RED BROOK JOURNAL

February15, 2008 Birth Announcement

Steve Angers called from Red Brook to tell me that the fry were out of the redds.

It was 14 degrees and Steve was pulling our old temperature loggers out of the brook. After 10 years of recording temps from 5 locations every 15 minutes of every day, the time to replace them had finally come. Onsett Computer was making some changes. The old loggers had become obsolete.

Meanwhile, Steve sounded pretty excited. There were fry just above the cement flumes where, along with John Kokozka, we had watched a big female salter sweep out a series of redds in early November.

On that gray Nov. morning, several smaller males were fighting for the privilege to be with “Big Momma”. They were chasing each other around the pool. Then one would dart in, flip on his side and leave milt on the redd. The old girl would back in, cover the eggs and then move up to clear some more gravel for more eggs. After half an hour of piscatorial voyeurism, we had to leave to get some work done. The hen and her entourage were still at it when we gave them a ‘thumbs up’ and slipped away.

The first big event of the year at Red Brook is the appearance of the fry. And, even though (having watched Momma and her suitors) we know that the fry are not spontaneous generation, their arrival seems a miracle. After all, it is still mid-February. It is still hard, nasty, cold winter, and by now it has gotten pretty old. Only the springs warming the brook keep these little larvae sized critters from freezing solid. What are these fish thinking?

Of course, they’re not thinking, nothing ‘thinks’ about being born. That is one of the experiences that we share with salters.

Life is much more than thought, that puny device that humans put so much stock in. There are philosophers who maintain that the opposite is true, that existence depends on thought. This is delusional thinking, a product of spending way too much time indoors.

“Monsieur Descartes, with all due respect, I’m not going to tell the leech sucking blood out of my leg that he doesn’t exist if I don’t happen to notice him.” Anonymous French fly fisherman

So, it is February and the brook trout fry have arrived. Somehow they have forced their way out through the plume of sand that buried the redd shortly after the spawn, and they don’t care what we think, as long as we don’t think of them as lunch. And another seemingly thoughtless arrival is taking place; the little black stone flies are hatching. Once again, we might ask why in February, but that would be pointless. They hatch at the same time every year with no regard for what we might think. Perhaps it’s better to skip the logic and chalk up these events at Red Brook, in the cold heart of winter, as miracles.

I know that Henry Lyman and Charles Lyman reveled in those miracles and all of the other seasonal miracles of Red Brook. In a very real sense, they were nurtured by this seemingly insignificant stream as much as are the brook trout, the herring and the osprey. How else does one explain why these men, who had access to the world’s best fishing, found their contentment at such a small stream? If it defies logic, well, that’s life.

The awe that Steve was feeling was apparent in his voice when he called to tell me about the fry, just as it was several years back when he called to tell me that the salters were breaking down at the Road Pool. It was late May and the trout had just come in from spending the winter in the bay.

That’s why we work to restore Red Brook. And that is why Fran Smith and the Quashnet crew work so hard to restore their stream, and why there are many of us who would restore all of the streams and rivers, if we could. It’s not about logic; it’s about passing along the gift of miracles.

Warren Winders