Trout of the Battenkill

by H. R. NEWITT

1

RISING in the Dorsets, a few miles north of Manchester, Vermont, the Battenkill flows south for approximately ten river miles to the village of Arlington. There, at what is known as the Cove, the river takes a westerly turn between the Ball and Red Mountain, flows another few miles through West Arlington township, then on into New York State and the Hudson. It is a powerful stream at certain times, with a treacherous thrust in many of its reaches, and dunkings are a commonplace experience for anglers who wade it.

For the greater part shaded by trees, the ten-mile reach of river between Manchester and Arlington winds largely through meadow and pasture land, glides smoothly around boulders at the base of great mountains, and, broadening impressively at Arlington, sweeps on toward New York State, in a series of long, gin-clear pools, linked together by gravelly glides and short stickles. It is a magnificent stream, and one to quicken the pulse of the most phlegmatic angler.

Three species of trout abound in the Battenkill: the native or Eastern brook trout, the European brown, and the latter’s lesser known cousin, the Loch Leven. Many large, some impressive, all outstandingly smart. The insect life of the Kill is both prolific and varied, ranging through the bewildering maze of the Ephemeridae, better known as the May fly, to the more subdued and less important stone and caddis flies. Food minnows also are plentiful; and in clear, sandy stretches of high visibility, the angler may see for himself large schools of black-nosed dace and common brook chub or, scurrying beneath stones at his approach, that shy little fish called the darter. It would be remarkable indeed if the Battenkill trout were not well-fed and lusty.

But while food is abundant, no less impressive are the trout’s natural enemies. Heron, kingfisher, and mink take a more or less constant toll of Battenkill fish life, while those major-league killers, the otter and osprey, play havoc among fish of a pound or more in size. Heading this list in terms of its ubiquity is the kingfisher, whose festive rattle is as much a part of the Battenkill scene as is the sting of the black fly. Next in line come the heron and the more recent arrival, the snowy egret.

In my ramblings, I have come upon mink patrolling the riverbank; and on an early November afternoon, I surprised one arrowing through the shallows of a Battenkill slough. Otter, less common than mink and very shy, may best be observed by proxy, when snow blankets the countryside and the ever narrowing stream is little more than a winding black ribbon between its housing of snow and rim ice. Then, on snowshoes or skis, one may pick up their trails at the edge of the rim ice and follow their ramblings through the snow to the point where they return to the river. Now and then, however, a large smudge of crimson on the snow, along with the skeletal framework of a brown trout, points clearly to the spot where an otter paused for dinner.

About the time of first frost, a pair of ospreys put in an annual appearance in the vicinity of the Cove near Arlington. From then on until snow flies, these great birds of prey, only slightly smaller than the eagle, may be seen almost daily, wheeling low above the river or perched in the branches of a tree above a trout pool. At the foot of the Cove, the river spills over an old wooden dam. And while photographing trout one October, taking this hurdle en route to the spawning beds upstream, a sudden rush of wings overhead sent me scrambling beneath the lip of the dam to one side of the spillway. Crouched down in my blind, uncomfortably, I waited. The osprey meanwhile, after winging on downstream for perhaps a hundred yards, banked suddenly to the right above the treetops and, returning to the dam, came to rest on the limb of a dead elm not a hundred feet below me. Unconscious of my presence the great bird merely sat there, one moment preening its feathers, the next looking idly about at nothing in particular. Suddenly, without the slightest forewarning, it plunged and, wings tucked in with a backward slant, struck the water with a crash and disappeared beneath the surface. Emerging in a shower of spray, it flapped heavily off downstream, a frantically struggling trout grasped firmly in its talons.

2

THIS balance, established by Nature, is, however, normal. But tilting the scales toward the deficit side, even dangerously, is the mass invasion by man of our trout streams. So that fished over daily, almost hourly, throughout the summer by anglers, pricked repeatedly by artificial flies, convulsed if not killed by spinning lures and worm hooks, the Battenkill trout have had to grow smart to survive.

It is not my intention to paint a disquieting picture. Quite the contrary. Trout still abound in the Battenkill and, no doubt, always will. The trick lies in taking them — in a manner, of course, that will at once serve the sportsman and the aims of conservation. For compared with the trout of twenty or thirty years ago, the Battenkill trout of today have a shocking disregard for the best efforts of the too casual angler, and yield only to the man with the knowledge and skill to bring his equipment to the peak of its performance.

Equipped with a binocular I have witnessed the behavior of trout under fire by an accredited master of the dry fly. His fly was right both in size and in pattern, and his casting was perfection. But the trout would not come to his dry fly. With the whole picture under my eye, I suspected his leader. Of a dark bronze color, it cast a shadow on the stream-bed sand as opaque and conspicuous as a clothesline, scattering the trout like chaff even as it hovered above the water. On an overcast day on darker waters, when leader flash and shadow would be negligible, this same leader might have worked to perfection.

Removing the offending leader, the angler replaced it with another of pale aquamarine shade, with a five-x tippet. With a handful of moss and mud from the stream bank, he spent the next five minutes removing all the kinks and shine from his replacement, then held it aloft for my inspection. I couldn’t even see it. A few moments later, at the end of a beautiful loop cast, his fly dropped lightly on the inside edge of a rising trout’s window. From that point on he had no trouble taking several nice fish; while, watching through my glass, I marveled at the precision of his rod work.

Of the several factors which may influence a trout’s refusal, however, only one is set forth in the above illustration — leader color. But had his fly been at fault as well, and had the angler, fumbling his cast, laid his leader along with the fly too far in from the edge of the trout’s surface window, his problem might well have been multiple, and a completely fresh start with three corrections might have been required of the angler.

The average fly-fisherman, and this includes the writer, is an incurable romantic. Hence the subject of trout fly patterns, however esteemed by anglers as a conversational gambit, is more often than not a delusion and snare for the unwary and gullible tyro. There are altogether too many patterns of both dry and wet flies to make sense. With this fact established in his mind, the beginner will save time and money by avoiding this pitfall.

Using approximately a half dozen self-dressed and unnamed patterns ranging in hook size from No. 12 to 18, and in color from cream-badger through lemon and primrose to a nondescript reddish-brown and gray-blue — fishing only these few patterns in four sizes, I have greatly improved my trout take in recent years over earlier ones. Unlike too great variety in pattern, however, variety in hook size is of vital importance. The reason for this distinction becomes clear when it is considered that the May fly, with all its interfamily resemblances in form and color, occurs also in many sizes. Of the two factors, size and pattern, however, the former is more exact from an optical standpoint. In short, first by its size — and only incidentally by its color — does one distinguish the crow from the goldfinch. And so it is with trout, who are far more selective in their diet than many anglers realize, and who, when feeding on a given type of fly, have a way of rejecting all others, especially when their size reveals their difference at a glance. Thus, while only with a hook may the tier fix the size of his dry fly, he may suggest in a single pattern, tied in four sizes, a wide range of May flies of similar, if not identical, coloring. It is no mere coincidence when trout come up repeatedly for the No. 16 fly after pointedly ignoring its No. 12 counterpart.

Some anglers, if they could, would have trout feed around the clock to fit snugly into their own itinerary. Fortunately for the sport, Nature has better ideas on the subject and takes suggestions from no one. “When grub’s on, trout feed, and when it ain’t, they just loaf” would be the guide’s laconic comment on sol-lunar tables and die-hard anglers. For he has learned, as do most of us in time, that trout have an irritating way of upsetting too finely drawn theories as to the hour and manner of their feeding.

However, as the season advances and trout become more and more nocturnal in their habits of feeding, the seasoned angler joints his rod about sundown, when, cooled by the forests, soft winds bring relief to the lowlands, sweeping over his trout stream and energizing indiscriminately all life beneath its surface. Then, seated on the bank, he awaits a bit impatiently that phenomenon of Nature called the hatch, when May flies swarm to the surface in whole battalions. Only then does he enter the pool by way of the stickle at its foot and, taking up his stance in midstream, stand by for thatmost spectacular of all moments in the drama of the trout stream when, having fasted all day, the trout swing into action and the evening rise is on.

Then suddenly his pool is full of movement. Deserting the mowings, swallows flick the water all about him, the faint snapping of their beaks a strange nuance in the silence as they share along with trout the bounty spread before them on the water. To the angler, however, the thing of greater interest is the dimpling of the surface caused by trout — the eager splashing of the small ones out in midstream and, in along the bank beneath the willows, the surreptitious rise-forms of the big ones, whose caution on the take is known to every angler on the Battenkill.

But our angler, by this time, has marked down his trout and in turn gone into action. His line leaps out, pauses briefly in mid-air, then settles toward the water, its belly arcing upstream as our angler “shoots” the slack held lightly in his line hand, its leader curving inward toward the willows. A split second later his fly settles lightly on the water about two feet above and an equal distance out from the center of a rise-form near the bank. Completely at the mercy of the current, it now starts its journey past the target — high-riding, free, undisturbed by line drag — a morsel to tempt the most cautious of fish, yet apparently ignored by the one beneath it.

Then a strange thing happens, surprising to the angler, who, about to retrieve his fly, is caught completely off balance. Deceived all along, the trout has pursued the fly downstream, swung quickly about, and come quietly up to receive it. Instantly our angler recovers himself, his rod arm twitches, and the big trout is on.

But wait! Something has gone wrong beneath the willows. A boiling of the water, then a crash; and his fly is returned to him, its hook straightened out, a battered wreck, reminding him too late that willows at times have roots beneath the water. Grinning ruefully, he changes his fly for another of identical pattern, waits patiently a spell for the pool to quiet down, then starts in all over.

For this is the Battenkill; beautiful, unpredictable — not a stream for the easily discouraged, but a school for postgraduate anglers, to whom its challenge stands forth as its number one virtue.