Robert Berls in Bulletin of the Anglers' Club of New York, Spring 2009

Rivers of Restoration: Trout Unlimited’s First 50 Years of Conservation

By John Ross

Skyhorse Publishing, 2008, 192 pages, 150 color photographs, $40.00

 Tagewahnahn, the Landlocked Salmon at Grand Lake Stream

Written and published by Dennis LaBare, 2007, 215 pages, more than 200 color photographs and many black & white photographs, $60.00   

  Reviewed by the Editor

 Trout Unlimited’s fiftieth anniversary book, Rivers of Restoration, contains brief discussions and many spectacular photographs of 21 TU-aided stream restoration projects from the Kennebec in Maine to the Garcia River in California.  Nick Lyons says in his preface: the book “profiles nearly two dozen rivers and watersheds and frames Trout Unlimited’s role in combating the threats to their health (showing) how careful stewardship can make a substantial difference.”  As Nick says, “It is an ongoing battle.” 

Most of the rivers presented in the book I have not fished and of the few I have fished the only one I know well is the Falling Spring Branch in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley.  The Cumberland Valley is Pennsylvania’s extension of the Shenandoah Valley, that swath of limestone that curves in a great arc from southwestern Virginia through Maryland and Pennsylvania.  The Falling Spring Branch, near Chambersburg, is one of the many spring creeks in the valley.  Falling Spring is, or was, famous for its magnificent Trico hatch, reputedly the best in the East.  Starting in July and running well into the fall, even as late as Thanksgiving if the fall was mild, every morning it was there.  One of the virtues of Falling Spring, in addition to its wild browns, is a self-sustaining population of rainbows, unusual in the East, as you know.  Before I began going to Montana, the largest wild rainbow I had caught came out of the Falling Spring Trico hatch.    

Our former member, the late Datus Proper, wrote of Falling Spring in 1982 that “the ability of a small stream to support so much life’ (wild trout, aquatic insects, and a mind-boggling population of scuds) ‘seemed a mystery.  They should have made it a national monument.  Instead it is becoming a housing development.”  The spring creek valleys of Pennsylvania have been increasingly encroached on by housing construction for many years.  The usual problems result: habitat degrading owing to increased storm-water runoff, sedimentation, and reduced riparian protection—not to mention “keep off signs.”  Sediment from dairy farms was a long-term problem on Falling Spring.  At times, engrossed in casting to rising fish, you had to glance over your shoulder lest you hook a Holstein on your backcast.    At least the dairy farmers were liberal with stream access.  When one of the farmers was approached about allowing stream improvements to be made, he said “you can do anything you want, just don’t tell me how to run my cows.”  But of course cows in the stream were part of the problem.  The announcement of a proposed housing development on the headwaters spring was the proverbial final straw to two of the regular fishers of Falling Spring who were also active TU members: Dennis LaBare of Baltimore and Bill Horn from Washington.  Dennis has an advanced degree in stream ecology and has taught a graduate course in it at Johns Hopkins and ran his own environmental consulting firm.  Bill was a former Assistant Secretary of Fish and Wildlife at the U.S. Department of the Interior.  Bill and Dennis teamed up to see what could be done to save Falling Spring.  They began to meet with TU members in Chambersburg.  The result was an eventual three-way partnership of the local TU chapter, the township government and what became known as the Falling Spring Greenway bringing in area birders, hikers and people who just want to keep green acres.  Early work by TU and the Greenway influenced the township to amend its land development ordinance to protect Falling Spring.  The state Department of Environmental Protection provided grants to fund stream design projects and for the heavy equipment needed to narrow wide, shallow channels and remove sediment.  The Falling Spring Greenway has generated more than $1 million for work on the stream and resulted in the remodeling of more than 4 miles of Falling Spring into a first-class trout fishery again. 

One of those two environmental activists who started the whole Falling Spring Greenway movement, Dennis LaBare, does nothing by half.  Dennis is the only person I know who spent a whole spring and summer (of 1975) collecting, identifying, and photographing the aquatic insects of one river—the Beaverkill.  Dennis is now retired and divides his year between Grand Lake Stream in Maine (where his family vacationed when he was a boy) and West Virginia.  Dennis spends the warm months fishing for landlocked salmon in Grand Lake Stream and the cold months hunting grouse with his English Setters in West Virginia’s long season that runs to the end of February. 

After five years of work, Dennis has published what must be described as a tribute to Grand Lake Stream and its Landlocked Salmon.  The book is Tagewahnahn, the Landlocked Salmon at Grand Lake Stream.  Tagewahnahn is the original Passamaquoddy Indian name for the Landlocks.  Passamaquoddy means “people who spear Pollack.”  The tribe lived on the Down East coast of Maine until the 18^th century when part of the tribe was relocated inland.  The Landlocks of Grand Lake Stream (GLS) and its St. Croix River watershed are one of the four original Landlocked salmon strains in Maine.                                   

The book has six chapters:  The Fish, The Stream, The Dam, The Hatches, The Hatchery and Sharing the River.  The last one is about prominent anglers and famous people who have pursued Landlocks in Grand Lake Stream.  For a stream that is only 2.75 miles long from the dam on West Grand Lake to where it flows into Big Lake, GLS might be the most intensively studied 2.75 miles of stream anywhere.  Dennis has researched the history and the science of GLS Landlocks and the stories about them.  Although the fish are wild, or virtually so, GLS is a highly managed fishery, but that is not to say that it is an artificial fishery.  The state-owned hatchery at GLS runs an “intercept fishery.”  The hatchery workers capture salmon dropping down the lake in the fall to descend through the dam to spawn and take eggs and milt from them.  The eggs are then moved to the hatchery.  The progeny of those fish are returned to their native waters a year and a half later as seven to eight inch smolts.  These fish are essentially wild, not the progeny of tame brood fish kept in the hatchery.  The hatchery workers net out as many fish as they need each fall: 1,500 to 2,000 fish and the rest are allowed to go through the dam into GLS.  The stripped fish are returned to the lake.  If you have ever wondered about essential differences between wild and hatchery brood fish, there are at least two:  the eggs from Landlock brood fish are 25 percent smaller than those of the wild-captured fish and only 60 percent survive to the eyed stage as opposed to 80 percent of those from wild-captured fish.  The GLS hatchery produces two-thirds of Maine’s stocked Landlocks. 

The salmon stocked in West Grand Lake become increasingly dependent on smelt.  The forage of second-year Landlocks, about 14” long, is nearly all smelt.  Thus the fishery in the lake is the usual trolled streamer fly.  As Dennis says, if you are fishing in West Grand Lake for Landlocks it’s a smelt imitation “or else”. 

In Grand Lake Stream it can be very different.  Comprehensive creel surveys of GLS are done every year by Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife interns.  The annual catch varies from 1,200 to 1,950 legal salmon; and most (88 percent) are released.  Legal minimum size is 14” but 18- to 19-inch salmon are common.  Many of the GLS anglers also fish streamers.  Dennis doesn’t care to fish streamers for GLS Landlocks, preferring the floating fly and presents at length what he has found to be “the most outstanding opportunities to fish the floating fly on GLS.”  He then outlines the ecology of the most important organisms in GLS.  The GLS Landlocks eat bugs and lots of them.        

In mid-June the “signature insect” on GLS creates what Dennis calls “truly spectacular fishing.”  This small net-spinning, size 16 caddis, Hydropsyche morosa, thrives on the plankton soup that flows out of West Grand Lake.  They hatch by the millions.  Stomach contents of the Landlocks show consistently as much as 80 percent caddis in May and June.  You can fish the pupae or the adult and it all goes on until mid-July.  Late June marks the start of another, slightly smaller (#18) net-spinning caddis, the Cheumato- psyche sordida which also thrives on the plankton out of the lake.  Late May and early June see extensive hatches of that iconic Eastern mayfly, the Hendrickson.  After the Hendrickson come the Pale Evening Dun, or Sulpher (E. invaria) and the March Brown, Stenonema vicarium.  A somewhat unusual mayfly, the size 12 Gray Fox-like Stenomena modestum starts to show in mid-July and goes on into September.  The Blue-wing Olive Drunella walkeri also starts in July and hatches from dusk to dark.  Most visiting GLS anglers show up in May and June, but as Dennis notes as long as there is enough water to keep the salmon in the river productive fishing continues through the summer and into the fall.    

Dennis LaBare has woven together a book that he intends “will enhance not just your fishing, but your overall enjoyment and appreciation of the river.”  If you are interested in Landlocked salmon fishing, or in Maine, then you will enjoy this book.  So buy it and feel good about it because 25 percent of the net proceeds go to the Maine Council of Trout Unlimited and the Grand Lake Stream Historical Society.  The book is profusely illustrated with photos, drawings and a lovely map created by Dennis’s wife, a classically trained cartographer.  (The editor of Down East magazine noted that the map was worth the price of the book.)  Among other things Dennis is a talented photographer and there are many historical photos too.  The jacket painting is by the noted Atlantic salmon artist, Arthur Taylor, and is the only painting he has done of a Landlock salmon fishing scene.