Active Angling

For many outdoor enthusiasts, spring in New England means one thing: Fishing.

The fishing rods start coming out of the closet as soon as the ice goes from the ponds, and the brooks and rivers fall from flood stage. You can find people spending every spare minute on or beside the water.

Oddly enough, though, for just as many outdoors folks, fishing is anathema. It's something to be avoided or laughed at: “Fishing: a jerk on one end of a line waiting for a jerk on the other.”

Fishing often gets a bad rap among the active outdoors crowd because it’s perceived as being a sedentary pastime at best. At worst, fishing gets associated with noisy, high-powered garishly painted bass boats and “chunkin’ baits for hawgs.” It's a mentality that doesn’t sit well with the endorphin sports crowd.

But if you approach it with the right attitude, fishing can get you and your family outdoors getting exercise. And you'll have a wonderful time. Getting started doesn’t take a big investment in time or gear. But here's a warning: Once you get “hooked,” the equipment options are infinite.

I’ve been an avid angler all my life. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I don’t have one iota of patience for sitting and waiting for things to happen. The way I do it, fishing is a very active outdoor sport.

For example, in the spring I like to fish for trout in small brooks. My ideal is a brook that drops a long way from high ground before encountering a road. I know dozens scattered from western Connecticut to the hills of eastern Maine. And no, I won’t tell you where they are. Half the fun is discovering your own.

I will give you the hint that the outlet brook from any hillside pond is always worth exploring. If there’s a path alongside the brook when you start out, try to go beyond where other anglers give up.

This is really more hiking than fishing, and usually, rough-ground bushwhacking at that. Basically you park your car (or, better yet, your mountain bike) wherever the brook crosses a road. Either fish your way up and hike out, or hike up alongside until you run out of fishable water and fish back down. If you release most of the fish you catch, you can do this all day, sometimes visiting several brooks.

On larger rivers, open lake shores, or best of all, seaside beaches when the stripers are running, you can do what I call “run and gun” fishing. This means you keep moving, trying different spots. You go to the fish rather than letting them come to you. In some places, it’s possible to cover several miles of ground and water this way. You get your exercise and, maybe, some fish.

The absolute best way to combine hiking and fishing is to backpack into remote fishing waters that can’t be reached any other way. There are dozens of such ponds and streams in the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire, hundreds in Maine and the Adirondacks of New York, and thousands if you cross the border into Quebec and Labrador.

You’ll have to carry in a tent, sleeping gear, a frying pan and your food (don’t ever count on catching your dinner!) in addition to all your fishing gear. But you’ll be guaranteed a great hike and a night or two in the wilderness. Chances are good you might catch a fish or two as well. Even if you don’t, it’ll be worth the trip.