Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 5, 1991 TAG: 9103050048
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Christopher Camuto chooses winter to launch his book, a season when rivers run quietly through a gray-and-brown world.
"In winter trout are nowhere to be seen, but you know they are there," writes Camuto. "They inhabit a cold within the rivers that is older than the mountains themselves."
The mountains Camuto refers to are the time-worn Blue Ridge, thus the title of his first book, "A Fly Fisherman's Blue Ridge."
When you ask him about his subject, Camuto is quick to agree that the Blue Ridge region isn't exactly a mecca of trout angling. Most trout literature lauds the British chalkstreams, the rough-and-tumble western rivers, the quaint Battenkill and Beaverkill.
"It was what I knew best," said Camuto, a man shaped by the character of the country he calls home.
He moved from metropolitan New York to Virginia about 15 years ago, lived near the salt marshes of Eastern Shore for a time, then came inland to Charlottesville, close enough to the Rapadan River to fall in love with it and the trout that fin about in its staircase pools. More recently, at age 39, he settled in Buena Vista, where he is a free-lance writer and teacher of an American Literature course at Washington and Lee University.
"I had been doing the magazine stuff and then I got a letter from an editor who asked, `If you wrote a book, what would you write about?' "
It would be the Blue Ridge, the streams that tumble off their slopes, the trout that live in pools so cold it numbs your lips to drink from them, the fly hatches, the natural history, the American history.
"That is what I love most."
The affection shines through in the descriptive prose of a naturalist whose appeal is well beyond the reach of the longest graphite fly rod. Published earlier this winter by Henry Holt, $19.95, the volume is in its second printing.
Most anglers live for spring, but Camuto speaks so elegantly of winter that this bleakest of seasons beckons a more careful look.
"The first time I realized how deeply I was into trout fishing was when I looked up and it was December or January," he said at his home last week.
He writes about fishing the North Fork of the Moormans River in weather so cold that the trout "might just as well be stones" and, for certain, his legs turn to stone in numbing 35-degree water.
"I learned that the river was no less a river during the brief days of January than it was during the infinite days of late spring or on evanescent autumn afternoons."
The insistent rain drumming on his roof in late winter helps him concentrate at the fly-tying vice where Quill Gordons slowly emerge. It is a rain that doesn't just bead on the hood of his pickup and form puddles in his garden. It promises a good spring flow when the trout season opens.
The series of essays that weave through his book are neither how-to or where-to-go in scope. The danger, said Camuto last week, is drawing too much attention to the little nooks and crannies of nature that you love.
"I didn't want to fink on my favorite streams. It is a homage more than a travel log. If you find some little gem out there I think most of us are going to be quiet about it, except with our friends."
His writings are the kind that encourage you to probe the gentle folds of the Blue Ridge and discover your own gems.
ANDY LAYNE: Members of the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club and others are morning the death of Andy Layne, one of the trail's most dedicated volunteers. Even at an advanced age, Layne was quick to take on the toughest trail building assignments, including work on the McAfee Knob and Brush Mountain relocations. Layne was found dead in his Roanoke Valley home on Sunday when he failed to show up to lead a club hike.
by CNB