A nice sized brown trout caught from Beaver Creek in Washington County. This fish was caught in autumn with fall spawning color and was released.
Attempts to distill the fly-fishing experience in Maryland waters by offering a range of expert advice, the sport’s relationship with conservation and environmentalism, and where to actually catch fish!
The allure, art, and impact of fishing with flies are prominent in the Old Line State
For many of us whose childhood included “gone fishin’,” it was as much a coming-of-age rite as taking a first step or riding a two-wheeler. The subject here is fly fishing, and we call on both a seasoned hand and chronicler of the sport along with an outspoken local conservation leader who’s a self-described “newbie,” recently converted to the pursuit.
While the setting is in and around Missoula, Montana, for many anglers in these parts, the Norman Maclean novella or the movie A River Runs Through It may have been their introduction to the art and craft of fly fishing. And if you know the meaning of “matching the hatch” or the characteristics of a Cat’s Whisker or a Woolly Bugger, chances are, you’ve been converted already.
What’s more, if the late Bernard “Lefty” Kreh is among your personal pantheon of all-time local sports heroes, you’re likely to have been “hooked” long ago. A Maryland native, World War II veteran, and outdoor editor for the Baltimore Sun, Kreh not only was among the first anglers to try explaining saltwater fly fishing in a book, among the more than 30 he wrote, he also had a fly named for him—Lefty’s Deceiver, one of the world’s most popular flies, which was featured on a U.S. postage stamp.
Tucked away in Paul Schullery’s exhaustive resume is his service from 1977–82 as the executive director of the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, Vermont. His book credits span a vast array of topics, including the subject of this story. His breadth of work in that realm, from American Fly Fishing to If Fish Could Scream: An Angler’s Search for the Future of Fly Fishing (among many others), has won him both high critical and scholarly acclaim. And he generously agreed to help with this story.
By sheer coincidence, Schullery mailed a copy of the Winter 2022 Fly Fisher magazine he had just received even before he got wind that we were tackling the subject at hand. It’s Fly Fishers International’s official publication, and, also as luck would have it, one of the featured articles in that issue is ”Brackish Water, Clear Solutions,” written by Kate Fritz, CEO of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, headquartered in Annapolis. So, we called her immediately for a short interview.
Even though Fritz had first tried fly fishing only recently, she quickly pointed out the sport’s significance in improving the water quality of the saltwater Chesapeake Bay and its feeding systems of fresh water. The sport offers the Alliance opportunities to educate groups such as the greater fly-fishing population. Based on recent research, she has determined that depleted fisheries can be attributed largely to air and water pollution upstream.
Indeed, Fritz agreed that the “Save the Bay” slogan from the 1980s, which was amended with “We All Live Downstream,” still applies. “We need to keep building a resilient drinking-water source for 18 million people. One way is to extoll the benefits of healthy trees and vegetation, as well as cleaner air,” she stresses, “which naturally have an effect on the fish population.”
Kate Fritz has fun with showing her catch during an early-spring fly fishing excursion. Photo by Will Parson, Chesapeake Bay Program.
While noting that it’s been 15 generations since Captain John Smith first saw the significance of the Chesapeake watershed, Fritz aims to restore the human connection to nature, at least in part by supporting the sport of fly fishing.
In her Fly Fisher article, she details the upstream/downstream relationship. In addition to Maryland, the Alliance also maintains offices in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. The work runs the gamut of forests, green infrastructure, agriculture, stewardship, and engagement, with all efforts aimed at reinforcing the determination that “what ails the bay also ails our local waters.”
When asked about conservation efforts often being political targets, she quickly responded: “The Chesapeake Bay is a shining example of bipartisan efforts at the federal level. We were able to fund it, which is proof of how engaged our citizens are.” Fritz told us that talking to people “who understand the dire impact of poor water quality and as such the rise in water temperature because of elimination of vegetation as filters and shade,” is a key to delivering the message that cool and clear fish habitat is dwindling. “Instead of being part of the problem,” however, she asserts that more people are becoming “part of the solution.” Obviously, Fritz takes the term “alliance” seriously.
She admits that one challenge is fly fishing’s reputation as being a pursuit for elites. “I’ve been a conventional fisher, and fly fishing seemed almost unapproachable,” Fritz says. “I determined that the sport is rhythmic (see the Presbyterian pastor/patriarch’s “rhythmic” metronome he used as a teaching tool for fly casting in A River Runs Through It). It just started to speak to me. I’m a perpetual learner, and this is an infinite sport in that respect. From standing in the middle of pristine freshwater streams, to the fact that you can also fly-fish for stripers (striped bass) and white perch, is incredible, especially when you think through what’s going on in each ecosystem.”
Where the Fly Fishing’s Good
Brook Trout caught during October at Big Hunting Creek in the state of Maryland. Brook Trout display their most beautiful colors at this time of year.
Since Schullery figured that, because most of the readers of this magazine already live on or near one of the largest saltwater estuaries in the world (which yields striped bass, cobia, red drum, and others that are taken on flies), he concentrates here on the freshwater streams in the immediate vicinity for this brief survey. Central Maryland’s rivers and streams—along with those in fairly close proximity, namely in West Virginia and Pennsylvania—cover a wide swath of fly-fishing waters.
“One thing that’s especially nice about so much of this region,” Schullery emphasizes, “Is the diversity of such waters that are still close together. Around the Harrisburg-Carlisle area, for example, you can go from fishing for trout in the Letort (which literally flows through the town of Carlisle and is one of the most famous of the ‘limestoners’) to fishing for smallmouth bass in Conodoguinet Creek to fishing for all sorts of fish in the Susquehanna, all in the same day, if you’ve a mind to.”
The Susquehanna, Shenandoah, and Potomac rivers are famous for smallmouth bass (along with a number of other species). The streams in Shenandoah National Park and all along the Blue Ridge are best known for native brook trout. Pennsylvania and Maryland “limestone” country features many small, spring-fed streams famous (some even world-famous) for their challenging brown trout fishing.
A selection of wet fly nymphs. The goal of fly fishing is to “match the hatch” with the most accurate fly presentation possible given many variables.
From Bull Reds to Brookies
When the subject of fly fishing arises practically anywhere else in the United States, images of the grand streams of the mountain west pop to mind. But here in Maryland, that’s begun to change. Just more than a year ago, the state’s “fly fishing trail initiative” (a collaboration among its Departments of Commerce and Natural Resources, along with its Office of Tourism and a group of five enthusiasts dubbed the “Maryland Fly Fishing Trail Team”) became a reality.
Maryland is now the first state in the nation to establish a statewide fly-fishing trail with sites in all 23 of its counties and the city of Baltimore.
These Trail champions have partnered with more than a dozen fly fishing and nonprofit conservation groups from across Maryland to expose the wonders of the sport to more women, young anglers, anglers of color, and those of varied economic status. One singular aspect of the trail is its inclusion of not only the state’s own picturesque cold-water mountain streams, but also warmer coastal and Chesapeake Bay saltwater, where certain fish species lurk that are equally well-known for satisfying the “sport” in sportfishing. For some anglers, even avid ones, the thought of fly-fishing in saltwater simply never occurred to them.
In addition, the new “Trail” initiative steers anglers to “less-pressured” sites across the state as alternatives to popular ones that tend to be over-crowded and thus over-fished. It also introduces anglers to an array of guides, fly shops, tackle stores, and a dozen or so like-minded fly-fishing groups across the state that are “closest to each trail site” and can provide “valuable information, mentoring opportunities, and gear for trail users.”
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this initiative is its reinforcement that, because Maryland considers itself “America in Miniature,” it’s entirely possible to fish and catch a wide array of fish in dramatically different habitats across the state, “all within a few hours’ drive.”
A fly-fisherman removes the hook from a fish in his net, during the shad run along the Susquehanna River.
Paul Schullery fly fishing the Gibbon River, Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Marsha Karle.
So, You Want to Try Your Hand at Fly Fishing
Saltwater fly fishing has wildly broadened the definition of a “fly,” which of course originally (centuries ago) was often a real fly—any of several types of small freshwater insects such as mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies, and so on. Nowadays, even freshwater “flies” also are made to imitate small fish, leeches, crayfish, frogs, even mice and anything else that might find its way into the water.
Trout are most often fished for with relatively small flies that imitate insects. The brook trout in small mountain streams are notably undiscriminating in their culinary preferences and are taken by a variety of small “attractor” patterns that may not look like any specific life form but are generally “buggy” enough to suit the brookies.
The Royal Coachman—perhaps the most famous attractor pattern—looks more like a Christmas tree ornament than an insect. The extreme in small flies are those used on the Letort, Yellow Breeches, and others of the legendary limestone trout streams in Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley and western Maryland. On bass streams, fly fishers use a variety of insect and small-fish imitations (generally known as streamers or bucktails, typically anywhere from one to three inches long); and in saltwater it’s most often larger streamers up to several inches long that imitate the prey species of the striped bass and others; in some places, large imitations of shrimp and crabs are popular.
Perhaps the best advice for aspiring fly fishers is first to tour a fly shop, especially if someone there is willing to spend a few minutes with you. Prepare to be amazed at how extensive this is.
What to Make of ‘Put and Take’
According to Paul, many people not surprisingly assume that an important part of the trout-fishing scene is stream stocking with fish raised in hatcheries. This is a typical misconception among countless people who assume that fishing, whatever else might be great about it, is above all about taking home as much meat as possible.
From this limited perspective, it is imagined that all fishers naturally want to see their favorite waters regularly stocked with hatchery-raised fish. This is known commonly as “put-and-take fishing.”
“This is no longer a trustworthy generalization,” Schullery warns, “especially among trout fishers and even more especially among fly fishers. Stocking hatchery trout might be the best thing for the most ecologically forlorn waters—either because they are naturally marginal trout habitat, or that they’ve been so deeply damaged by various kinds of human abuse. Make no mistake,” he asserts, “many fishers—probably the majority, most of whom fish with lures or bait—still feel strongly that their day’s trout fishing is a failure unless they catch their limit. Consequently, state fisheries-management agencies must cater to their desires by spending substantial portions of their budgets on operating large hatcheries, essentially fish factories that ‘manufacture’ many, many thousands of catchable-size trout that can be trucked all over the state.”
Schullery relates that research and experimentation all over the country “have shown that many trout streams, managed correctly and with very conservative creel limits or catch-and-release fishing, can sustain healthy populations of fish that reproduce abundantly. This matters to fly fishers especially, because so many of them are now aesthetically and ethically inclined to prefer fishing for native or at least stream-bred “wild” fish. They’re not interested in taking fish home, and they [the fishers themselves] are now numerous enough that management agencies must cater to them, too. In some heavily fished catch-and-release trout streams, each trout might be caught and released several times over the course of trout season.
Photo by Adam Miller, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
The Fishing Is the Point, Not Necessarily the ‘Keepers’
Schullery and Fritz agree that the condition of the various waters covered here affects the fate of the fish and thus the quality of the fishing, stocking necessities, and overall attraction to the sport. Yes, the stripers are in big trouble. And trout streams are ecologically fragile little ecosystems that are universally and permanently in peril from casual pollution, from individuals and the proliferation of massive condominium developments, shopping malls, highways, and factories. In her Fly Fisher article, Fritz refers to the building boom as “Paving Paradise.”
Fritz concluded our interview with her assessment of the topic at hand: “People ask, ‘Where can I fly fish?” I answer, “Nearly everywhere one fishes. It’s a style, a different mechanism from the conventional rites, with the physics of how you cast, the recall, and then what you put at the end of your line. You must know what would be attractive to a fish. And that’s just part of it. Fly fishing is fascinating to me. You must think through what’s going on in each particular ecosystem.”
A famous 20th-century fly fisher named Lee Wulff (many may recall his appearances with sportscaster Curt Gowdy on the Saturday afternoon TV series “American Sportsman”) insisted that a game fish is too valuable to be caught only once. In other words, as recreational trout fishing has drifted away from any need to harvest the fish, trout have become in effect a renewable resource. Schullery recalls, “As my late pal Bud Lilly, a long-time dean of western flyfishing outfitters, used to put it, thanks to catch-and-release, ‘trout fishing is a lot like golf; you don’t have to eat the ball to have a lot of fun.’”
Wild brown trout caught in the Gunpowder River near Baltimore. These trout tend to run small but are vibrantly colored during October. Bigger fish are possible but tough to catch.
On Catch-and-Release
Studies have shown that the incidental mortality of fish caught and released on flies is often less than 5 percent; it’s much higher—as much as 50 percent—when fishing with bait, which the fish tend to swallow more deeply, making the hook harder to remove even if you do want to let it go.
Many saltwater fly fishers also release some or all of their catch, but that’s a somewhat different arena because there isn’t a traditional and well-established hatchery industry for saltwater species. Lee Wulff’s statement applies just as clearly here. Also proliferating are “Special Regulation Waters” (the designation goes under various names and has a host of variant approaches), because those are of special interest to fly fishers.
Some of these trout waters might even be restricted to fly-fishing only, or to catch-and-release fishing, or otherwise have highly specific rules for which sizes of fish you can keep and which ones you have to put back. For a start and a good example, search online for something such as “Special Management Areas—Trout, Maryland,” or words to that effect, to see how your state is handling these places, which cater most specifically to fly fishers.—Paul Schullery
