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3. Ugliest stream you ever caught trout on?

Or more like it; the Oddest.

One of the more strange rivers I have fished runs a little like this:
It comes through the factory and directly under the motorway, then beside the gas-station, next to the road beside the motorway.
After 50 yards or so it disappears from the face of the earth, running under the industrial area and the railway station.
When it appears again it's straightened by human hand, and deepened, to prevent floods. It has runs of both salmon and seatrout, and a good population of browns.
No I have'nt fished here much.
Upstream from all of this commotion it's beautiful though.

I have caught trout within the city limits of Atlanta, GA - NOT my favorite place in the world! The Chattahoochee River runs through it and they stock it with rainbows (mostly) and some browns. The river itself is attractive enough except for one problem: SEWER LINES run along it, and I don't mean storm sewers. When it rains, they (the National Park Service, actually - it's part of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area) unfurl these signs along the river that warn you to STAY OUT OF THE WATER due to high levels of bacteria. Let me guess - fecal coliforms??? Sure smelled like it when the breeze picked up, even on nice sunny days with no rain.

Every other place I've ever caught trout was infinitely more attractive...Oh, I guess except for the "trout parks" of Missouri (Motrout knows what I'm talking about here), which again are perhaps attractive from a physical standpoint but not from the crowds of Powerbait-tossing humanity...

Jonathon

I don't think I caught anything there, but I did one time wet a line in the Root River in Racine, WI. It is known for its run of presumably stocked Lake Michigan steelhead, but I felt much more likely to catch a garbage bag, an old tire, or a dead body... or to become one if I hung around there too much longer.

I remember an old quote that claims "Trout only live in beautiful places" or something like that. I've forgotten who wrote it.
Thats not entirely true.

I've done a bunch of urban fishing. I've fished pools named: "Old Schoolbus", "Shopping Cart Run", "The Mudhole"... . Here in CO I also love to bass fish and many of our man-made snowmelt retention reservoirs are not pretty -"dishpans" that were excavated or just flooded natural shallow hollows on the plains. But the beauty resides in the water, in the system of living things there. One of my hotspots on one res has been a sunken ridge I found with sonar that turned out to be a concrete pile left over from construction -"ugliness" that can't be seen with the naked eye. But there's beauty there too, in the shape of mature largemouth bass and schools of large crappie on occasion.

My wife doesn't really get it. She appreciates my knowledge, but has little interest in fishing surrounded by less than a pristine mountain pass. I guess "beauty" is not just relegated to the visual. I also feel that, in my mind, much of CO is "spectacular", not necessarily "beautiful". Maybe that's bc my aesthetic is Eastern deciduous, developed when those kinds of things form.

Now I've fished in ugliness,like when a lake-run stream fills with snaggers that literally threw big trout high into the air just to emphatically exercise their perceived right to be unlawful. There were a lot of otherwise "beautiful" places and times I avoided.

I often hear FF's griping about "bait-fishers" with real lip-curling disgust and disdain -even on marginal stocked streams -another exposition of "ugliness" in my book. It seems that many FF carry more romantic expectations onto the streams than many others, and when those expectations are offended, they too can get "ugly". I watched two groups of FFs come to shoving each other when one approached upstream while the other fished down. The interesting thing was that that was the only "fight" I saw onstream that year, and it didn't involve snaggers or bait fishers.

I DO seek beauty in my fishing, (or avoid ugliness), but recognize it may not fit everyone's idea of it.

PaulRoberts//
Thank you for bringing that important perspective to the whole thing.
Of course 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' as well as 'Ugly' is.
My girldriend proves that every time she calls me good-looking.

I'm going to have to say the same thing as JMD about the MO trout parks. I don't fish them anymore, but I used to, and you can literally see people on the bank in lawn chairs, fishing Powerbait, from horizon to horizon. These people are attracted to the fact that these parks are stocked every single day in season with 10" rainbows.

The very ugliest place I've ever fished is in a Missouri trout park , but surprisingly enough, in a Fly-fishing only Catch and Release area in Montauk Park. I'd never fished this part of the park, and a friend had told me it was full of rainbows and browns in the 3-5 pound range.

It was, sure enough. But what he didn't tell me was that this stretch of creek is only 200 yards long at most, never more than 5-10 feet across, is a direct hatchery outlet, the big trout are pellet fed broodstock from the hatchery that you can actually see from the stream, and it flows slow and straight through a manicured lawn.

I did fish there for about 20 minutes, just long enough to catch a fat pellet hog or two. Then I got the heck out of there, and drove twenty miles away to a secluded little smallmouth stream (for some reason I felt the need to fish a stream that didn't border a hatchery or flow through a manicured lawn)

Paul,

I think you are right in alluding to the subjectivity of all this here we are discussing, but in my mind its all due to the "human factor"...It's humans that degradated all the above mentioned places, it's humans that act like assholes in some of these places we have mentioned, and it is us humans that think we can toss trout anywhere, whether they will live or not, simply to entertain ourselves...

I have mentioned my "ugliness" spot on this site before. Its a stocked trout program in a pond in a state park close by here. They dump old, wore out, brood stock in at the end of March and it's catch-and-release artificials only until the regular opening day of trout (the last Sat in April)...These hogs are incapable of a fight since their fins are wore down to nubs...It's like reeling in a large wet bath towel. When you land one you swear that the fish is trying to beg you to please put it out of its misery...

After every season I swear I'll never return and have stood up in meetings, at the club that started it all 30 some years back, and begged them to stop it...I have had conversations with our local DNR and even they say that if someone came to them today with this idea they would shut it down...You should see the place on the day they let the locals come in and yank them out...It's a feeding frenzy...There are even folks who show up there and ignore the no bait rules and the no-kill rules during the "special" season...I have watched them catch fish and run through the woods to a friends car and then speed off with the fish...The DNR has sat there and watched folks hide them in their waders...Lovely!

Spence the Misanthrope

PS Just for the record and truth in advertising...I'm a "Lifer" FFF member, and though I've come close, I've never killed anyone on the stream...Beat them within an inch of their life, but they always crawled away...:)

1) Without a doubt, the ugliest streams I've ever caught trout from were waters in PA's Upper Schuylkill watershed that had been devastated during the anthracite boom and then reclaimed over the past 20 years of so via the treatment of deep mine discharge. The fish were all wild brook trout, some of them among the biggest ones I've ever caught in PA (12-13"). The streams ran a milky ferrous red and traversed a pretty beaten down part of the Commonwealth. Ugly as sin, but full of fish.

2) I'd give a runner's up nod to sections of Pennsylvania's Spring Creek, one of the great wild brown trout factories of the East.
It isn't so much the setting, although that was mostly suburban and increasingly built-up. It was the smell. From one end to the other, fishing Spring Creek always felt like I was fishing in our laundry room. That's how it smelled to me, anyway..

Spence,
Such “fisheries” you describe exist everywhere. I’m viscerally repulsed by them too. There will always be those that want, or need, things “easy”. Lotsa people are simply not in position to know "better", or act "better". If there are too many of them, and there are a lot, regulating them will only alienate them. State resource managers have to answer to everyone, and such “fisheries” are maintained, or justified, bc they offer an entry point, or "harvest" opportunity for many. And they, luckily, tend to be limited in number and location. One that pushed the limits for many FFs in NY were the many local often-marginal stretches of trout streams that receive stocked trout in spring. “Bait dunkers” follow the trucks and line up and make a killing. Trout fishing to them is a spring thing when the trout catching is easy. It's a harvest and they would not go if they came home empty handed. I’ve known many good people for whom that is what fishing is.

And I also know some FFs that are vehemently opposed. “Bait dunkers…” they mutter and froth. Yet, I fished those same streams all year long and came to realize way more factory trout are stocked than those streams could support (And that’s by design). By midsummer, when everyone including those frothing FFs are either playing golf, at tractor pulls, or off on the tailwaters or spring creeks (where the fishing is “easy” LOL) I’d spend some time on those marginal creeks when the flow is diminished and temps peaked, and recognize the true habitat limitations there. It seems many people, FFs esp so, carry their aesthetic with them wherever they go, whether it fits or not. Take solace in this fact: Most people won’t walk more than a few hundred yards to fish, or do anything for that matter. The rest is yours.

I'm careful where I lay "blame" in the "human factor". Honestly, we are all a part. I can't help but see the hypocrisy in places like REI, the "green" shopper's paradise. There are an awful lot of us now and we all want roughly the same things: longevity and inordinate wealth -an ecological disaster. I doubt many of us would voluntarily pitch our poly-fleece windstopper fabrics, or our fine sporting rods for less corrosive hickory saplings -unless there were no other choice. And by then, we'd as likely be needing a 2ft wooden club as an 8.

Paul,

This was pretty close to my first lesson when it came to fly fishing. My mentor told me that if I was willing to hike away from the access sites I could find myself alone and not harrassed.

"I hear what you are saying" ( I can't believe I just said that phrase :)), but I'm not too forgiving these days when it comes to the thundering herd of instant gratifiers...Like you probably, I've seen them all, and its always the same old excuse..."Someone didn't show me anything different!"...I was pretty much the first of my extended family to see the inside of a university and I got myself there, and I made myself learn, and it is I who continues to swim upstream, against the current, only to find another dam obstructing my way...Metaphorically speaking...

Maybe it was those long wintery evenings after class in the library. I was the 1st of seven and couldn't study at home, and would sit in the listening room listening to an old recording of H.L.Mencken being interviewed by his old buddy George Jean Nathan for the Library of Congress...Who knows where the scepticism came from...But its there...I don't want to send anyone off to hell. I just want them to try a little harder.

Spence

Ditto.

Nice comments, all. Astute observations by Paul and Spence, particularly. The human element is usually what makes for a bad experience on the stream, isn't it? Perhaps all we flyfishers are a little misanthropic. And, while I've observed more bad behavior on the stream from bait-slingers than flyfishers, the elitist attitude of flyfishers is equally obnoxious. A family member of mine who is a tremendous flyfisherman once observed to me as we watched a chap with a spinning outfit quietly lock up his car and head off to the stream, "I can tell that guy has a lousy attitude." It was hard to remain silent.

I think the reason we fish ugly water is that catching trout there somehow redeems it. It's like seeing a flower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk - nature's beauty overcoming man's seemingly infinite ability to destroy it. Catching a wild trout in ugly water returns a semblance of the natural order to our chaotic world. It is nature's way of telling us that it can take our best shot, that our man-made jungles are destined in the long run to be swallowed up again by real jungles.

-Shawn

Ugliest stream you ever caught a trout on? I can’t say that I’ve ever caught a trout on an ugly stream. But I will mention the: Ugliest person I ever caught on a trout stream.

As a matter of fact Paul it was in your neck of the woods. Rather well known, and you have probably fished it. It runs along Hwy. 82. So take heed.

I was casting tight to the bank; at my back was an old railroad bed that sat high above the river. At first I paid little attention to the strange sound of a metallic ting ringing from behind. The first splash off to my left I felt was rather strange as I tried to figure out just what it was. The second splash, which had become uncomfortably closer, had me turning to investigate. There standing above me, on the old railroad bed, was some SOB with a metal baseball bat hitting rocks at me. I stood there staring him down in disbelief. I knew my 9 foot 4 weight was no match against this idiot so I just continued to stare. Eventually he meandered off and disappeared. I can only guess at his motive, but that is one of the few times in my life where I wish I could’ve drawn a handgun (preferably a 45 semi auto) and unloaded………..with blanks of course.

This is why, Falsifly, I always fish near a quiet meadow. So far, no one's ever found a body.

-Shawn

Speaking of the ugliness of humanity, I had my worst-ever experience with a so-called fellow fly fisherman this year. He was even someone I had met before, but somehow he forgot until I reminded him. He was fishing my local lake here in Troy - itself, not the prettiest lake I have ever fished, it's basically an old gravel pit next to a golf course, but does have a very nice mature deciduous forest along its west side and it is full of bass and panfish. In any case, I said hi to him, seeing a fellow carrying a fly rod in his hand, and he proceeded to insult my choice of tackle and even question why I had my handle on the left side of my fly reel! "What are you, just an old spin fisherman?" As if this put me somehow in some lower class of existence...aren't we ALL??? Then he was so upset, about what I'll never know, that he smacked his fly rod into mine while he was waving his hands about, and HARD enough to make me check mine for damage! He finally shut up when I showed him boxes full of my own tied flies and reminded him that I had met him the year before, and how I was no rank beginner, pardon me, but have been at this sport for 25 years now.

I should mention at this point that said as*hole was considerably older than me and so must have felt, quite stupidly I must add, that he knew so much more about fishing than I did that he could say and do anything he wanted. Well, gee, I have been fishing this lake since 1974 and flyfishing it since 1986, so excuse me, I think I know a thing or two about fly fishing, particularly on that body of water. He asked for my email and I don't know exactly why I gave it to him, but when he wrote to me I gave him a thorough dressing-down on his behavior on how insulting he was to a fellow fly fisherman and how I had never encountered anyone so rude within the sport, until now.

My only hope is that this stupid old know-it-all f*ck doesn't run into any beginners in this sport, as I'm sure he'll be a MAJOR turn-off! I told him point blank that I had enjoyed every other fly fisherman I have ever met except for HIM. So, yes, sadly, fly fisherman are not totally immune from being AS*HOLES. And to the rest of the older members of our sport, please oh please, DO NOT emulate this guy ever! If you have advice to impart to a younger member of our fraternity, do so with humility and respect, or you'll be doing nothing but hurting the sport that you love.

Of course, the solution is to find your own secluded fishing holes where there are no as*holes to run into...

Jonathon

I loved that line. Thanks for that. Gave me a really good chuckle.

I'm glad that you found it funny Paul, because I didn't. Perhaps this is just because, honestly, every other fly fisherman I have ever met has been inerringly polite. That's why he stands out so much I had to chew on his as* in my email!

Jonathon

Oh, I don't mean the whole situation -I wouldn't find such condescension funny either. And it turned out to be a good thing he emailed you and you got to speak your mind. He needed to hear that -to have his bubble popped.

I was meaning that particular line, which I read to mean that we ALL started as spin-fishers -who's he fooling but himself.

(I'm still a devout spin-fisher at times. Lots to be learned there too.)

Paul, I found the whole thing ultimately amusing too - like who's born with a fly rod in their hand already? I did meet one guy down in San Marcos, TX some years ago who claimed he began fly fishing at the age of two. Whether you (or I) believe him or not, he was a pretty young guy - like 22 if I remember correctly - and he was already pretty accomplished in the sport, at least he sure seemed so when I fished with him and he tied some pretty nice flies too. So, who knows? Maybe he isn't "just an old spin fisherman" like the rest of us...???

Jonathon

P.S. I myself have been on a "fly rod only" kick for the last three years. Not that I won't ever pick up a spinning rod again, in fact I am considering getting some more ice fishing gear this winter in anticipation of moving up to Oscoda, where winter weather is more consistent than it is here in the 'burbs.