Birdsong, the burble of water over rocks, the occasional buzzing of an insect, the slurp of a trout taking something off the surface, bathed in a muted green filtering through the kaleidoscope of leaves that cloister the stream. The scent of pine, and mountain laurel and the mint you crushed underfoot. The coolness of the shade and the waters that stand in contrast to the, often deplorable, heat of the summer sun. All things that ensconce you, the angler in a swath of gentle grace. Those are the wonders of small woodland streams.
Big rivers are great. The sky looms big
The water goes from one shore to another
The trout are a handful
They are the looming cathedrals of our trout world. Big, bold, reaching up there, dwarfing all around them in their majesty, a sight to behold and revel in. But they don’t give you the intimate peace found in the small chapel of the woodland stream.
Everything, the stream, the surroundings, the features and often the trout are in reduced scale.
There is a whole wondrous world of woodland trout fishing out there, especially in the Mid-Atlantic regions. Two things behind this. The first is that our streams are not snow fed streams. These little woodland streams are all spring fed in the true sense of the world. Even though very few of them would pass muster as a “spring creek” like this one
with trout like this
that is in fact what they are. They are fed by springs with a water temperature that is the mean air temperature of the area, which around here is somewhere in the low 50s. They may or may not have limestone influence but they do have the initial water temperature. The shaded woods they pass through keeps them cool. Even when the water is at its lowest they are still cool streams.
This stream we fish, is one that has a wooded section that’s great, then an open section that gets too warm in the summer and then a set of springs just before it enters the woods again that make it cool again. This was a hot August day, but the waters were cool and the trout cooler. It’s a nice shaded, cool woodland trout stream of the best kind.
The second type of woodland stream in our area is the hidden tailwater. There are small dams all up and down the Appalachians and associated sub-ranges that provide water for local towns. The dams themselves are typically small, but they’re built up in the hills where a small dam provides a deep lake (often just a very large pond). The outlets from all these lakes are at the bottom, and they provide a source of cold water. The amount of water may be just a trickle in comparison to the huge tailwaters others are used to. But that’s what they are - tailwaters and they provide a ready source of cold water, further augmented by springs on the way down. This little creek comes out of a dam that is 209 feet long and 66 feet high and forms a lake (?) that has a surface area of 46 acres. The midpoint of the reservoir is 96 feet deep, and there’s your cold water story.
The water flows out into this heavily wooded stream replete with trout like this
Not all these woodland streams are tiny. This one isn’t for sure
Nor is this one, which is more medium sized though it regularly produces fish that are oversized by any standard.
It isn’t that rare for me to find myself with 36-40 aggregate inches of trout on the end of my line on this stream. It’s full of big shouldered browns like this and sometimes I get two on at the same time. Most of those times I land neither, but it’s still fun.
But all these streams are marked by the same thing, a peaceful unhurried calm. There are no kayakers to dodge, no rafters to avoid, no drift boats to shake angry fists at, no cretin who jumps into the stream 20 yards ahead of you, none of the constant hubbub of life on a busy trout stream.
Instead they flow through the verdant beauty of the thick woods, often through exotic growths of rhododendron and mountain laurel, vending their way through moss covered rocks surrounding deep and dark pools
that hold trout that also take on the darker hues of their shaded abodes.
These streams are all cold, and in the summer months, as the evening draws down, the humidity starts getting caged in amongst the trees. The late afternoon’s torpid air gets a little life to it. A mist starts creeping down the valley, it’s early wispy fingers reaching out gently, searching for places.
As the shadows lengthen the mist gets stronger, casting a silence all over the valley. The birds go silent, the breeze dies, sometimes a tree frog or two starts his calling. The mist keeps rolling in.
And it brings with it the caddis returning to lay their eggs, or mayfly spinners in the whirling rise and fall of their act of procreation. You hear the trout beginning to rise. If you can use your ears to aim your eyes, you’ll find them, in the little seams and edges between the rocks. You know where you put your fly, you see the rise, you tighten up and you’re rewarded. Another beauty from the deep woods.
Soon the nightbirds will be there. The swifts and martins dipping and dashing through the gallery of the woods, the owls starting their halting hooting. The bats will start whirring past and it will be time to go.
But I always come back, because these little woodland streams are my chapels of peace.
Thanks for taking me along. What a beautiful story, and some beautiful fish.