Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 7, 1993 TAG: 9303070023
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SUCCESS REVERSING DAMAGE TO STORIED CRANBERRY RIVER
When I fished the famed Cranberry River in West Virginia four Aprils ago, I came away disappointed. It shouldn't be like that next time.I had ridden into the back country on horseback and set up a camp along the edge of the Cranberry Wilderness.
This is big country, in the Monongahela National Forest, with distant views of 4,000-foot ridges clothed in spruce. Some 16 miles of terrain along the river is open only to non-motorized travel: foot, horseback or mountain bike.
The Cranberry is a large trout stream by eastern standards, nourished by a multitude of snow-fed rills and runs with names like Rough Run, Hateful Run, Hell for Certain, Steep Run and Tumble Rock Run, all descriptive of their character. The river is deceptively powerful, moving along in a hurry, like a big man ready to knock you down if you get in the way.
My two companions and I cast for trout around camp without success, so we mounted up and probed deeper into the wilds.
The Cranberry River had been flowing deep in my dreams for years, a desire to fish it fanned by fascinating yarns told me as a youngster by an uncle who knew it in the 1930s and '40s. As he and I fished less-storied streams, he'd often reflect on the days when trout and solitude were abundant at places like the Forks of the Cranberry and Tea Creek, names that would roll off his tongue with a hospitable flow. I knew if I just could get there, a scrumptious treat awaited.
When I finally arrived, it was everything he'd said, except for the trout. They were either scarce or uncooperative - or both.
We were lured downstream by one enticing pool after another, but none produced a strike until just before dark. I was drifting a Panther Martin spinner behind a massive boulder when the flashing blade attracted the attention of a hook-jawed brown trout that grabbed it in its forest of teeth.
It was a beautiful fish, wild and ice-box cold, its sides the color of gold and peppered with spots half the size of a dime, some of them blood red along the lateral line. The only problem, it was the only trout I caught the entire trip.
I never measure a wilderness experience by the number of fish I catch, but something was especially troubling this time. The beautiful Cranberry, once among the finest trout streams in the East, was in obvious trouble.
For years, winds carrying air dirtied by distant industry had sailed above the wilderness, dropping acid in the rain and snow and lowering the river's Ph to the point it became a hostile environment for trout, especially January through April.
The forest service and the West Virginia Division of Natural Resource were working to reverse the damage when I was there by installing a limestone station to neutralize the river's acidic flow. But I couldn't see much progress.
Last month, officials announced their efforts to restore the river's glory now can be classified as successful, even spectacular. Two new rotary drum stations are putting 2,000 tons of limestone slurry into the river annually. Thirty miles of stream currently will support trout, and, to prove it, officials carried out a huge stocking, the earliest in 20 years. Some natural reproduction also was noted.
I'm already planning to return. But wouldn't it be even better if clean air flowed across the wilderness that holds the river rather than limestone slurry flowing down it?