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Trout Fishing in the Battenkill River

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(page 3 of 6)

For all I could tell, not a trout lived in this Battenkill pool.

Toward dusk I made my way back to the bridge where I'd left my car. An elderly man was parked beside me. He was shucking off his waders. I asked after his luck first, so he was forced to admit he'd been skunked before I did. He seemed cheerful about it. No bugs, no trout, he shrugged. A simple equation. He lived nearby, fished for a few hours just about every day, got skunked regularly.

It happens less regularly to me because I generally don't fish in rivers as idiosyncratic as the Battenkill. I don't like to spend ten hours on a stream without so much as a single strike. It makes me believe that there's something wrong -- either with the river or with me. I prefer to blame myself. I don't want things to be wrong with rivers.

I was reluctant to leave. My friend told me that he'd once taken a 16-inch brown trout from the Battenkill. That was his biggest. It had happened four years earlier. I confessed that I'd caught a six-incher the previous day. He smiled. He said he'd had plenty of days when he hadn't done that well.

I removed my waders, took down my rod, and went up to the bridge for a final look at the river. Swallows had begun to swoop close to the water, and few caddis flies swarmed in the air. Then I saw the rise of a trout, and as I watched, I saw two more. One of them appeared to be heftier than my six-incher.

I returned to the car. "There's a few rising below the bridge," I told my friend.

He smiled. "Go catch one," he said.

"I guess I will." I restrung my rod and stuck a box of caddis fly imitations into my shirt pocket. I didn't bother climbing back into my waders.

I stood on the river's edge below the bridge, and now there were half a dozen fish feeding steadily, splashing at the insects that fluttered over the water. My fly was invisible on the dark water. I cast upstream of a feeding trout, and if he rose when my fly was on the water, I lifted my rod. A couple of times I guessed the fish had splashed at my fly, but I didn't hook him.

As the dusk gathered, the fish began to feed more hungrily. Now I had at least a dozen actively rising fish in front of me. I cast frantically, amateurishly, first to this one and then, when another rose nearby, I'd interrupt the drift of my fly, lift my line, and cast to him. Perhaps some of these were worthy trout, although I couldn't judge.

Then I caught one. He did not come skittering in over the surface, but neither did he slog heavily at the end of my line. I landed him easily and measured him against the markings on my rod. His nose failed by an inch to reach the one-foot mark. He was a brook trout, a species native to the Battenkill. Perhaps this one was a descendant of those that settled here after the glaciers retreated. More likely his ancestors were hatchery trout that were heavily stocked a century ago.

Either way, I knew he was another wild trout, a survivor born in the river. It's been many years since hatchery-raised trout have been dumped into the Battenkill. I revived him carefully and slipped him back into the river.

"How big?"

I turned. My friend had been watching from the bridge.

"About 11 inches," I said.

"Brown?"

"Brookie."

"Three-year-old fish," he said. "Brook trout don't live much longer here. That's a trophy brookie for the Battenkill. About as big as they get."

On most of the western rivers I fish, an 11-inch trout would be an embarrassment. I realized I was still taking the measure of the Battenkill.