The Cortland, meanwhile, was banished forever to my shelf of old and broken reels.
I keep these reels because they remind me of good times (mostly) on pleasant waters. All are silent now—of course, the Ocean City always was—but sometimes, when I see them sitting there on my cluttered shelf, I think I can still faintly hear the music of the others in my mind.
I hope to keep hearing it until it’s my turn to go on the shelf.
INVASIVE SPECIES
HIS HAIR was iron-gray, his eyes level and penetrating, his face as rugged and craggy as his name, which was Lee Wulff. He was the most famous fly fisherman in the world.
It was a reputation he had not gained by happenstance. Lee had fished almost everywhere, it seemed, and for almost everything, and his adventures had been widely chronicled in magazine articles, books, movies, and television shows. I was in awe of him, as I suppose every other young angler was at the time, so when my wife, Joan, and I were invited to dinner with Lee and his wife, also named Joan, we were only too pleased to accept.
The invitation was from our friends Lew and Elizabeth Bell. Lew was president of what was then known as the Federation of Fly Fishermen. He and I had worked together previously on a couple of conservation projects, but we still didn’t know one another well when he asked me to join the organization’s board and serve as secretary, and I agreed. As we started trying to get a grip on a young, far-flung organization with virtually no infrastructure, we became close friends, and so did our wives, who turned out to be members of the same sorority. The dinner would be at Lew and Elizabeth’s home and it would be just the six of us.
The gathering was convivial and the conversation varied and interesting, and when dinner was over Lee and I retired to Lew’s spacious living room, each with drink in hand, and resumed our conversation in front of the fireplace. Because the subject was on both our minds, it was probably inevitable that we soon began talking about the future of fly fishing—or, more specifically, about public versus private waters.
Lee’s experience, mostly in the East, had made him decidedly pessimistic about the future of public fishing. He had witnessed the wholesale decline and destruction of public waters from rapid population growth and urban sprawl in the East until the only remaining decent fishing was in private ownership, and the only way to gain access was to pay for it. He was convinced the same thing eventually would happen in my native Pacific Northwest, and I would live to see the day when our only good fishing also would be private and expensive.
I was about thirty years old then, full of enthusiasm and convinced that fishing was and always would be an egalitarian sport with opportunities for all who lived in the Northwest. After all, we had a lot more water than most of the rest of the country, nearly all of it was open to the public, the resident human population was relatively small, and it was still possible to reach quality fishing within short driving distance, even from a city the size of Seattle. I told Lee I didn’t think I would live long enough to see the end of that.
Lee quietly sipped his drink while I argued my case. When I was finished, he smiled a little—or maybe it was a grimace—and said: “You’ll see.”
Nearly five decades have passed since that conversation, and I now wish to acknowledge that Lee was right and I was wrong.
It happened with breathtaking speed. Seattle, which always had been a somewhat provincial city tucked away in the remote northwest corner of the country, suddenly became everybody’s darling destination. It was dubbed the nation’s “most livable city,” and people flocked from every direction, even from the west across the Pacific. Almost overnight, Seattle became a crowded metropolitan melting pot.
Geographically confined to a narrow hourglass of land between Lake Washington and Elliott Bay on Puget Sound, the city quickly spilled over its boundaries and metastasized in all directions into the countryside. Bellevue, a once quiet little town east of Lake Washington, grew quickly into one of the state’s largest cities, a crowded, ugly, unfriendly place built for automobiles instead of people. Tract homes filled the river valleys and crawled up the Cascade foothills, and many little lakes and streams where in past years I’d enjoyed fly fishing for trout began sprouting houses on all sides, as if someone had planted them and added fertilizer.
The Green River, where as a young angler I had good trout fishing among pastoral farms and truck gardens, became an industrial sump, with wall-to-wall warehouses, shopping malls, industries, freeways, and endless traffic. The river is now known mostly for occasionally inundating the homes and businesses built stupidly in its flood plain, and as the dumping spot for victims of the infamous Green River serial killer.
The rising blight also spread far beyond Seattle. Central Oregon and southern British Columbia, where I used to spend much of my fishing time, have both been similarly overrun with people and pollution and I seldom go to either place anymore.
And so it is throughout the West and, I assume, the rest of the country. Almost before we knew what was happening, the beauty, tranquility, and fishing we had enjoyed and long taken for granted was all but gone, taken from us as if by a thief in the night. We had been blindsided by an unstoppable invasive species.
The invasive species was us.
Runaway population growth is now a fact nearly everywhere, responsible for virtually every environmental, economic, and social problem we have. We have met the enemy and he is us—and us, and us, and us. When the epitaph for the human race is written, I’m convinced it will say “They bred to death.”
Meanwhile, every day there are more fishermen, fewer fish, and fewer places to fish.
We should have known it was coming, for such things have been going on a long time. For evidence of that we need look no further than the prescient words of the Renaissance poet Thomas Bastard (1566–1616), who, with a name like that, must have had a difficult life. Maybe that’s why he took up fishing.
Anyway, this is how he appraised the situation in sixteenth-century England:
Fishing, if I a fisher may protest,
Of pleasures is the sweetest, of sports the best,
Of exercises the most excellent.
Of recreations the most innocent.
But now the sport is marred, and wot, ye, why?
Fishes decrease, and fishers multiply.
Imagine what Bastard would think if he were here today. Fishes are decreasing and fishers increasing more rapidly than ever, and much of the trout and steelhead fishing that once flourished in the Pacific Northwest has been severely degraded or lost altogether. The public fishing that was once widely available and accessible to almost everybody is now a thing of the past. The few good public waters that remain are usually restricted in some way, often to fly-fishing or artificial lures only, and have daily limits of only a single trout or at most a few. It’s also no surprise that these waters are overwhelmingly crowded. Widespread illegal planting of largemouth bass and other non-native species has ruined scores of other waters. Now anglers who want to fish in solitude with a reasonable chance of catching large trout in relatively unspoiled surroundings must seek private waters and pay to fish them.
This might be a good time to define exactly what I mean by private waters. The Pacific Northwest always has had some waters that were private, at least in the sense that physical access to them meant paying a fee. But most of these places were fishing camps, and the fee also included overnight accommodations, boats, meals, and other services, all in a package, so customers got a lot more for their money than just access to the water. The camps were open to everybody and, at least in the beginning, the fees were reasonable and affordable for most people. So maybe it was an illusion, but it never seemed as if people were paying just to fish; instead, they were paying for a whole fishing vacation, and the cost just happened to include fishing privileges.
I remember there were still a few of these camps scattered in the hills around Puget Sound when I began fishing seriously as a young man, and I patronized some without a s
econd thought. All have since disappeared, but others remain in nearby British Columbia and I continue to patronize several of those. Nearly all provide everything necessary for a complete fishing vacation, including access to the water, and it still seems as if patrons are getting a lot more for their money than just the privilege of fishing. I’ve also become friends with many camp owners, and I understand very well how hard they must work to keep such places going, and how tenuous is the modest living they earn from their efforts. So I don’t begrudge their fees, even though they have necessarily increased along with the cost of nearly everything else.
What’s different now is that we are seeing more and more places where one has to pay just to fish, with nothing else thrown in; you might even have to bring your own float tube or boat, and you will have to arrange your own meals and lodging. These places, where all your money buys is a few hours of fishing time, are what I now define as private waters. They are usually lakes, ponds, or stretches of river located on private property, and their cost of operation is only what it takes to stock them annually with trout—which, in the case of rivers, may not even be necessary—or to buy a few pounds of hatchery pellets to supplement what nature provides. So fees paid by fishermen are mostly pure profit for the owners of these places, which often are little more than fish feedlots. Small wonder there are more such waters all the time.
I have an inherent distrust for anyone who tries to make a living from fly fishing, but in the case of the owners of private waters, they usually have at least something invested in the enterprise, so I think they have a legitimate right to charge fishermen, although some charge far more than is reasonable. These waters also are often booked through fly-fishing shops, which may receive a share of the fee, and in some cases such fees are a major source of their income.
A few shops publish printed or online catalogs that include elaborate descriptions of private waters, and these always make interesting reading. At least one shop has gone to some lengths to explain in its catalog why private waters have become necessary. Years ago, the catalog says, the shop “recognized that the demand for angling privacy and quality fishing had far outstripped all but the most remote public resources. Then we did something about it … We began looking for fishing spots where fly rodders might enjoy quality, secluded fly fishing for a modest fee … As advocates for public fishing, we decided right away against exploiting any private waters that were historically open to the public. Most of our current private waters fishing destinations have been posted and off-limits to the public for generations. Some have been behind locks and fences for more than a century….
“All of our Private Waters [capitalization in original] are managed exclusively as catch-and-release destinations, and we allow only fly fishing with barbless hooks. The angling pressure is kept intentionally light in order to ensure each guest enjoys as fine a fly-fishing experience as possible.”
It sounds good, but is it just my imagination or is there a hint of defensiveness in all this? Or perhaps a touch of guilt over the notion of making people pay to fish?
In any case, the shop considers $135 a day “a modest fee” if you choose only to fish and not book accommodations. And that is a modest fee compared to many other private waters.
This shop’s commitment to stay away from waters historically open to the public is also commendable. Others apparently aren’t so concerned about the privatization of public waters; they offer private fishing on waters that were once open to anyone with a fishing license, apparently without feeling any guilt about it.
Is all this a good thing or a bad thing? I suppose the answer depends at least partly on your income. Fly fishing has become a much more expensive sport than it used to be, even for those who don’t fish private waters. All the equipment costs much more—rods, reels, fly lines, waders, accessories (and now there are many more “essential” accessories than in years past), hooks, vises, fly-tying materials—you name it. A beginning fly fisher must be prepared to make a sizable investment just to get started, especially if he or she also signs up for one of the numerous fly-fishing schools now being offered. And all that before making the first cast.
This has serious implications for the future of fly fishing. The sport has always depended on a relatively steady influx of young anglers, but these days many young people face economic circumstances that make it difficult or impossible to take up the sport. Recent college graduates have student loans that must be paid. Returning veterans must cope with a tough job market and often have to settle for low pay. Young married couples struggle with childcare costs or mortgages. In each case, there’s little or nothing left over for fly fishing or almost anything else.
Under these circumstances, if you’re going to start fly fishing, you really have to want to do it. That could mean buying your equipment at garage sales or thrift stores, then trying to find fishing in hard-pressed public waters close to home—not a good recipe for developing a long-term commitment to the sport.
Not that many young people are now likely to get involved in fly fishing in any event. In my generation, it was typical for parents to expose their children to camping and fly fishing at a very young age, as my parents did with me, so that by the time I was old enough to make my own decisions, fly fishing was at the top of my priority list. Many of my contemporaries had similar introductions to the sport. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. These days, families that take their kids camping or fishing seem the exception rather than the rule. Instead of becoming acquainted with the inspirations and attractions of an outdoor life, most kids now sit indoors watching videos, playing videogames, texting, or tweeting. By the time they have their own disposable incomes, they’re thinking only of buying the next electronic toy instead of a new fly rod.
Some people might think this is good. After all, if there are fewer up-and-coming fly fishers, that will leave more room on public waters for the rest of us.
But that in turn raises hard questions for the future of the sport. Fewer fly fishers also will necessarily mean less support for preservation or restoration of the threatened public resources on which we still depend—rivers, lakes, salt waters, and the fish that inhabit them. The absence of a large public constituency to speak in defense of these things will simply make it easier for “developers” to have their way, which will mean even fewer quality fishing waters in the future. That will surely lead to increasing demand for expensive private waters in a self-perpetuating cycle that could consign future fly fishers to a small minority of well-heeled anglers who can afford such fisheries and the expensive equipment needed to fish them. Fly fishing will then truly become the elite “doctors’ and lawyers’ sport” it has always been wrongly accused of being.
Other than well-heeled, what kind of anglers will these people be? It’s easy to imagine a scenario where most future fly fishers will get out fishing only a week or two each year—the pressures of making money occupying nearly all the rest of their time—and those few trips will be to expensive private waters where anglers will usually fish under the close supervision of professional guides who tell them where, when, and how to fish and what fly to use. In other words, these future so-called fly fishers will rarely if ever have to learn the intricacies of the sport, study its literature, or think for themselves; instead, they’ll always have a well-paid guide to tell them what to do.
What will that mean for the future of the sport? Or its literature and traditions? The implications are obvious.
That’s a pretty bleak outlook for the future, but it’s not just a figment of my imagination. I’ve heard the same thoughts expressed around numerous campfires shared with other anglers, most of them nearly as old as I am. Some of those same thoughts also emerged in my long-ago conversation with Lee Wulff.
What can we do about all this? The answer seems to be: not much. It’s a bigger problem than any individual or any group can hope to solve. It will take social and economic upheavals of enormous magnitude to change the circumstances tha
t have brought us to this point, a fundamental shift in public attitudes that will make people turn off their phones and TVs and rediscover the outdoors, a monumental change in economic conditions that will give more people the wherewithal to enjoy fly fishing, and a huge societal shift for people to start having smaller families.
The odds against that happening seem astronomical. Meanwhile, it would be a fine thing if some of the owners of private waters would donate occasional free days to fly-fishing clubs or other conservation groups that could raffle them off for fund-raising purposes. This would give fishermen who otherwise can’t afford private waters at least a chance to fish a few of them, while simultaneously supporting worthy causes. It also would probably do a lot to enhance the reputations of the owners.
It might be good for their souls as well.
My income is above the poverty line but not enough to allow many trips to private waters. I have fished a few, though, and sometimes the fishing lived up to advance billing and sometimes it didn’t. But uncertainty always plays a part in fishing, and even on expensive private lakes or streams you can’t escape nasty weather. So far I’ve not heard of anyone offering refunds for a bad day due to weather, lack of a good hatch, or other adverse circumstances.
I wish I had a refund for the day I spent on the most expensive private water I ever fished. When I got up early that morning, the radio reported the local temperature was twenty-six degrees. That’s Fahrenheit, not centigrade. It hadn’t warmed more than a couple of degrees by the time we reached the lake we had paid to fish. I’d heard fabulous tales of its big fighting rainbow and I was looking forward to exercising some of those leviathans, but the lake looked about as inviting as a new ice age. Patches of thin ice hugged the shoreline and the rest of the lake looked like it also might freeze at any moment.
A Fly Fisher's Sixty Seasons Page 18