Damn You, Fish Commission!

Sunny, 65 degrees, and I was driving to town when I noticed coltsfoot blooming on the road verge. This may not seem like world-shattering news, but to a fly fisher, it means the Blue Quill Mayfly, the first significant hatch of the year, is now occurring. This marks the beginning of trout fishing.

Or it would, if Pennsylvania’s fishing laws were not stuck in the 1950’s. Despite shifting demographics, public demand, and scientific study; in the face of falling license sales and decreasing revenue; Pennsylvania’s Fish and Boat Commission clings to stocking hatchery “catchable” sized trout during a month-long closed season so they can profit from the brief, ever-decreasing spike of license sales just before Opening Day. Never mind that their own studies prove that most of these trout disappear within days of stocking, either via downstream migration, predation, or poaching. The one-weekend-a-year anglers gripe about lack of trout when it is merely bad management.

Fly anglers have lost a third of their season each year because “approved trout waters,” meaning stocked streams and lakes, are closed during three weeks or more of hatch activity. In the warmer areas of the state, trout activity may well be over by the end of May. The closed season has seemed a prejudicial policy against fly anglers since its inception. There are some stretches of some streams open to year-round fishing with flies or other artificial lures, but they are such a small percentage of all trout waters that they are outrageously crowded during the closed month. Demands for more have not only gone unanswered, but the PFBC has persistently tried to relax or eliminate the regulations in these areas. The fact that public outrage swells each time has not seemed to penetrate their preconceptions.

The Pennsylvania fishing model revolves around stocked trout. There are many more wild brook trout fisheries in the state than the PFBC is aware of, and plenty of waters with naturally-reproducing brown trout; even more that are healthy streams for “holding over” trout that might be managed more cheaply stocking fingerlings or egg boxes. These could be managed for what they are at a fraction of the cost of stocking them with “catchables”… and such stocking just reduces the chances of wild fish survival. The Commission has taken a few tentative steps towards preserving wild brook trout water, but lags decades behind the science of watershed management in this and less pristine types of habitat. It’s my opinion that stocking all the aforementioned types of waters with “catchables” damages the resource and should be curtailed. An opinion based on scientific studies that have been ongoing (mostly in other states) for over fifty years. That’s a lot of data.

Many stocked waters get too warm for trout to survive. Why are they stocked? For social reasons: They are close to large population centers and there is some demand for stock-catch-and-keep angling there. Fine. As long as there is a demand for this, do it. But to make the best use of those expensive hatchery trout, leave the season open year-round and publish the stocking schedule (as they do now for in-season stockings) so these urban anglers can be there when the trout are. Not several weeks after sixty percent of the trout have vanished.

Ever since the “trout stamp” was initiated, every trout fisherman in the state has subsidized these truck-followers’ activities. I, for one, am willing to (reluctantly) keep doing so, but could the state make more money with a “catch-and-release” or “trout resource management” stamp and a “trout stamp” for stock-catch-keep waters? You bet they could! Especially if they could reduce the numbers of costly hatchery catchable trout by putting them only in those stock-catch-keep urban creeks. The urban anglers would even see more trout dumped in their local waters; the rural anglers would see their wild trout flourishing. It’s a win/win.

That brings us back to the closed season. As the numbers of bait fishermen continue to decline and fly-fishing rises in popularity, a trend that has gone on for twenty years, a larger proportion of the state’s license-buyers are disgruntled and discouraged by their shortened season. Small wonder license sales have been declining. Opening all trout waters to year-round fishing would reverse the trend; publishing stocking schedules for stock-catch-keep waters would make up for the loss of the pre-Opening Day sales spike… and probably a little more, with a clever publicist.

Those of us who fish “beyond the stocking truck” for purely wild trout have had a loophole in the past: Wild Brook Trout Heritage waters were open year-round. That ended this year, as the PFBC has belatedly decided to officially classify such streams for their protection. That’s good, right? Not when they also have a misplaced mania for “simplifying” the laws for easier enforcement. You guessed it… these waters are now closed when Approved Trout Waters are. Not to protect the resource, as brook trout spawn in the fall; not to “protect” newly-stocked trout, as these waters aren’t stocked. Is it to spit in the eyes of us “elitist” fly fishers and our demands for scientific, resource-based watershed management? Or is it, as they insist, to “simplify regulations?” The simplest regulations of all would be a year-round open season on all trout waters.

So it was with a sense of anger and betrayal that I spotted those blooming coltsfoot today, and realized that I would never again enjoy the pleasure of fishing the first great Mayfly hatch of the season. Not unless they hatch well in the single special-regs area near me, a 1¾ mile-long stretch of Kettle Creek that is sure to be elbow-to-elbow with desperate fly fishers. Must I give up my treasured solitude and fish for stocked trout instead of wild ones? Or must I wait through the first half-dozen hatches until the state allows me to fish the waters I truly love?

A Farewell to Frieda "m0m" Schurr

            There’s some people that, by their very nature, seem to be immortal. When suddenly it turns out they’re not… shock is not the word. It’s beyond that. Shock comes later, days later, when you realize that you will no longer share a thought, a joke, an enthusiasm, or a memory with this person again. You turn to them, because they have always been there, and they’re not. It’s human nature to do this again and again, and hurt every time.

            Frieda Schurr was my friend Maggi’s mother. I’ve known her since I met Maggi more than forty years ago. She was a woman of grace, humor, education, patience, culture, and wisdom. She always encouraged me and my creative works, never criticized when I fell short of my potential; in short, treated me as she treated her own children and many students over the years.

            Although I seldom saw her, we corresponded with mutual delight. Whether cracking up at Sir Terry Pratchett’s puns or creative use of Latin (“Fabricati Diem!”) or enjoying goose bumps at nice, tight harmony singing, we shared joy in a way I seldom found with anyone else.

            I remember the first conversation I had with her:

            Me: “Oh, I see you’re going to have a baby. What are you going to call it?”

            Her: “Quits!”

            And the last, her comment on my blog about being reluctantly coerced into learning to knit and displaying my first pair of self-knitted socks: “Welcome to the Dark Side. Enjoy it.”

            I remember when I told her Maggi was moving in with me after retirement she said, “I can trust you to take good care of her… and vice-versa.” I felt honored.

            She is gone. It was sudden, quick, pretty much painless. Although I can’t help but be thankful for that, she is gone. One of the ‘rocks’ of my life, the eternally wise, eternally gracious, just plain eternal Frieda “m0m” Schurr. (It stabs me just to type her name the way she always signed her e-mails.)

            I can’t explain how this feels, but I know one thing: It has to be infinitely worse for Maggi, her brothers and sisters, their spouses and children… the whole family. I’d like to comfort them with the knowledge that Frieda lives on, in each of them, in the form of memories, knowledge, and moral values. That, as long as one person speaks her name with love, she is with us. As long as one person follows the values she believed in, makes use of her teachings, her influence lives on in this world. I honestly believe this is truth, and that her spirit is immortal and will always be with us. But right now it’s hard to embrace this truth because of the pain.

            May the pain pass gently from every member of her family, and each of her friends, and may her soul shine down on us all.

Celebrating 20 Years of Women Fly Fishing

Fly fishing has a literary history dating back to the 12^th century. The scope of fly fishing literature over that time would surprise many non-anglers. Beyond the where-to and how-to books typical of most hobbies, fly fishing literature ranges from scholarship to poetry. Some of the finest writing of any kind that I’ve enjoyed over a lifetime of reading has been in fly fishing books.

Robert Ruark. Charlie Fox. Ernest Schweibert. Robert Traver. Ed Zern. Patrick McManus. John Gierach. You may not recognize the names, but to a fly angler like myself, these writers are just a few who influenced both my fishing and my writing with a lyrical and captivating style that elevated their writing above any restrictions of genre.

In the twenty years the newsletter of the Delaware Valley Women’s Fly Fishing Association has existed, many of the articles have stood out as contributing to this great tradition of fly fishing literary excellence. As editor for eight years, it was my dream to introduce these works to a wider audience, in a more permanent medium than a quarterly newsletter. After fifteen months of work, that dream has become a reality. Those fine writers now have their chance to be added to that list of greats in the field.

“A Woman’s Angle: Celebrating 20 Years of Women Fly Fishing” is now available as a high-quality soft-cover book. This is my first published book, fulfilling another even older dream of mine. But despite the lionization I’ve basked in during the week since publication (which included a signing table at one of the largest fly fishing shows in the world), and the fact that some of my own works are included in the book, this is not about me. It’s about twenty very fine writers who ably share their passion for fly fishing; who open their hearts and minds to reveal their thoughts, emotions, and experiences, to the benefit and pleasure of any who read their words. And those reveal more about the writers than the surface topic would suggest, as is true with all art, whether done with paint, words, music, or other media.

During the past twenty years, women have gone from being a ‘double-take’ sight on fishing streams to being the fastest-growing demographic and most-wooed market segment in the sport. This book subtly documents this change, and shows that women have indeed become influential in fly fishing and worthy of respect in the field. But this is no feminist manifesto. These are great fly fishing stories, plain and simple, written by fly anglers for the enjoyment of other fly anglers, of any gender.

My personal reaction to the release of my first book is one of childish enthusiasm, my mood swinging between rampant egotism and stunned humility; I’m overwhelmed by the positive reaction generated in less than a week. But I am so proud and happy that this particular book is the one. This is important; this is a collection of stories that needs to be shared; these are writers that can make readers think, feel, laugh, smile and nod, and want to grab a rod and run out to the nearest body of water to try this ‘fly fishing’ thing.

I’ll be spending most of the summer out at shows, festivals, and signings, drawing attention to this wonderful collection of wonderful authors. I hope to see you there. Various fly shops throughout Pennsylvania and some select gift shops in the Pennsylvania Wilds will also be selling them. Online, check out the book at www.wellsborobookstore.com. If it’s not immediately available there, phone them at (570) 724-5793.

Then go out fishing! And afterwards, relax with the latest addition to nine centuries’ tradition of great fly fishing literature.

How to Knit Without Wit

Today I finished knitting my first pair of socks. This is sort of a big deal, at least to me. One of the activities proposed as physical therapy for me at the age of 9 was knitting. I could knit, alright, but any attempt to purl resulted in a chaotic, cobweb-like mass of holes loosely held together with yarn. Cross-stitch and crewel were the therapies that stuck with me. The next time I picked up knitting needles was back in the early 80’s; when Doctor Who first hit the US big-time, I knitted two massive Tom Baker 5^th Doctor scarves. I didn’t know much about yarn, considering neither gauge nor what the yarn I chose was made of, merely looking for exactly the right colors. The pattern was pencil-scribbled on scrap paper and was all knit stitch… perfect for a purl-challenged knitter. I vaguely remembered the simple one-finger cast-on I learned at the age of 9. Binding off? I really don’t remember how I did that, but I suspect I got it from a child’s undersized paperback book called “How To Do It,” featuring such things as blanket-stitch edging, one-stitch knitting, hemming, and sewing on buttons. One thing I did do right was to work out a way of ‘carrying up the yarn’ to keep from having to cut-and-knot for making narrow stripes. Years later I discovered that I had indeed figured out the standard way of doing that.

Maggi moved in with me about four years ago. She exudes knitting the way I exude words. Anything that can be done with knitting needles she can do, but she’s especially fond of intricate patterns and lace knitting. Most of the gifts she gives family and friends for birthdays and other occasions come from her constantly-moving knitting needles. That included me, and thus I was introduced to the glorious warmth and comfort of hand-knitted socks. Oh, how I love them!

Even that would not have been enough to get me started knitting, except that there were a few items I dropped hints for that she more-or-less ignored. One that I found increasingly important was a bright orange infinity scarf for deer hunting. Hats didn’t keep my neck warm; regular scarves were bulky enough at the neck to push my hat down onto my nose; hoods didn’t turn when my head did. I figured that an infinity scarf would solve all those problems. After one particularly frustrating deer season, I decided I really needed the thing and would just have to knit it myself.

Maggi (mostly) held in her unholy glee at hooking me at last. When I hefted the hunter-orange skein of cheap acrylic yarn at the hardware store and asked, “What else do I need?” she hastily assured me that she had a pattern and could loan me an appropriately-sized circular needle. On circulars, this simple pattern was all knit stitch… I could do that. I learned that this results in ‘stockinet’ whereas the same procedure on my straight needles back in 1980 resulted in those Dr. Who scarves being ‘garter stitch.’ Oh, well, I took her word on it even though it took awhile to figure out why it worked that way and what the differences were.

Eventually I finished the hunting headwear and it was perfect for my needs. The next item on my ‘want’ list which (apparently) Maggi found too boring to bother with was another scarf, this one a copy of the Gryffindor House scarf from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She had the pattern in a book, and I thought, “It’s another scarf. I’ve done those. How hard can it be?” Little did I know!

This came in two sizes, which turned out to be a critical point and my big mistake on the project. I chose the adult size, which worked out to being as wide and bulky as my Dr. Who scarf if a bit shorter. The sticking point for me was that the pattern was something called ‘single rib’ throughout. I’d need to learn to purl. Maggi patiently worked me through, but somehow I learned it backwards. Counting wrong, failing to count at all, adding extra stitches, I ended up ripping out the first section five times before I finally comprehended what I needed to do to get a neat single rib, and what it was supposed to look like when I did. Even so, my memory had difficulty with that purl stitch and I ended up doing the whole scarf (which took well over a year) with what Maggi called a ‘twisted stitch.’ It ended up looking correct despite that, if about half again as wide as it should have been. This is how I learned the importance of something called a ‘test swatch.’ “For a scarf? One size fits all!” had been my initial reaction to wasting time and effort on a test swatch. Live and learn.

By that time it began to dawn on my that, if I planned my projects cleverly, I might possibly aspire to knit a pair of socks for myself someday. I could now purl, had learned a little about yarn sizes, and figured the next steps would be to learn to decrease, increase, and read pattern notation. The two other projects in the Harry Potter set, a beanie and a pair of gloves, would teach those skills. In addition, it seemed both would be done on multiple double-point needles, another skill I’d need to master.

I had plenty of that cheap hardware store yarn left from the scarf, so forge ahead! One test swatch later, I had chosen a needle size and was ready. The first thing Maggi needed to show me was a stretchy ‘long tail’ cast-on. I still have not mastered this. It’s about the complexity of hand whip-finishing a fishing fly, which took me over two months of patient coaching by my fly tying mentor for me to learn. However, every fly gets a whip-finish, while casting on yarn happens only at the beginning of a project which may take months. Even worse, there are two distinct finger movements to learn for knit and purl stitches. I’ll probably be still pathetically asking her for reminders for casting on when I’m 70. Next, she showed me how to handle four needles without twisting that first row, and how the stitches progressed from needle to needle, but that was pretty obvious even to me. The beanie brim being double rib rather than single was also no problem. I did most of the hat while travelling last summer.

However, although I understood that “ssk” meant “slip, slip, knit,” the actual mechanics of the stitch eluded me. I figured I slip stitch 1, slip stitch 2, knit stitch 3. That didn’t decrease at all; I was left with the same number of stitches. I knew I was doing something wrong. Once again Maggi had to demonstrate. Doing it her way worked, and I was delighted to see the crown of my beanie narrowing. I could decrease!

Hat finished, it was time to try the gloves. By now I was getting the hang of reading patterns and had a couple of reference books. I’m still not sure how or why the glove got wider above the wrist when I followed the pattern, but it did. Since I despise mittens and prefer finger-free gloves, for the first time I modified the pattern, although at Maggi’s urging I decreased one row before binding off at what I felt was the right length. The bind-off I chose gave a nice rolled edge and I was proud. The thumb gave some problems; I wasn’t sure whether to start knitting clockwise or counter-clockwise after joining the yarn (which also caused a big problem). Of course I did it wrong the first try, but had accumulated enough know-how to realize it. I’ve become quite adept at ‘tinking,’ or taking out my mistakes. In addition to increasing, joining yarn, and modifying a pattern, I learned about what Maggi calls ‘single sock syndrome’: Start #2 of any pair right after finishing the first one.

Okay! A little roll on the drum… I didn’t feel ready but I’d learned everything I could without actually knitting a sock. I felt great anxiety about ‘picking up the stitches’ along the heel, and a bit less about ‘turning the heel’ and ‘grafting.’ It turned out that the anxiety was merited; even though I have now picked up stitches twice I still am not sure how the heck I figured out exactly which ones to pick up how and with what needle. As for turning the heel… follow the pattern and a miracle occurs. Don’t ask me why it works. Grafting turned out to be a simple matter of following directions in my beginners’ book step by careful step, no sweat there.

It was a ‘simple sock’ pattern. That’s what the book called it. I’m positive there is not actually such a thing. I did end up discarding an entire section of the first sock and starting over, but once I got to the ‘simple’ part, it was fascinating to watch the self-striping yarn do its thing, and relaxing to just knit without counting rows, working until the length was right. It took three months (‘simple,’ eh?) but today I proudly laid my first pair of socks on my dresser ready to put on tomorrow morning.

Maggi’s already starting to talk about me doing a lace shawl next. Whoa, girl. You may love those intricate patterns, but it seems I only really find knitting relaxing when there are long sections of tedious (to you) stockinet or garter stitch between the necessity of puzzling over the pattern, counting stitches, and swearing. Let’s just find some shawl pattern that fits that description, okay? At least there is sure to be a ‘next project.’ I am still a product knitter, but I’m beginning to enjoy the process as well. Let’s keep it that way.