Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 31, 1994 TAG: 9411120041
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Quite the contrary, he was hurting something, believes Catherine Tucker, chairwoman of the Virginia Council of Trout Unlimited. He was damaging the landowner-angler relationships along Mossy Creek, one of Virginia's favorite fly-fishing streams.
So were the picnickers in the pasture who allowed their kids to run around flinging rocks at the cows. And the people parking in the farmer's driveway, even parking on a newly seeded lawn.
Mossy Creek's rich, limestone water boils out of the ground at Mount Solon in Augusta County and flows through pastoral scenes of lush meadows, grazing cows and bright green willows. This is brown trout country, where bronze-colored fish, some 20 inches in length, hold beneath grassy, undercut banks and along beds of watercress, keeping an eye out for a wayward terrestrial.
The stream was barren of trout until 1976, when the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and Trout Unlimited began working with the landowners on a restoration and public fishing project. Strict fly-fishing -only regulations were imposed, and for the most part there have been few problems. Until this season, especially around Labor Day Weekend.
"I was particularly miffed about the fisherman on the front porch refusing to leave," said Tucker. "We don't have him identified. I do not know that he is a TU member. I hope to heck he isn't."
Then there was the woman in white stretch pants, one in a group of people who refused to move off of a bridge so that the farmer could pass through with his vehicle. The woman told the farmer he shouldn't be driving on the road that "this is a recreation area." Then she defiantly went to her car and pulled out equipment to cook her family and friends a picnic lunch in the farmer's pasture.
Worst of all, said Tucker, the farmer has said that some of the problem people have been wearing caps bearing the TU logo, which stands for clean, cold water and warm relationships.
So one day last month, Tucker and Larry Mohn, a fisheries biologist for the game and fish department, spent time hunkering on the farmer's porch trying to patch up relationships.
"The visit was pleasant," said Tucker. In a report prepared for a TU council meeting at the Peaks of Otter on Sunday, she is expected to say that Mossy Creek appears to have been spared "No Trespassing" signs, but anglers need to brush up on their ethics.
"Either sportsmen police themselves or we will lose our privilege to access this wonderful fishery and perhaps others," is Tucker's message to all trout fishermen. "Some people don't live up to their raising, and some people didn't get any. It is just a matter of courtesy. They don't stop to think."
Tucker and Mohn came away from the Mossy Creek front-porch meeting with plans to ease the problems of landowners. Game warden patrols have been upgraded and new ways are being discussed to handle the access permits required of fishermen. Patrols by TU members are being considered.
"TU members have talked individually with the landowner to express their dismay at this situation and their wilingness to help," Tucker said.
"Mossy Creek is neither a picnic area nor a recreation area," she said. "Those are at Natural Chimneys two miles north. That there is a fishing opportunity on Mossy Creek at all is due to the willingness of the landowners, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and members of Trout Unlimited to cooperate in stocking, maintaining and protecting that fishery."
Tucker hopes that the recent transition to a year-round trout season and addition of special-regulation streams can be used to underscore angling ethics across the state.
"I think there always has been an opportunity to work with landowners, but this gives us a new opportunity because of change. Maybe we can get people's attention in a way we couldn't before."
by CNB