the photo are an unidentifiedphotographer and Carl Schwartz of U.S.Fish & Wildlife Service. Schwartz saidthat the high flows of Irene put theintended improvements in river dynam-ics in fast forward, so that we got five orten years of changes in the riverbedstructure practically overnight.Another structure that Schwartz has

used extensively to narrow the main flowand prevent erosion can be called a bankbench or bunker (see page , Figure ).This is a low shelf built with trees androcks below the level of the main bank. Ifit is a bench, it will be filled in with graveland dirt and planted to grass and bushesand trees. It will serve to narrow the mainflow of the channel and to stabilize thebase of the bank while still allowing flood-plain access. A bank bunker is similar in

Figure . An upstream look at a deflector.

Figure . A log/rock vane placed thirty-six hoursbefore Tropical Storm Irene hit.

Figure . A downstream look at a deflector.

Figure . Extensive erosion and widening from old deflectors.

structure and function, but the lower lay-ers are not filled in; instead, they are builtof trees, rocks, and brush in a way thatallows the water to continue to flow in andout. This creates a complex network ofcover and shelter for the trout underneathwhile protecting the bank from erosionand allowing floodplain access.Figure , looking downstream toward

the confluence with Murray HollowBrook, shows extensive erosion and widen-ing that is due to old deflectors. Figure islooking upstream along the same generalsection after installation of bank benches,which are solid structures of wood, stone,dirt, and gravel. Figure is a closer view ofa bank bench. The bench photos weretaken immediately after the work, so thedirt areas had not yet been planted withgrass and bushes.Figure is the machine access area. We

installed structures to stabilize the bankthere and planted it to grass and trees. The

work areas shown above are in the distanceupstream.Figures – on pages and show the

construction of a bank bunker a short dis-tance downstream of the Route bridgein Shushan. They show first the start of theconstruction of the bunker, then the treesthat frame it, then the layer of slate stone tocreate the roof. Figure on page shows aview of the bunker structure from the rivera year later, with the wood below the waterlevel and the bushes planted on top. We have now restored habitat in vari-

ous sections starting at the New York/Vermont boundary, then skipping down-stream with project sections around theMurray Hollow Brook confluence, down-stream of the Eagleville covered bridge,upstream of the Highway bridge, andmuch farther downstream above the con-fluence with Black Creek. We have manymore habitat restoration opportunities ifwe can raise the funds.

MONITORING CONFIRMSHYPOTHESIS: THE TROUT

TESTIFY IN

In Vermont, the numbers of small- tomedium-sized brown trout (the popula-tion cohort that showed the greatestdecline in earlier studies) increasedalmost percent. This increase is com-pared with the same area before therestoration and with other sections ofthe Batten Kill that were not restored.The scientific paper summarizing theseresults is “Trout Population Response toCover Habitat Enhancement in theBatten Kill Main Stem” by Ken Cox,Vermont Fish & Wildlife Departmentbio logist (www.vtfishandwildlife.com/common/pages/DisplayFile.aspx?itemId=). This is the evidence that con-firms that the lack of cover and shelter hasbeen a limiting factor in trout habitat. It

Figure . Machine access area.

Figure . An upstream view after installation of bank benches.

Figure . A closer view of a bank bench.

confirms the usefulness and validity ofour efforts. It is a very strong result for awild population studied in the field. The monitoring in New York has been

much more anecdotal and observational,but there are definite improvements indynamics and habitat, as well as reportsof improved angling opportunities in therestored areas. Although brown trout are the domi-

nant sporting fish in the river itself,increasing cover and shelter makes it eas-ier for eastern brook trout to occupy theirnative habitat space in the Batten Kill. Itis important to note that these habitatimprovement structures also serve otherriparian and aquatic creatures. When theelectroshocking census is done, turtlesand crayfish are also found using thestructures. The leaves and twigs that thestructures collect provide importanthabitat for benthic macroinvertebrates.In the short run, we are continuing

active restoration work in both states.

But we are close to running out of fund-ing to expand and intensify this work—work with proven success. In the long run, the Batten Kill needs

trees planted on all the banks, trees thatwill eventually get big, get old, and fallinto the river. If the river dynamics aregood, this wood can stay in the stream -bed to provide the cover and shelteressential to trout habitat. Wooded river-banks have many benefits in terms ofholding banks and filtering runoff.Figures – show a tree-planting pro-

ject along the Batten Kill in Manchester,Vermont. Figure shows the dogwoodsand sycamores to be planted, with one ofthe Vermont Youth Conservation Corpscrew who did the planting. Figure shows a sycamore in place. Figure shows a log jam in the river nearby—oneof the very few. This planting project of trees was undertaken by the Ben -nington County Conservation Districtwith the assistance of BKWA.

THE FUTURE:INTENSIFICATION AND

EXPANSION

BKWA has positioned itself to contin-ue the restoration of the Batten Kill. Thealliance and its partners have the abilityto design and implement the necessaryprojects. However, additional resourceswill be needed to continue this restora-tion work. We have a proven track recordwith documented success. Please consid-er joining our efforts.

�

Cynthia Browning is executive director of theBatten Kill Watershed Alliance. For moreinformation on how BKWA helps restore fishhabitat or how to support their work, go towww.bkwa.org, or contact Browning directly(PO Box , Arlington, VT [] -; bkwaexdir@gmail.com).

Figure . Dogwoods and sycamores ready to be planted. Figure . Sycamore in place.

Figure . Log jam in the river.

T on the roof signaling more rain wasnot what I wanted to hear. The remnants of TropicalStorm Irene had already saturated the ground, leaving

the Grand Cascapedia almost too high and alder tinged to fish.Peter had just arrived from Connecticut and, knowing that Ihad the great Fraser’s Pool in the afternoon, I had little troublepersuading him to unpack his gear for the : p.m. trip north.We met guides Perry and Carl at the Forks Pool, and soon the

green-sided -foot Shapes canoe was slicing through the danc-ing raindrops, spreading them like frightened sheep. We passedthe opening to the old Parson’s Pool, considered to be the mostproductive piece of water the river had ever seen before it tookan unexpected turn to the right in . How many big fish overthe years had passed through that famous channel, I wondered,as we coursed through Long Tail, Ray’s Rock, and into the heavywater that greeted us at Fraser’s. The large rock on the left sideof the pool that we often stood on in summer conditions wasunder water. I was fearful that we couldn’t hold a fly in thestrong current, but with little effort, an eager -pound salmontook my / in a slip of reasonably calm water not too far fromthe tail of the pool. He gave a good account of himself, andwithin twenty minutes we poled back up into the weather, hop-ing for one more fish before the rain blew us off the river.Carl secured the killick, bringing the canoe to rest a bit high-

er in the run than I imagined the sweet spot to be. Perry had arummage through his bedraggled assortment of deadly flies,and with some assurance, I saw his hand stop. The overcast skywas robbing us of much of the evening light, but the greenish-

yellow object that was being anchored to Peter’s leaderappeared to be dressed on a large gold hook. “I am going to puton a Guide Fly,” he said, “something they can see.” We did notquestion his selection.“It looks like a big-fish river in this heavywater,” I heard Perry mutter as we settled into the cooling, wetcomfort of the canoe.Peter’s salmon rolled on the second drop near the middle of

the pool, just off the edge of the heavy current. I saw the roil asthe fish took the fly very near the surface and felt a rush ofdelight that Pete too had latched onto something. As we movedto the shore, I could sense that she was probably pounds,maybe larger. The intense look on Perry’s face told me that hewas thinking bigger numbers, and her first run across the pool,with a nasty sideways surface thrash thrown in for good mea-sure, confirmed his practiced eye. The width of the fish’s tailoutlined in what light that was left immediately charged theatmosphere for all of us, and we prepared for a long fight witha very large fish. “If you land this fish,” Perry shouted, “I’ll tellyou a story about that fly.” Peter stayed in the boat, holding onto his -foot, -inch

Loomis rod with both of his large powerful hands as thegraphite tubes heaved under the weight of the fish who, bynow, knew she was in some trouble and was using the heavycurrent to make her getaway. Perry and Carl climbed out of theboat and were holding the gunnels as we moved swiftly alongthe shoreline. The fish made a terrifying run downriver thatquickly burned any remnant of oil that may have remained inPeter’s Islander reel. The squeak of warming metal on metal, awarning sign, scared me. The fish did not show, but rather con-tinued to run, pause, and run downriver toward the famedLazy Bogan Pool some yards away.

The Big Fish at Fraser’sby Hoagy B. Carmichael

The fly that caught the salmon: a Green Spey with real heron hackles tied byMark LeBlanc on a metric . standard-weight Alec Jackson Spey hook.

This piece was first published in the Winter / issue of the Anglers’Club Bulletin (vol. , no. ). Used with permission.

Hoagy B. Carmichael

The salmon found several pieces of water to her liking as shecontinued downstream, and even in the turbulence of the fast-moving current appeared to be resting there. I was struck byhow powerful and determined that fish was. She could not bemoved off her chosen lie even with a hook her mouth and thestrength built into a modern graphite rod. We were in the mid-dle of a high-stakes fight of wills with a fish that had alreadyearned our respect. Twenty minutes in, and she was still verymuch in charge. As the light dimmed, the salmon moved toward the boat and

then swirled off into the current showing renewed determina-tion, putting Peter’s beleaguered tackle once again to the test.With each minute I was further gripped with the fear that thehook would pull out or that something would break. I was root-ing for Peter to land the salmon with all I had, but the life andbreath of that noble fish was also beginning to be a concern. Perry put the large open face of the net in the cold brown-tint-

ed water, and it was clear that landing the fish in the little lightthat remained was going to be difficult. Two more gut-wrench-ing mini-runs and, with a combination of skill and good fortune,the salmon finally eased into Perry’s waiting net, exhausted. She lay in the webbing almost motionless, having spent

forty minutes trying with all her inherent instincts to avoidcapture. She had little else to give. Peter called more than onceto get the fish back in the water. As Perry was removing the fly,I leaned over to see for myself what a truly gallant, magnificentfish looked like. As she rested there, I saw the beautiful sleekhead of a female salmon and the crimson touches on each scalemixed with shimmering remnants of light blue, the sure signof a fish that had probably come into the river in late June. Herbelly was full of roe. She was the longest and the most beauti-ful salmon I had ever seen. Carl had a measuring tape, and he was able to get her length

and girth before she tried to flip on her side. “Twenty-six

around the girth,” Carl said. “Forty-four long.”* As I watched,I think I caught her eye for a second as he was measuring her,and I saw the deep stare of fear that I now wish she hadn’t hadto experience. She was too splendid in appearance for that, andI joined the chorus of those who wanted her back in the riverwhere she belonged. A quick photo (which did not turn outwell), and Perry was rubbing her sides, nurturing the giant fishback to health. At that moment, all I cared about was seeingthat great fish swim back into the dark waters unharmed. Itdidn’t take long for her to revive, and with a defiant flip of herbroad tail, she was free again.In the not-too-distant past, that beautiful fish would have

been hit over the head with a stick and left bleeding in the bellyof the boat. Having witnessed the gallant, incredible effort thesalmon had shown in her need to spawn, I could not imagineher life crushed by indifference. I admit that I fell in love withthat gal on that cool, rain-swept evening and was thrilled to seethe life in her as she swam away from me. I knew I had experi-enced something few had seen, and for a moment I didn’t wantthe story to end. The images of that evening, with Peter’s jawset like a seasoned prizefighter bracing against that great fish,will be with me forever.

�

Hoagy B. Carmichael is author of A Master’s Guide to Buildinga Bamboo Fly Rod (), The Grand Cascapedia River: AHistory (in two volumes, and ), and by Carmichael(). This essay appears in his new book, Side Casts (AneshaPublishing and Skyhorse Publishing, ), signed copies of whichare available at www.booksbycarmichael.com.

*According to various formulae, the salmon weighed – pounds.

AMFF MEMBERS REPORT: OCTOBER

Executive Director Cathi Comar reported on the following programs and outreach to date:Installation of two onsite exhibitions (Bob Hines: National Sporting Artist and The New Yorker Goes Fly Fishing)•Public launch of first online exhibition (A Graceful Rise: Women in Fly Fishing Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow)•Installation of one offsite display (Vermont Welcome Center in Bennington)•Publication of all four issues of the American Fly Fisher•Coordination of ten of eleven onsite programs scheduled•Addition of more anglers to Ambassador program (currently ten members)•Expansion of all social media platforms, work with online blogs, and distribution of content to online magazines•Change in digital format and frequency of e-newsletter Casting About (once a month)•Organization of two successful fund-raising and three cultivation events throughout the United States•

President Richard Tisch reported on the financial status as follows:The operating budget, revenues, and expenses are in line with forecasts.•We anticipate finishing the year in the black once again.•The major donor program continues to grow, and this year’s numbers exceed last year’s.•Earlier this year, the outstanding loan from the museum endowment was completely paid down.•Our development program continues to raise funds for restricted projects such as saltwater history, digital•outreach, and the conservation initiative.Our financial audit was clean, and absolutely no findings were noted.•

Rare Reel RendezvousOne benefit to AMFF membership is access to exclusive

events. On September , the Rare Reel Rendezvous—a true,behind-the-scenes, white-glove event—was held as a thank-youto our members. They were able to take a close-up look and han-dle the significant reels of our permanent collection, includingsaltwater reels that have never been on public display. In addi-tion, they were able to interact with reel experts and collectorswho were kind enough to donate their time in celebration oftheir shared passion. The event was well attended by members,reel experts, and collectors, including the museum’s DeputyDirector Yoshi Akiyama. A special thank-you to some otherswho were attendance: Jim Schottenham of Side-Mount Reels,Jim Brown from the Old Reels Collectors Association (ORCA),Fred Balling of Perfect Fly Reel Company, Trustee EmeritusJim Hardman, and Michael Hackney of the Eclectic Angler,who brought his D printer for a demonstration. We look for-ward to next year’s members-only event!

Anglers’ Club DinnerOn September , AMFF members and friends congregated

at the Anglers’ Club of New York for dinner accompanied by alive and silent auction to benefit the museum. Board PresidentRichard G. Tisch was the venerable host, master of ceremonies,and auctioneer for the evening, which raised almost $, forAMFF public programs. We are grateful for the support of all theattendees, as well as the generosity of the following auctiondonors: E. M. Bakwin, Douglas Outdoor, Rachel Finn, Pat Ford,Ed Jaworowski, Carmine Lisella, Sara Low, Anthony Magardino,Scientific Anglers, the Hungry Trout, Tyler Thomson, TedTurner, Wyoming Whiskey, and Alan and Nancy Zakon. Wewould also like to thank Carolyn Chadwick and her team at theAnglers’ Club for making us so welcome.

Grand Day OutMembers of the AMFF Council Program gathered on

October at the Hollenbeck Club, one of Connecticut’s oldestprivate clubs, for a day of fishing and dinner. The museumwould like to extend a sincere thank you to former trustee andlongtime museum supporter John Mundt for hosting thiscomplimentary event. We hope to offer an event each year inappreciation of our great supporters.

Friends of Corbin ShootHudson Farm welcomed the museum at the Friends of

Corbin Shoot event in late October. Guests traveled fromLouisiana, Florida, and around the Northeast to participate.Pictured is the shooting of the cannon (right), which marked thestart of the two-day event benefiting AMFF and FortTiconderoga. Each year the participants are given a chance towin a painting by sporting artist and AMFF Trustee PeterCorbin. This year, Jon Gibson was the lucky winner of the orig-inal work Drifting the Edge. Funds generated through this event

Jim Schottenham of Side-Mount Reels chats with a museummember at the Rare Reel Rendezvous in September.

Sara Wilcox

Shooting the cannon marked the start of Friends of CorbinShoot, which benefited AMFF and Fort Ticonderoga.

Michael G

allart

In October, the museum welcomed Maple Street School studentsfor a tour of the exhibit and to create practice rods and clown flies.

Sara Wilcox

Museum News

directly support the museum’s digital initiative. We trulyappreciate the participation of the shooters, along with theefforts of Peter Corbin, Korky Podmaniczky, and the entireteam at Hudson Farm.

Hooked on the HolidaysOn December , the museum, partnering with Southwestern

Vermont Chapter of Trout Unlimited, welcomed more than guests to our annual Hooked on the Holidays event. Com -munity members and families, museum trustees, and friends offly fishing joined us for an open house to create fish ornaments,build jewelry, decorate cookies, learn fly casting, craftChristmas cards, tie clown flies, and make practice rods.S’mores and hot cocoa were on hand to keep visitors warm asthey took advantage of free admission to the museum’s exhib-it. Thank you to all who shared this special time of the year withus and to the American Museum of Fly Fishing’s program spon-sors, Orvis and TD Bank.

In the LibraryThanks to the following for their donations of titles that

have become part of our permanent collection:Skyhorse Publishing sent us Darrel Martin’s The Fly-Fisher’s

Companion: A Fundamental Guide to Tackle, Casting, Pre sen -

tation, Aquatic Insects, and the Flies That Imitate Them ();Dan C. Frasier’s The Orvis Beginner’s Guide to Carp Flies ();and Greg Senyo’s Fusion Fly Tying: Steelhead, Salmon, and TroutFlies of the Synthetic Era (). Frank Amato Publications, Inc.,sent us Lee R. Baerman’s Fly-Fish the Surf ().

Recent Donations to the CollectionBarbara Phillips of New Russia, New York, donated a col-

lection of fly-angling materials of Bill Phillips on behalf ofJoan Crane. J. Louis Newell of Dedham, Massachusetts, gaveus a collection of salmon fly–angling materials. Leigh Perkinsof Grover, Wyoming, donated collection of eight graphite rods.And William Sheehan of Barnesville, Maryland, donated acollection of fly rods and reels. For a detailed list of any ofthese collections, contact the museum.

Gordon Hill of Big Pine Key, Florida, sent us a collection ofmaterials related to Edward “Pop” Hill and his Pop Hill Specialbonefish flies, as well as a John Emery saltwater fly reel (no. ).Carmine Lisella of New City, New York, gave us a -inchMilward’s Seafarer reel, a -inch Nottingham reel, and a BauerMZ large-arbor reel. Michael Hackney of Groton, Massa -chusetts, donated one of his D-printed Tranquility fly reels.

Michael Barth of Liverpool, New York, donated a fourth-impression copy of Mary Orvis Marbury’s Favorite Flies andTheir Histories (Houghton Mifflin, ). Jim Heckman ofManchester, Vermont, brought us a metal sculpture of a per-mit. And Howard Bleakie of Manchester, Vermont, gave us aConsolidated Tour Map of Eastern States issued by the OrvisInn ca. .

Sara Wilcox

A young visitor focuses intently on the bracelet she’s makingduring AMFF’s annual Hooked on the Holidays event.

With a grant from the Mount Laurel Foundation, the museumworked with the United Counseling Service of Bennington

County (Vermont) to develop a program combining fly fishing’shealing and therapeutic properties with the UCSVT focus onteaching developmentally disabled adults new wellness skills.

Sara Wilcox

The American Museum of Fly Fishing recently completedour own conservation project on the Manchester property.We received a three-year grant from the Natural ResourcesConservation Service to eliminate invasive plants along ourstream bank and to reintroduce native tree species to

encourage a healthy water system.

Sara Wilcox

Keith Harwood retired from full-time teaching in the summer of . He thentaught Latin and Greek part time for a few months at Stonyhurst College, a Jesuitfoundation where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was apupil and the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was a teacher. Harwood now spends histime writing, fishing, fly dressing, and helping to look after his three grandchildren.His most recent books are Fish and Fishers of the Lake District () and The Anglerin Scotland (), both published by the Medlar Press. He is currently working on abook about John Buchan and angling, which he hopes will be published in .

Jon Ward-Allen

Upcoming Events

Events take place on the museum grounds in Manchester, Vermont, unless otherwise noted.

January –Somerset Fly Fishing ShowGarden State Convention CenterSomerset, New JerseyPlease stop by the AMFF booth.

February Gallery Program: Fit to Be “Tyed”: a.m.–: p.m.Fly-fishing activities for all

February Gallery Program: Fit to Be “Tyed”: p.m.–: p.m.Fly-fishing activities for all, followed by pizza, cash bar,and Pig Farm Ink Iron Fly Contest

March Gallery Program: Movie Madness: p.m.–: p.m.Finding Nemo and popcorn

March Gallery Program: Movie Madness: p.m.–: p.m.Mini fly-fishing film festival, cash bar, popcorn

April Gallery Program: Spring Training, Gear Swap, and Sale: a.m.–: p.m.For all ages

April Gallery Program: Opening Day Celebrations: a.m.–: p.m.

June Canvas ’n’ Cocktails: p.m.–: p.m.

July Canvas ’n’ Cocktails: p.m.–: p.m.

July Celebrate National Ice Cream Day! Fly-fishing activities and free ice cream: p.m.–: p.m.

August th Annual Fly-Fishing Festival: A Taste of the Great Outdoors: a.m.–: p.m.

September (date TBA)Members-Only EventRare Read Rendezvous: p.m.–: p.m.

September Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day Live!Free admission with a Museum Day Live! ticket

October Fall Foliage Fiesta: a.m.–: p.m.Complimentary cider, donuts, and member gift

December Gallery ProgramHooked on the Holidays: p.m.–: p.m.

Always check our website (www.amff.com) for additions, updates, and more information or contact () - orevents@amff.com. “Casting About,” the museum’s e-mail newsletter, offers up-to-date news and event information.To subscribe, look for the link on our website or contact the museum.

We are manufacturers of fine heirloom sporting accessories. We are pleased to offer our scrimshaw bone and solid brass cufflinks & blazer buttons and lapel pins in a wide variety of

images including:

lhe American Museum of Fly Fishing logo, Tarpon, Atlantic Salmon, Permit, or any one

of the iconic sports trophies shown on our website.

Prices are as follows:

Lapel Pin ............................. $120 CufAinks ........ .................... .. $300 Blazer Buttons .................... $350

Order your set online at amff.com/ shop or by calling Samantha Pitcher at 802-362-3300. For each purchase, a portion of the proceeds will benefit AMFF.

J~Wo PITTARD & COMPANY~ LTDo IsLANDS AND STREAMS- ScRIMSHAW CoLLECTION

TM

T bring change to our corner ofVermont, and visitors from near and far gather inManchester to marvel at the colorful show that Mother

Nature orchestrates. This year the trees were particularly stun-ning, and many anglers took advantage of the unseasonablywarm weather to close their fishing season amongst the red,yellow, and orange backdrop. Fall is also a busy time for themuseum, as the number of daily visitors peaks just before theend of October.We witnessed changes at the AMFF Annual Members

Meeting as well. One board president finished his term, andanother trustee assumed this leadership role. Karen W. Kaplanwas welcomed as the new board president and looks forwardto working with staff, museum members, and trustees as wecontinue to expand our public programs and outreach. Karen

has been on the board since and was instrumental inplanning our development program since its inception in .The museum wishes to thank Richard G. Tisch for serving aspresident since and guiding us as we developed andundertook our digital initiative. Andrew Ward, our currentNominating Committee chair, was elected to vice president.For museum members unable to attend this annual meet-

ing, we have included in this issue a summary of the executivedirector’s and president’s reports on page . In brief, ourfinancial status is positive, and our public programs meet ourmission in an engaging manner.Thank you to all of our members for your support!

C CE D

’Tis the Season of Change

AMFF President Karen W. Kaplan.

Main Street • PO Box Manchester,Vermont

Tel: () - • Fax: () --: amff@amff.com: www.amff.com

M T isthe steward of the history, traditions, andpractices of the sport of fly fishing and pro-motes the conservation of its waters. Themuseum collects, preserves, exhibits, studies,and interprets the artifacts, art, and literatureof the sport and, through a variety of out-reach platforms, uses these resources toengage, educate, and benefit all.

The museum provides public programs tofulfill its educational mission, including exhi-bitions, publications, gallery programs, andspecial events. Research services are availablefor members, visiting scholars, students, edu-cational organizations, and writers. ContactYoshi Akiyama at yakiyama@amff.com toschedule a visit.

VThroughout the year, the museum needs volun-teers to help with programs, special projects,events, and administrative tasks. You do nothave to be an angler to enjoy working with us!Contact Becki Trudell at btrudell@amff.com totell us how we would benefit from your skillsand talents.

SThe American Museum of Fly Fishing relies onthe generosity of public-spirited individuals forsubstantial support. If you wish to contributefunding to a specific program, donate an itemfor fund-raising purposes, or place an advertise-ment in this journal, contact Sarah Foster atsfoster@amff.com. We encourage you to give themuseum con sideration when planning for gifts,be quests, and memorials.

JMembership Dues (per annum)

Patron ,Sponsor Business Benefactor Associate

The museum is an active, member-orientednonprofit institution. Membership duesinclude four issues of the American Fly Fisher;unlimited visits for your entire family tomuseum exhibitions, gallery programs, andspecial events; access to our ,-volumeangling reference library; and a discount onall items sold by the museum on its websiteand inside the museum store, the BrooksideAngler. To join, please contact SamanthaPitcher at spitcher@amff.com.

Scan with your smart-phone to visit ourcollection online!

Catch and Release the Spirit of Fly Fishing!