Wild Trout

For the first time in more than six years, wild baby trout are darting about the left fork of the Jabez Branch, proof that years of trying to revive the stream's trout population have not been in vain.A team of Maryland Department of Natural Resources fish experts, armed with cameras and nets, confirmed the finding yesterday. The timing couldn't be better for environmental activists lobbying to preserve the Jabez ecosystem."Tomorrow is my birthday -- this is the best present," environmental activist Lina Vlavianos said yesterday.

"There is no guarantee that when a middle-aged man enters the dark forest where the black dog is waiting, he will come out healed. It is possible to be broken there beyond hope of repair. " -- Howell Raines, from "Fly Fishing Through The Midlife Crisis" Mike Flanagan and I became friends after his major league pitching career ended and most of his old teammates and fishing buddies from the glory years of the Baltimore Orioles had scattered across the country. We were transplanted New Englanders, rooted in Maryland and approaching middle age with fly rods in our hands -- mine in my right, Mike's in his left.

Five miles upstream from Deep Creek Lake the gin-clear water flows lazily toward the 3,800-acre reservoir nestled in the mountains of Western Maryland. This is a different world.In all but the floods of spring, only the waters leave the stream bed beneath overhanging mature hardwoods; the fish always stay behind. They like it here.And so do I. Who needs the lake?My boots feel the tender current of Meadow Mountain in the dim light of early morning. The heavy foliage will discourage the early sun for another hour in this wilderness 6 miles north of Oakland.

NO DISRESPECT to those fishing for them this spring, but hatchery trout are inferior to wild trout. It's not that wild trout taste better or look prettier (both true) or that wild trout are bigger than hatchery trout (usually not true). For me, it's what the wild trout represents that makes it superior. It represents something precious in this overdeveloped, polluted and trash-strewn world, a bit of paradise regained. Wild trout represent victory, hatchery trout defeat. And, when it comes to preserving or restoring natural resources, we should be more about achieving victory than conceding defeat.

They're not cute and cuddly, nor proud and regal. About 10 inches long and weighing less than a pound each, they have the personality of, well, a cold fish.But Maryland's wild trout, while hardly an endangered species, has become a symbol for residents fighting development throughout the region.They have been noted in contentious battles involving everything from a proposed religious retreat in Baltimore County to the location of a badly needed highway in the Washington suburbs.Other species can be just as sensitive to water quality, but stone flies and minnow-like daces somehow don't inflame an environmentalist's passion like the trout that swim in the state's cold streams.

NO DISRESPECT to those fishing for them this spring, but hatchery trout are inferior to wild trout. It's not that wild trout taste better or look prettier (both true) or that wild trout are bigger than hatchery trout (usually not true). For me, it's what the wild trout represents that makes it superior. It represents something precious in this overdeveloped, polluted and trash-strewn world, a bit of paradise regained. Wild trout represent victory, hatchery trout defeat. And, when it comes to preserving or restoring natural resources, we should be more about achieving victory than conceding defeat.

State officials and environmentalists cheered yesterday when they found 10 brook trout in the Jabez Branch, survivors of about 300 wild fish relocated in recent years to the shallow Severn River tributary."

About 25,000 sun-gleaming, tail-flicking rainbow trout were dumped into Carroll County ponds and streams this month in preparation for the opening of trout season Saturday.By summer, Carroll anglers will have snagged most of the trout. Their short lives give their wild cousins, in the relatively few Maryland streams where trout live naturally, a better chance to survive and flourish.The goal of the trout stocking program "is to provide angling for trout you can take home and eat," said Charlie R. Gougeon, a central region fisheries biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources.

A glint of silver and a flash of fractured light -- blue, green and red -- mark the spot where a moment before a fish had been. In the dappled fast-water world of mountain streams, the rainbow trout reigns supreme. It is a fish that stirs the imaginations of fishermen and cooks alike.Named for the "rainbow" band that runs the length of its olive-green skin, the rainbow trout is America's most popular sport fish. Wild trout are prized by fly fishermen for their fierce spirit and wily nature (and "catch and release" is the honored rule.

Perhaps not since the snail darter defeated the Tellico Dam project in Tennessee have a few little fish created such a stir.The cameras were clicking when officials from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources dipped nets in the left fork of the Jabez Branch near Gambrills last Thursday and scooped up 18 baby trout -- the first born in the stream in more than six years. "This is a red-letter day," said Robert A. Bachman, director of DNR's Fish, Wildlife and Heritage Administration. "Christmas in March."

They're not cute and cuddly, nor proud and regal. About 10 inches long and weighing less than a pound each, they have the personality of, well, a cold fish.But Maryland's wild trout, while hardly an endangered species, has become a symbol for residents fighting development throughout the region.They have been noted in contentious battles involving everything from a proposed religious retreat in Baltimore County to the location of a badly needed highway in the Washington suburbs.Other species can be just as sensitive to water quality, but stone flies and minnow-like daces somehow don't inflame an environmentalist's passion like the trout that swim in the state's cold streams.

I HAVE A keen eye for trash in pretty places -- not the big, obvious chunks of man-made debris that appear along riverbanks, or the bright blue plastic bags that blossom along highways, but the minutiae of trash. I can easily spot the smallest souvenirs of our premillennial society -- flattened beer cans, pieces of plastic from toys, stove bolts, roofing nails, fishhooks -- that end up in the pretty places where trout live.The other day, as a friend and I hiked along a creek in a secluded stretch of rural-almost-suburban Maryland, I spotted something white on the dark creek bed from 30 feet away.

The Savage River is a wild, magical place where cool mists often form over the rocky watercourse as it tumbles down through the forests of Garrett County to merge with the Potomac -- and some of the best trout fishing in the state can be had in its deep pools and pockets.In recent weeks the Department of Natural Resources has documented record wild trout biomass and densities in the trophy area downstream from the Savage Reservoir dam.A survey, conducted annually by the state's Fisheries Service, estimated that the combined standing crop and density of adult wild brown and native brook trout are 83.8 pounds per acre and 1,664 trout per mile.

About 25,000 sun-gleaming, tail-flicking rainbow trout were dumped into Carroll County ponds and streams this month in preparation for the opening of trout season Saturday.By summer, Carroll anglers will have snagged most of the trout. Their short lives give their wild cousins, in the relatively few Maryland streams where trout live naturally, a better chance to survive and flourish.The goal of the trout stocking program "is to provide angling for trout you can take home and eat," said Charlie R. Gougeon, a central region fisheries biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources.

Dozens of newly hatched trout are darting about the Jabez Branch, swimming proof that a stream can be brought back to life.Astounded state biologists counted 61 swim-up fry, or recently hatched trout, last week, the result of a large effort to repair environmental damage in a stream where the wild trout population disappeared six years ago.The figure is more than three times the number of fry biologists saw a year ago and confirmation that environmental rescue...

Perhaps not since the snail darter defeated the Tellico Dam project in Tennessee have a few little fish created such a stir.The cameras were clicking when officials from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources dipped nets in the left fork of the Jabez Branch near Gambrills last Thursday and scooped up 18 baby trout -- the first born in the stream in more than six years. "This is a red-letter day," said Robert A. Bachman, director of DNR's Fish, Wildlife and Heritage Administration. "Christmas in March."

BLOOMINGTON -- Eight miles west of this small Garrett County town, the North Branch of the Potomac River is being reborn through a progressive system of trout management, and the river below Bloomington Dam eventually may become a Mecca for fly fishermen on the East Coast.But already in Maryland, there are two trout rivers that are the stuff of dreams made from what once were close to being nightmares.Those rivers are the Lower Savage in Western Maryland and the Gunpowder in Baltimore County.