Swing the Fly Issue 2.4 Spring 2015 | Page 126

populations in Lake Ontario. However, Oneida Lake and Fish Creek are still impounded by seven working dams and not on any official program list. A small group of dedicated volunteers manning an off-the-grid (powered by gravity) in-stream hatchery on donated land are out to change that. Independently stocking fish in New York State is expensive and through Spey Nation’s Annual Clave those costs are mitigated.

But there’s something special about those who travel to Pineville every summer. It’s obviously not the quality of the summer fishery. The real mystery is why keep people keep coming to a spey clave every year on an infamous snagging river, where the general consensus around the world is that Pulaski is the worst place to go fishing. The people who come to Spey Nation love steelhead rivers, and for better or worse, this one is theirs. They work to make it the best one it can be. People who go to Spey Nation talk about concepts like streamside etiquette, conservation, returning Atlantic Salmon to historical watersheds, and angler rotation…and they