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Learning to enjoy life again
BOND, COLO. - The trout rose and sipped a mayfly off the surface of the Colorado River. Joshua Williams caught the small disturbance on the water from the corner of his eye. Standing in a drift boat, he raised his fly rod and the trout rose again and gulped in the artificial fly on the end of the line.Suddenly, Williams was in trouble.He'd done this a hundred times before on the rivers and creeks around his home in Virginia, passionately throwing a fly at rising trout, holding the long rod in his right hand and gently stripping in the slack line with his left, a delicate two-handed operation.But on a recent Friday, the 22-year-old Army staff sergeant, who had spent a hellish year engaged in street combat in Iraq, had a problem.He didn't have a right hand.The trout surged into the current. Williams, holding the rod in his left hand, hung on.
He's cast as a top fishing guide
As a child, Gary Mauz was so dedicated to fishing, he would go camping by himself and spend all day exploring the best fishing holes along the Neshaminy Creek, especially where it flowed into the Delaware River. Mauz, 43, still loves to fish. But now, he's generally not alone - he's either guiding or instructing others in fishing - and his years of experience have taken away some of the guesswork in finding good fishing spots. His business, the Delaware River Fly Fishing Guide Service, is based on his knowledge of the area. His clients often include tourists who like to hear a bit of local history while they're fishing. As a professional guide who guarantees that you will catch fish, he also relies on his ability to read the water surface. He looks for places where a strong current can carry the line, and where slight impressions on the surface might indicate where the water is deeper and where fish might hide.
Dunbar Creek survey brings surprise
Biologists from the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's regional office in Somerset surveyed the stream July 18-19, looking for wild and stocked trout. They found both in pretty good numbers. They also found something they weren't expecting. Electroshocking one section of stream, below what is known locally as the wire, they found eight hatchery brown trout and three hatchery brookies, but also four rainbow trout "that appeared to be either wild fish or fish that had been stocked as fingerlings, because they were all five to seven inches long," said the commission's area fisheries manager, Rick Lorson. .
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