Over in Shandaken, Mike O'Neil, Troutmeister -- yes, that does appear to be an official title -- recently issued a plea to the community for money to fund the annual stocking of trout in the Woodland Valley Stream. Troutmeistering is a sacred family trust, handed down to Mike by his father Paul before him. Fittingly, Mike used the same letter for this year's fundraising drive that his father wrote 24 years ago. It begins:
LET US BEGIN by agreeing that Woodland Brook will never inspire lines like:
“To the West! To the West!
To the land of the free!
Where the mighty Missouri
Rolls down to the sea.”
It would be ridiculous in fact—not unlike comparing a leaky faucet to the falls of Niagara—to equate our piddling little trickle with dozens of such watercourses: with the Congo as well as the Missouri; with the Amazon, the Nile, the Yukon or even (author blushes) the Gowanus Canal. Few of which lack their own sort of piscine life.
It is a paean to the humble Catskills trout stream, "piddling" though it may be, and a small but elegant masterwork of purple prose. Check out the whole thing at the Woodland Valley View blog.
In its 2011 trout stocking plans for Ulster County, the DEC notes that the Woodland Valley Stream is due to receive 210 8-to-9-inch brown trout this April.
Photo of brown trout by Flickr user weanders. Published under Creative Commons license.
