Scrimshawed for a fund raiser raffle held by the Mountain Bridge Chapter of Trout Unlimited.
Indeed. It’s not as though I haven’t been fishing at all this year, but the trips have been few and far between. Not a good situation for a web site that claims to be about fly fishing for trout in South Carolina.
As mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been devoting quite a bit of time to the art of Scrimshaw, with a lot of reading and studying. Included in all this is the time spent making various tools, and finishing pieces of ivory and horn for projects not yet begun other than an underlying idea in my head.
I like art. I like the outdoors obviously and therefore I like art based on nature: animals, fish, etc… . I have been doing this thing called scrimshaw since 1982, off and on. Some years I did more than others, but very spotty until nearly 2 years ago. I decided to improve my skills, and, with the help of two books by Jim Stevens, I have been making progress to the point that I am now going public with it. Hence, I have added scrimshaw.rodandquill.com. I hope it proves pleasing.
[Gallery not found]This is the premiere event (well. almost) for the Mountain Bridge Trout Unlimited chapter, and I always look forward to getting with folks either new to fly fishing for trout, or just a little inexperienced with fishing and reading a river. And my favorite place to do this is, of course, on the Chattooga River. To be more specific, the delayed harvest section above the Highway 23 bridge.
Wes and I were putting on the finishing touches about the time that Jimmy Davis and Mike Harvell pulled up, so we said our howdies and headed on up the river. We passed a few fishermen on the way up, but a lot of the folks we saw were simply camping/backpacking on the river, so it didn’t feel very crowded. That was OK with me; I’ll never complain about that.
Not much success, just a couple here and there, so it seemed that either they hadn’t stocked or the fish just hadn’t spread out yet. We were informed by a member of a camping party that they had indeed stocked the preceding Thursday, so it had to be the latter.
As it turned out, after coming back down just prior to calling it a day, we got into a pool and I had one of “those” days. Didn’t want to seem greedy, but I ended up with having made the acquaintance of 17 slippery trout: 12 ‘bows, 3 brookies, and 2 browns. Of course, 2 of them could be considered “short distance releases”, but I wouldn’t get really picky about that. I figure that if I could have gotten them in the net, then they count.
Didn’t take many pictures, though, so if you want to see trout pictures, I encourage you to look around at some of the older posts. I’ll dig around and see what I can come up with in the meantime, just so I can make use of the new plugin I just installed on this flog. Later….
In an article in the Greenville News, it was pointed out that this issue is definitely sensitive and deserves all the careful consideration that all parties concerned are expecting. From the viewpoint of this author, the area in question definitely needs quite a bit of improvement, particularly with regard to the impact of past usage practices. Restricting the parking to greater than a quarter-mile and eliminating “user-created” campsites are not going to be popular in some circles, but these steps can only serve to improve the situation in the long run.
The major issue that I find fault with is the permission of boating in this section of river. Using a criteria of 450 cfm as the “optimum” flow level beyond which fly fishing for trout becomes impractical, seems completely arbitrary and impractical. Many of us have no choice after having travelled considerable distance, and we can only adapt our tactics as necessary to accommodate what conditions we find. In my experience of forty-some years on the river, I can see no reason whatsoever to implement such a controversial policy. The area was created and set aside as a “pristine” section where those seeking solitude could go and find that peace, and not be forced to endure the encroachment of thrill-seekers who seem to continuously run out of new places to pursue their sport, without regard to the needs of others.
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