By Don Feigert
Herald Outdoors Writer
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I arrived on a Friday evening at F-Troop, just me and the two camp kitties Austin and Pooh-Cat. I settled the two pets in at their 20-hour-per-day sleeping venues and their food-and-water stations and walked out back to build a campfire. A couple of hot dogs and some good quiet time later, I doused the flames and headed to the front deck to settle in on the wicker rocker and listen to the great, grave movement of waters downstream in the majestic Allegheny River.
I cracked a beer (hey, I’m old enough; don’t worry) and breathed in the fresh cool air and listened to the crickets and bullfrogs and owls in the night and pondered. “I drink alone,” I heard myself quoting from the classic rock song, “because I prefer to be by myself.”
And sometimes I do prefer to be alone in the outdoors or up at camp. Things slow down then and get quieter. You can have a conversation with yourself. It’s fun with a raucous crowd joke-telling and excitedly making plans for fishing or hunting trips, but sometimes I’m in the mood for an evening on the front porch. Just me and the river and the sounds of the night.
And then there’s the solo fishing trip awaiting in the morning. I rose with the sun Saturday, made coffee and toast, then drove down to Perry Run, which holds stocked trout in its lower reaches and wild brookies farther up. It’s one of my favorite Warren County streams, high-gradient with lots of pools and waterfalls. I started in at the Althom Road bridge and hiked upstream. The game lands forest was lush with the early-summer greenery of oaks and hickories and beech trees and hemlocks, and in the open places along the trail, where sunlight shone through into meadows, tall grasses thrived. Birdsong and insect buzz filled the air, and I fired up a Black‘n Mild cigar to hold off the gnats and mosquitoes.
A half-mile up, I approached the five-foot-high shelf-rock waterfall that I’ve been fishing once or twice a year for 20 years and tossed a line in where current bordered eddy. The fly line went suddenly tight, and I jerked and missed the fish clean. I tried again and hooked him, a fine, fat hatchery brown trout about one foot long. I don’t catch many stocked trout these days, so I took a moment to study him. The head was small and the body heavy compared to wild trout, and the fins were stunted and the coloration drab. He was still a worthwhile fish, though, having lived a month and a half in the stream since the last stocking. I contemplated his chances of surviving through until next spring and officially becoming a holdover trout, which are almost as wild as born-in-the-stream wild native brook trout. Pretty slim, I decided, especially if he stays in this obvious waterfall fishing hole.
I caught another stockie in a deep run a hundred yards up from the waterfall and one more in a pool close by. After that, though, I saw nothing but wild brookies. The stream was high and roily from recent rains, and the trout bite was light, but I did manage to catch four small brook trout from the half-mile to the mile-and-a-half points upstream, then nothing at all for a long stretch.
At the two-mile point I approached a familiar hole where I had fished a few times before. A fast run poured in against the bank, and the creek made a sharp bend and formed a deep hole right where an old hemlock had blown down into the waters. It was tricky fishing around those hemlock branches, but I found a spot where the current carried unobstructed into the pool. On the first cast, I saw the line tighten and move sharply upstream, and I set the hook and felt a strong fish on the line. I battled and maneuvered him away from the branches and up onto the shoreline.
He was a real prize, a nine-inch wild brook trout with salmon-colored fins, a reddish cast to his belly and nothing but pure power and musculature from his oversized head to his square-backed tail. Most brookies never reach this size, so I admired him a moment longer and then released him back into the pool. That beautiful fish put a smile on my face and made my day. I stood by the stream for a couple of minutes and basked in the memory of the catch. Then I dismantled my fly rod and hiked straight back to the road.
Good luck out there. And have a great week outdoors.
Don Feigert is the outdoors writer for THE HERALD and the ALLIED NEWS. His latest book, The F-Troop Camp Chronicles, and his earlier books are available by contacting Don at 724-931-1699 or dfeigert@verizon.net. Visit his Website at www.donfeigert.com.
