A Sound Sleep and a Single Fish

BLOOMINGTON, Md. I like a good sleep as much as the next man, but is even the soundest snooze worth a three-hour drive, particularly with gasoline at $3 a gallon?

"I thought we were supposed to be catching big trout," I groused to Jay Sheppard last week after eight hours flogging the storied waters of the Savage River and North Branch of the Potomac here in the highlands of Western Maryland. "Where's all the fish?"

"Maybe you could write about the great sleeping," he responded lamely.

It is true that of the world's soothing sounds, the chuckle of cool water tumbling over rocks in a fast-flowing trout stream may be most soothing of all. And it's undeniable that a deep and satisfying sleep coddled us both in Mike Evans's little rental cottage alongside the Savage, where the river purls and glides just beyond the sliding screen doors.

But except for the song of the creek it was mighty quiet--too quiet, as John Wayne used to say.

Evans, a Gaithersburg consultant escaping the Beltway rat race before cares and congestion do him in, recently bought three streamside dwellings along the Savage from elderly widows. He's poured his time and money into refurbishing them, hoping to lure more Washington area flyrodders to both the Savage and nearby North Branch, where big rainbow and brown trout are known to lurk.

Sheppard dragged me up with promises of glorious fall fishing but it was all lies. But for one lucky cast late in the day, I could easily have come home with the stink of skunk all over me. As with everything, it was all in the timing.

Autumn is supposed to be prime time for the North Branch in particular as big browns move downstream from around the dam at Jennings Randolph Reservoir to carve out spawning redds on the rocky bottom, accompanied by plump rainbows hoping to gobble some brown-trout eggs. Six- and eight-pound fish are not uncommon in the fall, according to local lore, and they're generally hungry as they fatten up for the winter.

Autumn comes early in the high country, but we jumped the gun by arriving at the end of August. "Mid-September to early November is best," counseled Harold Harsh, who guides flyrodders here through his company, Spring Creek Outfitters. "I'd say the height is usually around the middle of October, just after the leaves come down."

Which put us two to six weeks early for the fall bonanza. Oh, well, no one's perfect. The early visit gave us a chance to scout hotspots to return to later, and there are worse ways to spend an August evening than on a streamside porch sipping Wild Turkey under the stars, telling lies while the river burbles along.

The Savage and the North Branch are tailwater fisheries, with cool water flowing from the base of reservoir dams upstream to keep the trout chilled and frisky year-round. The smaller Savage below Savage Reservoir has been productive catch-and-release trout water for many years, while the North Branch is newly minted, the beneficiary of massive improvements in water quality since the dam was completed in 1982.

Harsh, a Garrett County native, was among the first to start guiding there 12 years ago, when the first North Branch stocked trout began to mature. The 10-mile stretch of river above and below Bloomington has grown steadily in stature since as trout blossomed in the clear water, which only 25 years ago was lifeless from unchecked acid mine drainage.