Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305230136
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Fleshman heads "Virginians for Clean Rivers," something he describes as a loose coalition of river users and conservation groups - Trout Unlimited, Float Fishermen of Virginia, Coastal Canoers - who want to patch up relationships with landowners along the Jackson.
Below Gathright Dam, the river sends its unremitting green flow through a scenic Alleghany County valley, hugging deep-cut banks and dancing through washboards of rounded rocks.
It has potential of becoming one of the finest trout fisheries in the eastern United States. Trout stocked by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries are doing well, but there is a major drawback.
Some of the landowners along the river's course don't want to see a public fishery in their backyard. They say the river belongs to them, and they have deeds to prove it, deeds, they say, that can be traced back to grants from the king of England. They want to be left alone. They have taken one angler to court to prove that point.
If you expect to hear Fleshman, a fly fisherman, expressing animosity toward the landowners, you will be disappointed.
"They have had quite a few things turned around and shoved down their throat," he says.
The purpose of the new group he heads is to develop better communications and relations with the landowners.
"Mostly we would like to share the responsibility of the river's upkeep and its resources in a responsible way," he says.
Fleshman and his crew of about 40 river lovers, from Tidewater to the New River Valley, attempt to do that by policing three pickup loads of trash during a day's effort. Afterward, a barbecue is spread at Cole Mountain Recreation Area on Moomaw lake.
The landowners have been invited to share a lavish spread. None shows up.
Some don't just ignore Fleshman's invitation;, they send him messages saying, "We don't want you on our land or wading our river even to pick up trash."
That's the kind of "hot" letter Barbara Flint says she returned. She and her husband have owned Jackson River property since the mid-60s.
"We have worked hard for what we have," she says, adding that too few people have tried to understand the landowners' side of the issue. The Flints say they have paid taxes on property skirting both banks of the river and on the river bottom itself for nearly 30 years. They have done that to buy seclusion, to have a place to swim on a hot summer day, to have something they can call their own. They don't care to share it with strangers. They are incensed when outsiders claim the river as their own.
The message they have for Fleshman and his friends is this: There's really nothing you can do that will make us change how we feel.
The deepness of the gulf between sportsmen and landowners does not deter Fleshman.
"If you keep showing them [that you care], pretty soon they are going to turn around and find out we are true to our word," he says.
That word centers on his belief that sportsmen and landowners can share a wonderful resource in a way that benefits both sides.
The fact that the conflict may be resolved in court troubles Fleshman. One side is likely to win big; the other lose big. And a court decision is destined to spread well beyond the Jackson. He favors a peaceful settlement rather than taking that kind of gamble.
`It's really a shame to have two groups of people fighting," he says.
by CNB