Autumn On The Wissahickon
by Ron P. Swegman

Indian Summer arrived in Philadelphia, PA, on All Saints’ Day. The Saturday morning began warm and bright and quiet. The streets were unusually still, as if the entire city was sleeping off a Halloween hangover. The birds were awake, though, and a full visible spectrum of colorful turning leaves decorated the sweetgum trees in the small square catty-corner to my town house. I was up early enough to plan a full day off, considered my options, and decided to combine my two favorite outdoor pastimes: mountain biking and fly fishing.

My decision was an easy one to make. Philadelphia, both a city and a county, is a unique American metropolis. In addition to over three centuries’ of historic firsts, it also boasts some of the world’s most terrific largests. Of these, Fairmount Park is the most impressive: the world’s largest urban greenway to be found completely inside a city’s limits. Within this great expanse of nature, to the north and west of Center City, twenty minutes by bicycle along the well-maintained Fairmount Park Bike and Hiking Path, is Wissahickon Creek, a bonafide urban trout stream, one as picturesque and as wild as any other mountain stream in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

I made the futon and next cooked up one of my patent-pending toast bread omelets (a cycling fly fisher needs to be well-fed, so no nagging stomach distracts from the focus on fly and fish). I next sorted through my gear and streamlined it from the infinite possibilities of summer angling to the more specific conditions of a fall season freestone stream (fly fishing, as a sport and an art, requires substantial preparation before working the water). Lastly, I attached the rod in its case onto the bike’s frame using bungee cords (perhaps the greatest invention to the cyclist after handle brakes). I then hopped onto my mountain bike, and within the space of half an hour I had gone from my row home apartment in Center City to my favorite fishing spot along the Wissahickon: the stretch between the historic Valley Green Inn and the start of Forbidden Drive, the gray gravel path, closed to automotive traffic, that parallels the stream’s course from its confluence with the Schuylkill River north and west up to the Morris Arboretum.

An interesting sight greeted my arrival. Down below, two bearded old timers were poling their canoes through a stretch of rapids like Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman on some 19^th-century outing. Poe, who wrote and published the essay “Morning On The Wissahiccon” in 1844, was especially familiar with this “rivulet.” He spent many poetic mornings and bucolic afternoons hiking along its steep banks and rafting along its varied currents. Recreational use of the stream can be traced back even further in history; I was witnessing a timeless passage, one that goes back to the indigenous Lenni Lenape people, those who are more popularly known as the Delaware Indians.

My own descent to the water’s edge commenced when the two boaters were no longer in view through the trees. The gorge of the Wissahickon Valley is impressive by any standard, and a cycling angler, side-stepping down the hill with a bike and other equipment balanced over the shoulder, must take care not to topple. When I made it to streamside, I was struck immediately by how the creek had turned over to its autumn and winter way. High and clear and calm, the sheltered pools had also acquired that darker, tannic quality from fallen leaves that Mr. Poe might have described as “lurid tarns” in a misty autumn valley. The exposed cobblestone shore I had walked along in my summertime sneakers had been submerged by a half foot of water thick with elm, oak, and tulip tree leaves in warm brown and yellow tones that blanketed the area like the patches of a quilt. Good thing I was prepared in knee-high rubber Wellingtons!

I unpacked and spread out my equipment on the top of a long boulder of Wissahickon schist, a 550-million-year-old metamorphic rock that is a product of its namesake valley’s unique geology. Dark gray in color, and flecked with mica and brown garnet, this schist formed when geological forces pushed layers of sedimentary rock under, and then back up to, the surface at a steep angle; a process which melted, cooled, and crystallized the stone, and that created the Wissahickon’s gorge-ous setting.

I attached reel to rod, tied a clear, monofilament leader to the end of the opaque, floating fly line, and waded out into the stream. The feeling of reunion was sweet! The water temperature was in the high 50’s -- perfect for the coldwater trout -- and the bottom had been scrubbed clean of the slippery silt that can sometimes get deposited in the main channel during the low water of slow summer.

I selected a patent pattern for this stream -- a size 8 Olive Woolly Bugger -- an attractor pattern that does not represent any specific fish food, but rather uses color and motion to excite fish into striking. I sent off a cast and began to get down to fishness -- this angler’s term for his business on the water. I first worked a stretch that flowed below a moss-covered cliff that formed a bend in the stream. This spot has in the past produced many fine catches of redbreast sunfish and smallmouth bass, two of the Wissahickon’s native game fish. I tried drifting the fly down and across with the current. I tried a manual retrieve upstream that mimicked a swimming baitfish . . . Nothing . . . No fish at all were to be roused in that dark -- and slow -- pool. There were only the pleasant distractions that compensate for the lack of angling action: the subdued sound of sporadic crickets; chipmunks scurrying from nut tree to nut tree; a city of birds darting back and forth in the overhead canopy; an occasional V of migrating geese filling the air with the soft echo of their calls.

I pursued a fishless, yet fun, afternoon until the sun was just about to let go of the old growth trees in the Wissahickon Valley. The time was 4 p.m. The drawbacks of the return to Standard Time were suddenly visible in the fading light. I left the slow water, tied on a fresh tippet, and switched patterns. I removed the streamer and tied on a custom version of my favorite wet fly -- the E-Z Nymph, which is rather easy to assemble at the vise: a size 12, 14, or 16 wet fly hook, black thread, and a section of pheasant tail spiral-wrapped forward on the hook and then folded back and tied off are the simple ingredients to this fish-catching recipe. The pattern will imitate almost any small, brown, stream bug, and is an especially effective caddis imitation.

I waded upstream to the base of one of the many fine stone bridges that span the Wissahickon. From there, downstream to my encampment, was a long pool flanked by fading wildflowers. This section offers some of my favorite water along the creek. This is a wide stretch, boulder-strewn, with an undercut bank on the far side. A nice feature along this section is the presence of several depressions the size of a desktop where the average one foot flow dips down to two or three feet, which makes a perfect habitat for holding -- and feeding -- trout.

I worked half of the pool with no results other than the occasional tug and hook up of a submerged tulip tree leaf. I had my new 35mm camera slung around my neck, so I paused to catch a few parting shots of the sun-bathed hillsides bursting with the russet glow of high autumn. I replaced the lens cover and made a few more casts; I was in good form, with my rod tip high and a good stream-to-bank angle, a position that let my fly line roll out naturally in the current. The lack of distracting drag on my fourth cast must have made the wet fly look exceptionally good. A sudden, strong tug took up my line, and the taker began to move against the current. No tulip tree leaf this time --

“Fish on line!”

The taker offered solid resistance, but did not jump. The fish swam toward me, so I had to draw in the line in that frantic manner that is so chaotic and fun.  I brought the fish close and was delighted to see the E-Z- Nymph had fooled a brown trout.

Fooled, yes. Caught, no.

A trout has remarkable endurance when it works with the current, and this one went with the flow like a pro. I could only stand there and watch it chug like a train upstream until fish, not fisher, had tired itself.

The end game finally came. Removed from the water, the trout was slim and muscular, with a goldenrod belly that blended up into its spotted, silver flanks. I tried to snap a picture of the photogenic fish for proof and posterity. Sadly, just as I had managed to hold and focus my camera with one hand, the trout broke into a manic wriggle. Then the fish slipped off the hook and -- “PLOOSH!” -- dove back to its home boulder along the opposite bank.

“Oh, well!” I said. I had the memory . . .

. . . And now you have the story, another chapter in the onflowing history of Wissahickon Creek.

ron P. swegman is the author of Philadelphia on the Fly: Tales of an Urban Angler. His website is http://www.ronpswegman.com/

 

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