I’m at an age where circles are closing, so maybe that’s why “The Vanishing Trout” by Charles Lose resonates with me so strongly.
Originally published in 1931, “The Vanishing Trout” captures the trout fishing culture of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The fishing, though prominent, is the prism through which Lose depicted a world that has long departed. It is, in part, a lamentation and a prayer about the destruction and resurrection of Pennsylvania’s vast forests of hemlock and white pine, especially regarding their effect on brook trout. Lose’s prose is a bygone form of American English. Some of the stories are structured a lot like gospel parables. His recollections remind us that Pennsylvania — Penn’s Woods — was wild and remote almost until the end of World War II.
I have a personal connection with Lose that I’ve hinted at before. In 1987-88, Miss Laura and I backpacked from Arkansas to Maine. Part of that journey took us up Pennsylvania’s backbone, from the village of Penmar on the Maryland border through Gettysburg all the way north through Lycoming County into Stueben County, N.Y.
Near a small community called Trout Run, we befriended Dot Lose and Dick Lose, who managed Mt. Asbury, a Methodist church camp. We filled our canteens, chatted briefly and continued on our way.
Shortly after, the Loses’ daughter Donna Jackson pulled up beside us in a battered old pickup truck. She said a big storm was approaching and that Dot sent her to bring us back to the camp. We stayed about a week, and we remained close with the Loses until they died. My sons and I spent time with Donna and her sister Debbie when we visited Alaska in April.
In the 1990s, Dot Lose sent me a hardback copy of “The Vanishing Trout” written by Dick’s uncle. Dot’s faded handwriting on a yellow stickie on the inside cover says, “Loyalsock is 10-15 miles from Trout Run, and same distance to Williamsport, home of Little League.”
Miss Laura and I spent all of May 1988 backpacking through the middle of Pennsylvania, and we spent time on many of the rivers and streams in this book. Reading Lose’s reflections from more than a century ago take me back to the Loyalsock and tributaries such as Trout Run, Penn’s Creek, Fishing Creek and Licking Creek. We camped along their banks and even shared breakfast a time or two with fly fishermen that waded a very long way to reach our campsites.
Long-distance wading is apparently a tradition in Pennsylvania. Lose wrote often of rising at dawn to wade 7 miles of whatever stream he was fishing. For me, 7 miles in Arkansas is an all-day canoe float.
By the 1980s, the state of Pennsylvania had purchased vast woodlands to protect its major watersheds. The hemlocks had returned, as had the white pines, re-creating a dark, damp, mystical world that makes one think of J.R.R. Tolkien. These woods protect water quality. They stabilize the woods and protect habitat for Lose’s beloved northern brook trout.
That vision was the prayer portion of “The Vanishing Trout.” Lose would be delighted to see what it has become.
Like many modern anglers, Lose chides himself for carrying a vast selection of flies even though only a few ever catch fish. He described in great detail a “spinning minnow” rig that is identical to the sculpin rig that Craig Yowell uses to catch big brown trout on the White River. He describes a dropper rig that has recently seen a resurgence in popularity, especially on the Little Red River.
Lose despised brown trout, calling them sharks that would eat their own grandmother if the opportunity arose. His main complaint against them is that they eat his beloved brook trout.
Lose and his contemporaries ate every brook trout they caught. His biggest was 20 inches, which is phenomenal when you consider that a 10-incher makes a modern fisherman rapturous. My biggest was 17 inches on West Virginia’s Elk River in 1995. I can only imagine when fish that size were common.
A committed naturalist, Lose devoted much attention to the birds he saw and heard while fishing, especially the passenger pigeons that inhabited bankside beech groves. He described them as we today would describe seeing wood thrushes and mockingbirds. In later chapters, he expresses sadness over the passenger pigeon’s extinction.
Dot Lose’s note asks me to send the book to her granddaughter Sarah when I finish reading it. Sarah was a little kid when we met in 1988. Now she’s approaching middle age.
Your gramma’s book is in the mail along with this column, Sarah. I’ve taken good care of it. May the circle continue unbroken.
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