Why this site...
To engage in a dialog on these topics, or to read more in a similar vein, check out our blog at: wildtrout.blogger.com
This site is designed to help you find a place to fish for wild trout, and to avoid crowds. Besides enabling an activity we believe to be intrinsically wonderful, we also feel we're doing something that's good for the long term health of the water resources we're describing.
This is a labor of love (or, as my wife would claim, an obsession). I've created it because I found it stupidly hard to find useful information for locating wild trout streams.
What We're Not
We are not about making money. We offer no advertising. We're not plugging a book or a DVD. We've done it as a service to the community of like-minded fishermen, and offer it for free.
We are NOT an online guidebook. Guidebooks tend to concentrate fishing pressure in a few "good" places. They offer evaluation, and explicit directions to specific locations.
We don't do that. We think half the fun is discovering a place on your own. We say, implicitly, "Here are streams that hold wild trout. Go explore." Some of the streams found here are wonderful places to fish. Many are quite marginal. Even trickier, some are marginal, but wonderful in a few spots where, say, the gradient increases and the brush recedes a little bit. But we'll never review streams, or point out the best places to gain access or fish. That would be telling, and defeat the purpose of this site, which is to encourage broad exploration.
Streams Need Friends
Trout fishermen have been the single most effective lobby for habitat preservation and clean water legislation. This tradition is in danger, with the decline of active participants in the sport.
Yes, I said decline in participation. Nationwide, virtually every state has reported a decline in the number of fishing licenses for more than a decade. For example, in New Jersey, my home state, the number of resident fishing licenses issued by the state has fallen by almost 50% since 1991 (260,000 in 1991 vs. 139,000 in 2004). That's not simply a trend. For a well established activity, which depends on license revenues to support a state-run conservation apparatus, it's approaching a death spiral.
It's not only NJ. MA is down 50%. California over 47%. Nationally, relative to population growth, participation fell nearly 40% between 1983 and 2003.
Sadly, it makes sense. I'm a baby boomer. As we're aging, I know many of my less avid fishing friends have given up the sport for golf or other, less taxing activities. The trend in all age categories is towards "cocooning", not exploration. I don't believe that the generations behind us are fishing with anything like the levels of participation we did. How many 20-something men and women, raised on fast-twitch video games and organized team sports, will find their way to fly-fishing? A few, but I suspect many fewer than from my generation.
If future generations are going to enjoy the same water resources we do, we need passionate advocates for their preservation. The best advocates are people who visit the streams often, are sensitive to environmental changes, and are likely to take action if they detect a problem. Put another way, if every stream that supports wild trout had a small cadre of people fishing it, more would be preserved from development and neglect.
The Reaction Factor
A few of you reading this website will be outraged to find information about your favorite stream available here. You may feel that this might ruin the stream, and would want me to somehow pull it from the list, or perhaps hope that this site would disappear altogether.
I can tell you that all of my personal favorite streams are on this website. As much as I love to find no one else fishing on "my" streams, it's not good news for their long term survival that I virtually never see anyone else on them. We could double or even quadruple the number of fishermen who fish them, and still all have a wonderful experience.
This little website doesn't have that much power. The numbers of folks who will actually use this information, and fish any one stream, out of the 1,000s of streams found on this site, is going to be few. In New Jersey, I continue to be shocked about how few fishermen actually take advantage of the wild trout resources that are here, even on the best publicized streams which appear in many guidebooks and prominently on the DEP website.
Success for this site would be to help slow the rate of decline in participation, and convert a few others like ourselves into small stream junkies. But if somehow, magically, it could have much greater impact, I would still do it. At worst, I'd have to drive-on to another spot occasionally. It would be worth it, knowing that others cared about the stream as much as I do. If you disagree, well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
There are no secret places anymore. Because of the need for clean water preservation, the places trout inhabit are relentlessly mapped, measured, sampled, and photographed from airplanes and satellites. A great deal of that information, one way or another, is available over the Internet to anyone with the interest and skills to find it. This site simply makes it a little easier.
Regulatory policies which are premised on an ignorant population will fail in this new environment. Given the nature of most people who enjoy fishing for wild trout, especially those who seek out small streams, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
It may be a shock to find one of your favorite streams here. Especially when part of the attraction of that stream is its isolation and privacy. Understandably, the fear that this could be lost can turn to anger.
Instead of fearing their arrival, we should treasure the new wild trout fishermen and fisherwomen as allies in the battle for stream preservation.
Six months or 10 years from now that new person might be sitting next to you at the Environmental Impact hearing which will end up saving the stream. He (or she) may also be the person that stumbles across the poacher who has cleaned out that big pool every year, and gets him arrested.
For the biggest enemies of these streams aren't law-abiding fishermen, or even poachers. They're careless development or thoughtless resource extraction that destroys habitat and degrades watersheds. Ultimately, the biggest enemy is indifference. Such is the brave new world we live in.
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