A River Runs Through Me: Little River, Scotland, CT
It is not a large river, nor is it well known. But it is the river that flows through my dreams. I feel the cold spring runoff tugging around my legs. Those old hip waders that I refused to replace reminded me year after year of a hole I missed patching. It is where I learned to trout fish. Where my childhood best friend caught a brown as big as a football and won the local tackle store’s fishing contest. I taught my son to fish for trout on it. It is also where I saw the wild trout return. Little River is an apt name, more a stream than a river that flows through a part of Connecticut that is postcard New England with white steeple churches, ancient grave yards and farms established in 1700s and still operating. If you were to create a list of well known trout rivers in southern New England—the Housatonic, the Connecticut, the Farmington—Little River would mostly likely not be included, and that’s just fine with me. Cutting through farmer’s fields where the banks are high or through woodlots where its sounds soothe and inspire I negotiate the rocks and the overhanging trees. I left ornaments on those trees, tackle boxes full of Red Devils, Golden Fish, and other spinners and spoons. Nymphs, too, when I started fly fishing.
I still hear instructions from the old timers on how to read the water and remember the chill of early spring mornings on opening day fishing season. “See how the water slows by the overhang?” I nodded. “Cast before that and let the current take your bait. And see how the water curls around the rocks? Cast just before the rock.” I did and I caught fish, plenty of state-stocked, put-and-take browns, rainbows and brookies. When the lessons evolved to flies, it was a matter of delicately placing a dry blue olive as the hatch peaked and the trout were in a frenzy. We have nicknames for spots like the Big Pool, Second Rapids, and Slow Bend. It was at The Sandbar where my son Joshua, nearly 10 and just aching to try a fly rod on trout, caught his first brookie on a fly. They were rising to a hatch and I gave him instructions. He had that awkward cast of beginner and I am grateful that brookie was patient. Josh’s face still lights up when we talk about that fish and it has been over 11 years since he was that boy in wet sneakers and a cat’s cradle of fly line. On a return trip he brought me a small trout, darker than stocked fish. “What is?” I had asked the same to the old timers when I was 10. “That’s a native. Throw it back gently. Let’s make sure they’ll be there next time.” The wild trout in Little River are slight compared to fish out west, but they are giants here showing the determination to return to their streams and rivers to challenge young boys and men and sons.
A few months ago the Boone & Crockett Club released the most popular caliber used to take wall hangers in North America. It seems that most trophies are taken with the .300 Winchester Magnum. The .300 win mag beat out the .30-06, 7mm Remington Magnum, .270 among others. Care to take a guess what the second most popular caliber is? Trick questions. It’s not a caliber at all but a bow. The second most popular weapon used by B&C members is a bow. The .300 win mag is probably the outer limit of most hunter’s and shooter’s recoil tolerance. The .300 spits out a 150 grain bullet at about 3,290 fps and that can result in about 2,314 pounds of recoil. In layman’s terms that similar to a sharp blow to the shoulder from 2x4 depending on how well you have the stock placed in your shoulder pocket and what position you are shooting from. My first experience with the .300 win mag was about 35 years ago. A friend of mine who believed bigger and faster in a caliber was better bought a used bolt-action that looked a suspiciously like a Weatherby—glossy stock, bright blue finish—but was actually a Japanese-made brand that is now long defunct. He bought the gun for whitetails and shot one about two acres away on the edge of the hay field. The bullet entered via a small hole and existed by a tennis-ball sized hole and kept going. Not one to be duly impressed I commented that it’s a good thing the farmer’s Holsteins weren’t around since you might have had to drag two animals. I understand a grizzly, elk or mountain goat hunter needing the power at a distance the .300 win mag offers, but it’s a little too much gun for whitetails. And I know you are dying to know what other calibers B&C members use; in order of popularity the .270, .30-06 followed by the 7mm rem mag.
