On observation

The other day I wrote about some similarities between my experiences fly fishing and mushroom hunting. Another similarity between the activities has to do with the development of focused observation.

In fly fishing, after a while, you're out there on stream and you start to notice the bugs and how the trout are reacting to them quite clearly. I recall being on the Crowsnest River one late September day several years ago. It was snowing and it was my first time on the river and I hadn't seen any trout. Then I noticed a flash in the stream and another one, and as I concentrated on looking into the water, I started to see a number of trout, angled down, grabbing nymphs from the bottom, flashing as they turned. There are sometimes clues to the behavior of the trout: a splashy rise, a tail rise, seeing the back of the trout, a gentle pop or a slurp on the surface. The same thing happens over and over and at a certain point it is clear what is happening, what stage of the life cycle of the insect the trout is eating. And they can be very very selective.

In mushroom hunting, you need to train your eye to pick up on clues in much the same way. There is a lot of forest to look at, but you're looking for mushrooms, not just looking around. The first time I found chanterelles, they were around me but I couldn't see them, but once I picked a few, I started to see the telltale bits of yellow peeking out from under leaves. One of the things you have to learn how to do is to slow down. If you don't slow down and focus around you, you won't see what is there for you to see.

My brother has a knack for finding lobster mushrooms. These are curious items, these lobster mushrooms. They are actually the result of a mold attacking a mushroom, turning it lobster red, and transforming an unpalatable mushroom into a tasty edible along the way. I've never found one, yet going to the same forests, my brother finds them almost every time out. They reveal themselves, he tells me, as little bits of red under leaves, and sometimes as just bumps in the leafy surface of the forest floor. Salvalinas has somehow or another learned see those bumps, or find those little bits of red that I don't yet see. I expect that once I find a few of them, I'll start to see the signs in a similar way.

Occasionally, of course, nature hits you over the head, no subtlety involved. For instance, there was the day we found the large chicken mushroom. We were walking through the woods and I saw something screaming red. I thought somebody had left a red hunting jacket in the woods and that was what I had glimpsed. It turned out to be pounds of chicken mushroom, bright red-orange on top and yellow on the bottom. Impossible for even a newbie like me to miss.

The character of forests

I've spent a good deal of time over the years chasing trout, which has brought me into contact with any number of forests. For me though, for many years, forests were places trout streams flowed through. I was more interested in the character of the streams than the character of the forest.

There are some fly fishers who have involved themselves in the phenology of the business to the point where looking at the forest plants provides clues to the insect activity and so to the trout behavior. I've spent lots of time watching trout go after insects and birds go after insects and I understand some of those relationships pretty well. Of course the evidence of that is tying up the right fly pattern for conditions and actually catching some trout. I don't make the associations though, between what's happening in the forest and what's happening on stream. Enthusiasts with that interest might enjoy a fascinating little book called The Phenological Fly, by Bob Scammel.

This summer, since I've been learning about identifying mushrooms, especially the edible ones, I've been paying a lot more attention to forests. It became obvious fairly quickly that my poor ability to identify conifers was a huge liability. Some mushrooms tend to grow around hemlock, for instance, but I couldn't pick out a hemlock in the woods. Some boletes apparently prefer Norway spruce to black spruce. Do you know the difference? There are lots of opportunities to learn in the forest.

As I've been wandering about various forests, looking for and at fungi, I've begun to characterize forests based on the mix of trees (pine plantation, mixed hardwoods, mixed forest with hemlock, hardwoods with plenty of oak, and so on), and based on other factors as well. Some forests are easier to walk in than others, and some are just about inpenetrable. Some are on dry ground, while others are what I've come to call "malarial bog", a loose term describing just about any damp mosquito-infested forest. I know of a couple forests that never seem to really dry out, even without rain.

I've started to really pay attention to where I am in a forest, because looking for mushrooms takes you off the trails much of the time. Of course, sometimes the mushrooms are closer to the trail than you expect. The other day I found several chanterelles smack in the middle of a trail. I guess this is like the fly fisher who regularly catches good trout at the bridge pool. I've also started to pay attention to specific conditions within the larger forest. On Saturday, I was out with my brother and we found a gentle trough with a hill rising on both sides. This spot showed us quite a variety of mushrooms, including some curious and tasty mushrooms known as "Sweet Tooth" or "Hedgehog". Further up the hill on either side, there seemed to be nothing. Yet it wasn't the lowness of the trough that created the right conditions. On the other side of the trail, we looked through forest which was as low and lower with no success. I suppose with experience, I'll be able to identify the right subsets of conditions for various types of mushrooms. For now, although I'm learning quickly, there is a lot of hit and miss going on.

This is similar to my early experiences fly fishing. I recall thinking, well there are rising trout, I'll try a dry fly. Years later, I would look at the same scene and think something like, the trout are on the isonychia duns in shallow water, knowing the fish had followed the isonychia swimming nymphs into the shallows where they emerged and became mayflies, and were gobbling up the big adult flies before they were able to take flight. With experience comes detail.

Should Lake Sturgeon be protected?

I saw an ad in the paper the other day, placed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada - about Lake Sturgeon.
"Fisheries and Oceans Canada is currently considering whether the Lake Sturgeon should be protected under the federal Species at Risk Act. In southern Ontario, this fish is found in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River system. Populations of Lake Sturgeon in the Great Lakes and tributaries were greatly reduced due to commercial fisheries in the late 1800s or early 1900s, and only remnant populations still exist today. Protecting this fish under the Act will help ensure its continued survival, but may affect fishers, boaters, First Nations, municipal governments and others."

To comment on whether the Lake Sturgeon should be protected by federal legislation, you can contact Pooi-Leng Wong at Fisheries and Oceans Canada: fwisar@@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.


You don't hear much about the Lake Sturgeon these days. My father was an extraordinary story-teller, and when I was growing up, he used to tell me (over and over) two stories about fishing for Lake Sturgeon - one about the one he caught and the other about the one that got away. They were dramatic fishing stories that were so vivid when he told them, I would listen wide eyed. Somewhere, we have an old family photo of my father with a very dead sturgeon and my big brother when he was a little tyke. I don't know how many times my dad would say, "he was 57 pounds and 57 inches". He would point at my brother and say, "he was bigger than you, and better looking too", and everyone would laugh, even though they had heard his cornball humour and the same story a thousand times.

My father fished for Lake Sturgeon in a pool in the Nottawasaga River we used to call the Whirlpool, just above Montgomeries Rapids. He showed me the spot so many times. "The sturgeon hold in here in the spring, son", he'd say, and he'd launch into another version of story 1 or story 2. "Hey son, did I ever tell you about the day I hooked into an 8 foot sturgeon on a fly rod?".

I have no idea if the sturgeon still hold in the whirlpool above Montgomeries in the spring, or if their numbers are the same or less than those days, when he was a young man who loved to chase fish. I do know that when I read the ad in the paper, I thought about my father and that river, and the stories about the sturgeon that he's not around to tell any more.

I think we'd better do everything we can to protect those sturgeon, don't you?

I'm back....

I'm back home. Thanks Candy for doing some posting around here. For more photos from the Upper Michigan Peninsula, check out my fly fishing blog. More posts soon.

Watch for guest posts by Candy Minx

I'll be back in a week. Candy has generously offered to make some posts here while I'm away.

Fishing Alone

Some people think that fly fishing is a social activity, and it is true I've made some friends among the cranks who fish my home waters - but really fly fishing is a very solitary pursuit. Even on those occasions when I head up to the river with a friend, it is rare that we fish together. Sometimes we meet for lunch, or share a camp.

Over the past few years, I've taken a few days to a week to travel and fish and camp completely alone. I can't explain why I find this periodic solitude so compelling, but I look forward to it each year.

On Saturday, I'm driving to Sault Ste Marie, crossing into the US and heading west on the Upper Peninsula, fishing a number of the streams on the Superior side. A few of my weekly trips have been to this area. I like the streams there, and the fact that there is good access to many streams. On the Ontario side, there are some great streams but overall, access is more challenging. I also like the fly fishing literary history of the area. Hemingway wrote about the Fox, calling it the Big Two Hearted River, which is actually north and east. Robert Traver wrote Trout Madness about his home water, the streams around Gwinn and Ishpeming and Marquette. If you are ever curious about fly fishing and why some people are drawn to it, read Trout Madness. It was written in 1960, the year I was born. Traver also wrote Anatomy of a Murder, which became the great Preminger film starring Jimmy Stewart.
Successful fly fishing for trout is an act of high deceit; not only must the angler lure one of nature's subtlest and wariest creatures, he must do so with something that is false and no good - an artificial fly. Thus fake and sham lie at the heart of the enterprise. The amount of Machiavellian subtlety, guile, and sly deception that ultimately becomes wrapped up in the person of an experienced trout fisherman is faintly horrifying to contemplate. Thus fiendishly qualified for a diplomatic career he instead has time only to fish. So lesser diplomats continue to grope and bumble and their countries continue to fall into war. The only hope for it all, I am afraid, is for the Lord to drive the trout fishermen into diplomacy, or else drive the diplomats to trout fishing. My guess is that either way we'd be more apt to have peace.: the fishermen-turned-diplomats would hurriedly resolve their differences on the trout stream so that they might return to their fishing, while the diplomats-turned-fishermen would shortly become so absorbed in their new passion they'd never again find time for war.

The Credit River above the Forks

I took these shots this afternoon above the group of houses known as Brimstone and up through the meadows and into the pocket water section. I didn't make it nearly up as far as the falls. Another day.

Fishin Blues

Got the day off work again, and yes I'm goin fishin.

Here's Taj Mahal.


....or, if you prefer more of a jug band feel:


see ya later...

A day on the Credit River

I enjoyed a delightful day chasing trout on the Credit River. It was sunny, but not too warm. I saw an otter and a garter snake and a toad and mallard ducks - and I caught a bunch of trout too.

gardening, fishing

Between me and Tuffy P, we got a lot of work done in the garden. My goal is to thoroughly weed the back garden before I start work on the new back patio - that gives me this coming week...

Tomorrow, I'm taking off to get lost on a trout stream. I should post late evening once I get back.

Opening Day

Trout season opened today. I had breakfast this morning with the usual cranks who fish the upper Credit, then parked by the river and went for a long walk upstream.

It felt really good to be walking a stream again. The water was high and discoloured. The sky was grey and the greens on the cedars by the river were intense. This early in the spring, the forest is sparse - you can see quite a distance through the trees. I walked upstream for about 45 minutes before cutting over to the river from the path, and fished a stretch we call the meadows. For a while a fine mist filled the air, just enough to notice, but not enough to get soaked through. You can see some pictures of the river on my fly fishing blog.

I caught and released one trout at a place the guys call stuck-truck pool. There is no truck stuck there; maybe there was once. The river has changed, and now it is more of a run than a pool, but we don't call it stuck-truck run. That wouldn't be right.

My left knee has been giving me problems for the past few months - doctor thinks I strained a ligament, so I took it easy wading to avoid twisting it. I'm happy to report that it held up well.

It was good to see the guys for breakfast and it was especially good to be on a trout stream today.

Canadian Fly Fishing Forum

My other blog, The Southern Ontario Fly Fisher, has been pretty much dormant for some time, given that there isn't much in the way of fly fishing action happening around here this time of year. However, I did post today about the Canadian Fly Fishing Forum, scheduled for April 14 and 15 this year in Burlington.