Still Life with Brook Trout by John Gierach

Author:John Gierach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

During the drought, some of my friends and I had gotten almost smug about beating the conditions by fishing in the high country, hitting the controlled tailwaters now and then and sometimes traveling to places like Labrador and Maine, where there was plenty of water, if not actually too much. But late in this third season, we’d begun to see not just low flows, but some undeniably shrunken streams, although the one we’d just walked along was the first that actually seemed too far gone to fish.

Not unexpectedly, the only trout fishery that had actually been lost that year was a man-made affair. A reservoir up in South Park had been drained dry to fill another reservoir farther downstream so that people in the Denver suburbs could continue to water their ridiculous bluegrass lawns. As the water dropped, the Division of Wildlife invited fishermen to come up and kill all the trout they could catch in what they euphemistically called a “recovery operation.”

I saw some of those guys interviewed on TV one night. The reporter—and I use the term loosely—obviously went up there to do a lighthearted piece. I mean, who would be happier than a fisherman who could kill all the fish in the lake if he wanted to? But the fishermen the reporter talked to seemed sad and a little embarrassed, while the talking head seemed annoyed to have reality intrude on his preconceived idea. The lead for the story had been, “Good News for Fisher-men.”

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