FOOTNOTES

Newsletter of the Georgia Foothills Chapter of Trout Unlimited
Volume 5, No. 6
November 1996

NOVEMBER MEETING

Tuesday, November 4th at Cornelia Public Library at 7:00 pm.

The Georgia Council has committed to doing some Christmas decorating at Smithgall Woods this year...we'll be discussing this among other exciting fish tales, so be sure to make the meeting!

The President's Column

I don't remember the first fish I ever caught. But I do remember quite clearly the first fish I ever hooked and then lost. This was before my first sister was born, so I had to be about 3 years old. Even now, 30 years later, I can remember the tug on my line and then feeling the slack and seeing the bream turn and escape.

This past weekend Lee Hiers and I went up to the Nantahala and had a pretty good time. But what sticks in my mind aren't the fish I landed, which were all respectable fish, it's one that I hooked and then lost trying to get my line back on the reel. The fact that this particular fish was a good bit larger than those that I did catch might have something to do with it, but that's not it entirely.

This summer on the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park, I hooked and then lost a cutthroat. That fish sticks in my mind because I had come a long way and spent what was to me a good deal of money to catch some cutthroats in the Yellowstone country. And cutthroats are supposed to be relatively easy to catch and that didn't help my attitude any. This same trip also included two browns, one slightly larger than the other that I hooked out of the same hole on the Madison. I fought those two to the point that I thought I had a chance, but lost them both. I've spent a great deal of time thinking about what I could have done differently. I've also wondered why the ones I do catch don't create the same stir in my mind as the ones that get away.

I guess this may be some form of mental gymnastics that plagues all fishermen, but I don't know that for sure. It seems kind of strange to regret losing a fish when I was just going to turn around and let it go. But I do and I really wish I didn't.

Just something to think about.

Annual Elections Held

At the October meeting, officer and director elections were held. As you can see above, each of the officers was re-elected for another term. Also, two new directors were added for the terms expiring in 1999: John Hulsey and Bob Nelson. They replace Mark Smith and George MacMillan, whose terms expired this year.

Thanks guys for your continuing efforts!

Another "Thank You"

Jimmy Harris has been filling in on the newsletter several times recently due to my work / vacation travel schedule, and I just wanted to publicly thank him for taking up my slack!

And, speaking of vacation travel, if you will notice, there has not been an article written about my big fishing trip to Yellowstone in August with Dale Waters. Dale can write it up if he wishes, but suffice it to say, the fishing was slow!

Anybody else have a big summer fishing trip they could write about? We'd all love to read about it....send your articles to the editor.

Nantahala Delayed Harvest Report

by Lee Hiers

I'm sure everyone is aware that the NC delayed harvest season now starts on October 1. As Dale Waters mentioned above, we sampled the new season last Saturday and can report that the Nantahala is fishing well.

According to Fred Harris of the NCWRC:

"We are excited about the fall and winter delayed harvest period and I hope many of you will give it a try. We'll be doing angler surveys to evaluate angler success and trout survival, so you may get interviewed on the stream. "

We did get interviewed, and were told that they would be taking daily "creel" surveys from now until late spring.

"Just so you will know, we will stock in October and November, and then again in March, April and May. This year the numbers of trout stocked in fall will be less than what we stock in spring. Sizes will be about the same."

Reports were that a little over 3,000 fish were stocked in October. With a similar stocking in November, the Nantahala (or other DH streams) will be a lot of fun on the odd warm January and February days we usually have.

So, heed the Boy Scout's motto and "Be Prepared"!

Latest Threat to ID, MT, WY Waters, Criminal Negligence?

by Marty Seldon

The older I get the more amazed I get at the very serious consequences of people not taking into account all possible effects from tampering with mother nature, before they go off half cocked. It makes it a lot worse when professionals are the culprits, and when such professionals are the caretakers of the public trust resource responsibilities that include our fisheries, such actions border on criminal negligence in my humble opinion.

The article from the August 25,1996 Billings Gazette “Little Critters - Big Threat” was sent by old friend Maggie Merriman to Al Hansen in our club, who mentioned it at our last meeting, and was kind enough to put a copy in the mail to me.

The latest invasive alien species to invade Yellowstone National Park is the New Zealand Mud Snail. First discovered in North America in central Idaho in the Snake River, they now grow as thick as carpets in some areas. The article notes their size as smaller than “BBs”; but the photo in the article, with a penny in the background, made them look like about 0.2 cm dia. x 0.4 cm long. These beasts multiply exponentially with densities up to 100,000 per square meter and very quickly. Dan McGuire, an independent biologist, who was one of the first to identify mudsnails in Yellowstone almost two years ago states that he has seen tributaries of the Snake where the entire bottom was snails and snail shells.

New Zealand mudsnails are believed to have arrived in shipments of trout released into the Snake in the early to mid-1980s. The have since populated the Snake from American Falls near Pocatello, ID to the C.J. Strike Reservoir near Mountain Home, ID. From there a bird or an angler may have inadvertently carried live snails to the Madison River in Yellowstone NP. They have now spread up the Madison and up into the headwaters of the Firehole River near Old Faithful. These prolific exotics have become the dominant invertebrate on the Madison between Madison Junction and West Yellowstone.

The fear is that these aliens will squeeze out native caddisflies, mayflies and stoneflies, all very important trout foods. In the early portions of their life they forage the river bottom for aquatic bacteria, as do insect larvae. Trout eat these mudsnails, but unlike declining native species, these foreign interlopers can shut a trap door in their tough shells and pass through the fish undigested, alive, and ready to reproduce. Its a double insult. All but one in 100,000 mudsnails are fertile females that reproduce on their own. They give birth to live young that are already pregnant and armored.

Independent Mollusk expert, Terrance Frest, was quoted, “Unless the keepers of the park act quickly, they may have to write off the Madison River as a natural ecosystem. They have a choice of letting the natives be ousted or doing something about it right now - otherwise you’re going to end up sacrificing the entire river.

Book review: A.K.'s Fly Box

by Martin Joergensen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Here's another great book by A.K.Best. A.K. should be fairly well known. The term 'production fly tyer' is very suitable for him. He counts his flies in hundreds of dozens and has before demonstrated his ability to write books about this kind of tying.

In this book he reveals the contents of his own fly boxes. They contain a lot of brown trout flies - no salt water patterns, no poppers, no bass flies. There are a few hoppers and ants, but apart from that it's mayflies, stoneflies and caddises. Luckily this is done in a very instructive manner, that not only deals with the patterns and the colors of the flies, but also the techniques applied in their tying and their use: how to fish them.

The book is sectioned in a rather peculiar way. The first chapters have names such as 'Practice with Quills', 'Blue Winged Olives' and 'Light Cahills', but there are also chapters on named 'Caddis Flies' and 'Tricos'. The chapters have obviously been made according to A.K.'s own estimate of importance in regard to pattern choice more than with an intent to be systematic. This doesn't affect the first reading, but can have some influence on your later use of the book. You'll have to rely on the Index to find whatever species you want to imitate.

And imitation is a key word in A.K.'s choice of flies. He does a great job of being exact in his patterns - choice of color, material and dressings. In doing so he gets across some important points, and comparing the flies and the natural in the many color pictures will reveal a great knowledge of entomology and key stimuli.

The pictures are a great resource in the book. Both pictures of naturals and flies, and examples of tying techniques are depicted in clear and crisp pictures. The last section of the book contains supplementary and more systematical tying instruction for different techniques and patterns.

The book is almost 200 pages, and succeeds in covering all important brown trout fly types. A.K. does of course make a selection in the vast amount of patterns, but he doesn't seem to miss anything important, exept for maybe the most modern type of flies and materials.

His fly selection is quite conservative. You don't need to look for patterns with CDC, foam and other modern types of materials - they are not there.

What you will find is fishing flies featuring quills, biots, hackle tips, hair and lots of other traditional natural materials. His flies are by no means 'elegant', but if you want to tie durable flies for fishing, look here.

Highly recommended.