The Written Word
for December 5, 1999

One of the most famous trout streams in the world is the Beaverkill in New York State (Kill is the Dutch word for stream incidentally thus betraying the early Dutch interest in New York.) Much has been done over the years to maintain this historic river and it’s been seen as sort of the "canary down the mine" for other eastern American rivers and streams. Up until about five years ago, the Beaverkill was as good as it ever was – as good as the days when Alfred Miller, writing under the pseudonym Sparse Grey Hackle, gave us such wonderful prose about the river. Now it is a shadow of its former self and soon will only be tested by a few beginners and the odd old chap who wants to live out ancient memories.

What’s happening? Is some chemical company dumping its crud into the waters? Is it slurry from nearby farms? Is it perhaps being fished out?

None of the above – it’s what the flyfishermen call the "aluminum hatch". It is hundreds of canoes, river rafts, inner tubes, scuba divers and God only knows what-all floating down the river desecrating the spawning beds and scaring what fish are left half to death. There are now less than ¼ of the fish per mile there were a decade ago and they will soon be a curiosity.

But what do you do? These are public waters and not exclusively for fishermen. They’re not even mainly for fishermen even though they pay for fishing licences and canoeists and other floaters pay nothing.

It’s not just the Beaverkill that this is happening to. To some degree or another it’s happening everywhere. Lakes that were once inaccessible can be reached by logging roads. Lakes with trophy fish in them, until a few years ago only reachable after an exhausting hike, are now ice fished to extinction by people on snowmobiles. It’s all part of the so-called democratization of the outdoors that is made possible by greater access to the outdoors by more people every year.

It’s not as if multi interests cannot live side by side. A reasonable amount of canoeing and river floating can co-exist with fishing. But there is no will to ration these things. Fly fishing is seen as elitist even though the working stiff is the backbone of the sport. It can never lose this elitist tag, I suppose, but that’s a great pity which may lead to the ruination of much of our heritage.

I only have to look at the past ten years to see what is happening. The place to look is the flyfishing magazines and especially their classified pages. Alaska, once the fishing destination of Kings and Presidents only, has crowded fishing on all its accessible rivers. Where there may have been one ad for New Zealand, now there are a half a dozen. There was once the occasional ad for Patagonia, now there are three or four destination fishing companies. Russia, once closed to the world, is now being attacked in the west by Atlantic Salmon fishermen and in the east by Pacific Salmon fishers, especially those finding that there are some steelhead left in the world after all. There is a regular ad for Outer Mongolia!

For a time these exotic places will remain havens for flyfishermen who have a bit of money. But that will change and more and more pressure will be exerted. Perhaps we will become like Britain and have hundreds of reservoirs pop up for still water fishing – nothing the matter with it, Our lake fishing in BC is superb. But the rivers and streams will all be useless.

Gradually population growth is crowding out the old timer and is demanding to use the water in new, noisy and damaging ways. The jet skier comes to the larger lakes. And the quality of the outdoors approximates Locarno Beach on a hot July afternoon.

I can afford to travel to New Zealand every year and fish what I consider to be the most wonderful river in the world. I will be able to do that until I die.

I have no idea, however, where my grandkids will find such a haven.

Probably they will just have to get to like jet boating up what used to be a famous trout stream wondering all the while what that silly old bugger in waders is doing waving that stick.

And it makes me very sad.