TroutLegend

As I pulled into the lot M.H was all ready on his tailgate pulling on some old pair of rubber boot foot chest waders. The type of gear you’d expect to see a sanitation worker dressed in as they set out to maintain tanks at the local Waste Management Processing Facility. Looking at our surroundings it was an entirely appropriate outfit. He said: “quit your gawking. They’re my deep winter shit-kickers – give my toes more room to wiggle.” Smoke stacks loomed nearby bellowing fields of steam laced with ominous looking colors into an otherwise crisp blue sky. Old abandoned warehouses with row upon row of broken glass windows stood nearby. Probably safe harbor now for rodents and mischievous teens tethered by poverty to small town America. Huge, criss-crossing networks of transfer pipes ran here and there. Today we would most certainly be “Industrial Fly Fisherman” and I was oddly looking forward to the experience. Living in the shadow of an ancient steel town I am no stranger to the face of industry. Buffalo, after all was built on the back of strong steel workers and the boom of industry. Today though, like much of America, the evidence of those “wonder years” lay fallow and silent marring the landscape.

We geared up with the heaters on full blast as it was a cold day in January. Howling winds cut across the pavement stirring old coffee cups & cigarette butts. Dump trucks and other large utility vehicles roared past. Various warning beeps and horns rang out at odd intervals in the background. All together it created a sort of “white noise” curtain. On any average fly fishing adventure this could be an entirely unsettling scene. But I had prepared myself mentally for the setting and blocked all those little rising thoughts of: “this certainly isn’t proper trout fishing.”

When M.H’s friend arrived we shared the usual gentlemanly hand shakes and quiet conversation with that reserved curiosity friends have for friend’s friends. Nothing you could ever quite put your finger on or that really amounts to a hill of beans, but that faint suspicion that the other 2 know more than they are letting on. I wish I could remember his name, but for the life of me. He was a quiet fellow. Not shy though. More likely lost in thought of some affair at home he had left only 10 minutes ago. Aren’t we all like that from time to time and more often then we’d like to admit?

Industry unfortunately has peculiar propensity to tumble off of pavement and into streams too. Old tires, bricks, outflow pipes, heat exhausts, engine blocks, scrap metal, and a 1000 other unidentifiable objects that once had a very specific use. The upside is this combined pile of junk emits a certain level of heat that raises the stream temperature as much as 10 degrees at times. And fortunately enough a certain lovely little fish really digs a bit of warm water refuge in the dead of winter.

Now, are all the fish lovely? Not really. Some seem a little skinny. Some have an odd fin where it shouldn’t be… no, I’m just kidding. But the mind does get to wondering when you catch a fish in this type of setting that has a deformity. One Rainbow had half a jaw and a very irregular snout. Was it a deformity you would never find upon a trout living deep in some pristine river secluded in the wilderness hundreds of aeronautical miles from the closest road? I don’t know. The mind does get to wondering though.

And then the bounty. If you’ve found your way to such a place and you’ve put your mind in such a state that you can enjoy this sort of thing you’re in for a treat. Because the fish are there. And since their metabolism might be a shade primed by the higher water temperatures they’re probably hungry. They can be wild too. Oh yeah. Don’t think for a minute that a big 20 inch wild Brown Trout gives a dam about your high-pollutin’ scenic angling sensibilities. He’s an opportunistic feeder. A survivor.

In the middle of this surreal scene we stood catching gorgeous fat, healthy looking fish. At one point M.H., a bit upriver, was motioning me to turnaround… and low and behold there was a stoic looking Bald Eagle making it’s way upriver looking for lunch. The thought crossed my mind that I might be a character in a modern day “River Runs Through It.” When the cold freezing rain fell we kept fishing. But it had chilled the water and with it the trout.