The Rainbow Fly Fishing Club has stocked Black Creek below Noccalula Falls as of yesterday with over a thousand rainbow trout. People are widely ambivalent about the commerce and tourist dollars this fish stocking program brings to Gadsden, Alabama. Maybe “people” is an overstatement, but I am certainly conflicted about it. I have heard fish biologists express concern for the project but this is out of their regard for competition with native fish populations and habitat. The other thing to be concerned about was the difficulty many have had getting into the gorge. I myself broke my wrist once, and another friend of mine practically scalped himself in a nasty fall chasing the trout.
On the one hand, I find the annual programmatic release of bows great for me personally to feel connected to the piscatorial natural world in a kind of deep ecology way (even if these fish are foreigners). The more I think about being aware of entomology or trout competition with copper nose bluegill, the more I feel myself to be an in-"complete angler,” as Isaac Walton’s famous title refers to these many multifaceted skills in his work by the same title. What is even more, I feel myself to be a stakeholder in the natural world. Perhaps more Gadsden fly fishermen will mean other stakeholders in preserving wild-ish spaces.
The man that made this possible is a real hero in my life as an angler, though it would be quite a stretch to call myself a “complete” anything— besides complete dumbass when it comes to baseball, anything mechanical, or mathematics. I am not “the best” at any of my pursuits, but I am adequate enough to enjoy many things, as any renaissance man worth his salt might be. Frank Roden owns a fly shop in Rainbow City called The Rainbow City Auction. Frank’s life, the one he has brought me in on, is fascinating for the way he grew up into a savvy business leader in Etowah County from humble origins. He explained to me once in an interview that he and his brothers learned early-on that they could keep meat in the freezer by hunting for it. This wasn’t unique to the Roden family for Etowah County residents, but it is a practicality that seems to have grown less common today (unless you are Cambo). (Cambo being Cambo )There are simply fewer people with access to hunting land.
For the last three years, Frank has orchestrated with the people that participate in a fly fishing club (here in Gadsden) a two thousand year old tradition called fly-fishing for trout that dates back to Macedonian anglers who used horse hair braided together, and later to people in the Northeast and Western states who used silkworm gut ordered out of the Sears catalogues. Frank has had a fly shop-antique store-cattle farm for as long as I can remember. His skills are as diverse as he is kind, and he has been helping me learn to cast my whole life in fly fishing which is nearly 25 years. He even sold me my son’s crib. So I want to be upfront about my esteem for this veteran of the Vietnam War. He is living an ‘American Dream’ through his hard work and dedication to his passion for fly fishing.
He even taught me carp fishing with his Hewes skiff when I could not get close enough to them on foot, spooky bastards that they are, so Frank taught me to be stealthy in the first boat I owned called, the River Hawk. Carp are Asian fish now naturalized as American. They bottom feed and are equally omnivorous fish that eat a lot of crustaceans, and aquatic nymphs—much like trout.
It is hard for me to now speak ill of a stocking project that does give me great satisfaction, since I am a Gadsden native in the epicenter of Dixie that can now fly fish for trout in his hometown. This is ninety percent owed to Frank’s efforts as a passionate entrepreneur of fly fishing. I have never spent time learning to tie flies and his shop is an emporium for my travel and adventurous life as a sportsman of fish. The summers that I guided regularly for carp I would always wash my boat at his shop in part because he was kind enough to nudge his clients to take trips with me.
I plan on fishing for the trout below the falls this Friday, and I happily will pay the toll at the cabin next to the parking lot, but there is something about this experience that resembles Disney Land. The 75 foot waterfall is where Princess Noccalula jumped to her death rather than marrying the wrong cross town tribe’s most eligible bachelor, so there is a fair amount of romance built into the site. My Columbian American brother-in-law proposed to my sister here. Noccalula’s death dive is immortalized by a sculpture of her descent in bronze, and bravely that is where Mateo Marquez Marquez popped the big one.
The combat fishing of every Gadsden new angler learning to fly fish below the falls can impel a person to jump from one boulder to the next in order to reach the best beat on the stream. Just think if you were rubbing elbows with Cambo. If you didn’t beat him to the stretch of water you might wonder if he’d leave you any fish. I jumped to a boulder below me and my wading boots slipped, but deeper than that, it was my competitive spirit that said, “hurry! Don’t let Cambo beat you.” I was so hyped up over this new experience of catching a trout in the heart of Dixieland that I let passion for fish get the best of me. I caught six before I crawled out with a broken wrist.
Most know that rainbow and brown trout are immigrants from Europe from the 19th century. In truth, carp are only seen as “trash fish” because of their resiliency and the profundity of their numbers. People love to bow hunt for them and leave them on the boat ramp banks. The waste of this is striking to me, because I love to fish for them. Trout would never be treated with this kind of ill will. There is an aura that encircles the trout, and they are terrific for getting a wife or child interested in catching fish. The carp is more graceful, and stronger, but it is seen as uglier by nearly everyone. The carp is also ten times more difficult to hook in its rubbery mouth by fooling it to eat.
In some ways Frank’s effort to hold up fly fishing in ‘Bama has made me lazy. I’d rather go trout fishing all winter, and then carp fish in spring and summer. It doesn’t get much better than that. Good on ya Frank! Maybe I’d rather catch these hatchery fish as it only takes a day trip to satiate my fishing needs for a few weeks. I am still using more than giving but I’ll sign petitions and take political action to preserve wild spaces even though mine are all constructed wild spaces. I will go buy some flies for my trip right after I leave work on Friday. I’ll be in a cold stream fishing for trout by 3:30. Life is good and complicated.