By John Ross
Watermark
By Grant McClintock, Mike Crockett and Fen Montaigne
148 pages with color photos throughout
The Lyons Press
$39.95 hardcover ISBN 155821-779-7
Lo, how we may try, there is no way we can do it all. No more than we can hunt all the woodcock coverts or the patches of conifers where grouse hide after a good snow, we can't fish all the streams, not even all the famous ones, not even if we had the wealth of Croesus and the all the time in the world. We do not know, though we think we do, all of the streams that wend through our own turf. And those that we think we know, we don't know well enough. It is a common affliction of fly fishers, a corollary to the grass-is-always-greener syndrome. "Why must you drive hours and hours to fish," Katie my wife asks me in genuine puzzlement, "when you have such good streams so close to home?" I have tried many answers and have found none that satisfies her or me.
Ernest Schwiebert says that fishing is a lovely excuse for travel. From me he gets no rebuttal. Later today I'll pack my bag for the Bighorn. It will be rushed as such jaunts always are. Like most of us working stiffs, my travel window is small. I have planned this trip hurriedly. That I will find this prime tailwater at something other than its best, I know. I will hear: "You should be here in (fill in the blank with any week of the year other than the one I've chosen)." In some ways, the fishing will be disappointing as it must be unless the Universe smiles and leads you to the river at just the right time.
That is why I am so grateful to Grant McClintock and Mike Crockett for their volume: Watermark. They put us on a score or more of rivers of the East when angling is at its peak. Through exquisite photographs and text that is as comfortable as that of John McPhee, Messrs. Crockett and McClintock pack us up in an Airstream with Paula, Grant's wife and a trio of Goldens who are fools for fishing.
This band of fugitives from Oklahoma leads us on a Kuraltesque odyssey that begins in the front yard of Henry Williamson's homestead on a Georgia mountain not much than a hoot and holler from the Chattooga, the river of Deliverance and fine trout. Heading north, we wade the gentle streams of the Southern Appalachians, breaking out of the mountains to drift flies over the persnickety trout of Pennsylvania's limestone streams.
The rumpled mountains guide us still further to the northeast, crossing the Delaware near Hancock and into the much fabled Catskills where Joan Wulff and Ed Van Put steward the legacy of the greats of the Beaver Kill -- Theodore Gordon, the Darbee's and Dette's, and Sparse Grey Hackle. We pause to fish a Maine pond for brook trout, before crossing the boarder into the Maritimes in pursuit of Salmo salar in the still great rivers of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
In this book you won't find all of the famous trout streams in the East, and some of the ones you will find aren't famous at all. You won't find river maps and emergence charts, lists of lodges or fly shops, or a bibliography of sources for more information.
The book is generally organized by geography, but it's not overly retentive about it. It's not meant to be a guide, but a book that conveys a sense of fly fishing in the East and a companion to their fine book Flywater on the West. Watermark is a book for the fireside, for nights when sleet streaks the window pane and a glass or steaming mug feels good at hand. RWOL
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