Trout fishing on the Pit River might come back someday.
The guide didn’t sound hopeful when he told her this. Conviction seemed drained from his voice.
He told her the water was changing and not just because it was clogged with sediment. Every aspect of the river water, from current to chemical composition, was no longer what it had once been.
He lowered his gentle voice when he told her rainbow trout didn’t show up like they did before. The contours and composition of the river banks were sagging or sliced up. The pools were altered, all victims of sedimentation and the degradation of the habitat.
So it wasn’t just the rainbow trout that were going away. It was the Pit River itself.
The enemy was in plain sight, a string of hydropower projects. The utility company knew full well when they built them their installations would kill the river. Never has a dam been built that hasn’t killed a river.
Then the guide was quiet for a while. He stood still and looked out over the water, staring where the surface rippled in uneven wind.
He pointed to a trail and let her go first. He spoke even more softly now.
He told her the best time to fish the Pit River is early summer. That’s when you use Blue-winged Olives and Caddisflies. Then there are times you’ll want Stoneflies, maybe for a few weeks in the spring but mostly in the fall.
Differences of opinion about the best place for trout fishing on the Pit River come with the territory. That worked out well. It spread people out.
So the river wasn’t overfished, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was a slow death.
They set a slow pace along the trail. He mentioned a spot on the upper part of the river, below Lake Britton where the river flows down to the Pit 3 Powerhouse.
His brother took him up there for his fourteenth birthday. He was shown an easy way to get down to the river that few others knew of. Long ago they stayed up late and drank Southern Comfort from tin cups by a small campfire.
Then his brother left for Vietnam.
