To get women into the outdoors, just ask them

May 31, 2008 02:03 pm

— Some guys keep their outdoor activities to themselves in an exclusive all-male fraternity, but I think they’re making a mistake. With declining hunting and fishing license sales and diminishing national participation in the outdoors, we need all the support we can get. Besides, women and girls can bring their own special brand of joy to the evening campfire and the morning hiking trail.
At Camp F-Troop, we uphold a longstanding tradition of inviting wives, girlfriends, mothers, daughters, nieces, and significant others to many of our annual events in the mountains. And that’s the key: we ask them, we invite them, and often they’re surprised and delighted to come along. In fact, my new book about the history of F-Troop — due out in three months — devotes an entire chapter and lots of stories and anecdotes to the adventures of women at camp.
My fiancée Donna Rai’ enjoys campfires, canoeing, hikes, and photography up in the Warren County highlands, and she has held a Pennsylvania fishing license for the past two years. We have ventured out together after trout a dozen times, and on each occasion, she has caught more fish than I have, which is a good thing for both of us. Such was the case again last weekend.
We started out bridge-hopping with fly rods and live minnows Sunday morning to break the ice. First we drove the Jeep a mile down from camp to a small bridge over a tiny creek that only a few of us “locals” know holds wild brookies. D-Rai’ rolled a fish on the first cast, then tossed right back in and hooked a fine small brook trout with brilliant red shading illuminating its belly and fins. I took a photo as she held the fish up and smiled in the sun, and I knew right then we were in for a good day.
Then we drove another mile south to a larger stream, Perry Magee Run, which features hatchery trout in its lower reaches and wild fish and holdovers upstream. We parked by the bridge and peeked over the side. There — in the deep pool below — swam four stocked trout in obvious feeding mode among the big rocks in the clear-water stream. Problem was that since we could easily see these fish in the lucid pool, they could see us, too, so it was a challenge to get them to bite. Still, D-Rai’ persevered, and on her 10th cast she hooked and landed an 11-inch stocked brown trout.
Now we were ready to launch into a long wild trout hike deep into the game lands forest. We drove three miles north, parked on the gravel road, donned our fishing vests, pulled on our knee-high boots and began walking upstream along Antler Run. It was a brilliant day, with cool breezes drifting upstream and warm, dappled sunshine beaming down through the hemlock canopy. We took photos of sparkling waterfalls and colorful wildflowers and spotted lots of deer tracks in the soft earth along the banks of the stream.
We skipped some pools and fished some others and caught and released nine wild native brook trout, six for her and three for me. The most memorable fish was a dark-hued brookie that D-Rai’ caught in a shallow pool where the stream ran along a rock-wall cliff, and deep green shadows colored the waters there. She tossed upstream into the flow, and the fish darted out from the shadows and slammed the bait and fought up-current until she brought it to hand, posed briefly for a picture, and then released it into a quiet eddy.
About 1 p.m. we sat down on a big windfall oak log and gazed up at the steep wooded hillsides and listened to the overhead birdsong and the soothing melody of the flowing waters. Then we hiked out and drove back to camp for lunch on the front porch overlooking the river. Life just doesn’t get much better than that.
Good luck out there. And have a great week outdoors.

Don Feigert is the outdoors writer for THE HERALD and the ALLIED NEWS. He can be contacted at 317-985-2870 or dfeigert@verizon.net. Visit his Website at www.donfeigert.com.

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