A fisherman’s journal amid a pandemic

A stocked brown trout from the Blackberry River in North Canaan, Conn. The state has stocked the stream several times in recent months.
Photo by Patrick L. Sullivan
The gist of fishing right now is: There are three brook trout streams in nearby Conneciticut, the Blackberry and the Furnace Brook in North Canaan and the Housatonic, all within 20 miles of Lakeville (staying in-state).
I can avoid other people quite easily on any of these bodies of water. I’ve been doing it for decades, never mind pandemics.
The Farmington is only 20-odd miles away but it’s just far enough that if anything should happen, such as spraining an ankle or the car breaking down, I would have to holler for help and thus risk exposure and/or exposing someone else. It’s also crowded, perhaps more so than usual.
So no. Staying put means fishing nearby.
I’ve been keeping a pandemic fishing journal. Here are some recent entries:
Last bit of April to May 2: Rain. Endless rain. Had a decent Blackberry day in there, and a decent Secret Stream day, but from the evening of Thursday, April 30, into the next morning, May 1, it rained hard. (Which was good because I was worried about the crops.)
The Housatonic was up well over 3,000 cubic feet per second, and the tributaries were pretty much blown out. Managed one little brookie in the raging torrent at the falls on Mount Riga before calling it quits and trudging home to watch (i.e. nap through) the “Ancient Aliens” marathon on television.
May 5: Spring arrived for a couple of days but everything, I mean everything, was too high to fish. Yesterday the Blackberry was still a tad high but clear. My buddy Dave was there experimenting with Euronymphing and catching some fish. I managed several with a shorter rod and a Tenkara rod. One streambred 17-inch rainbow was in the mix of stockers.
May 6: Cold and awful and I was nailing fish right and left on the Blackberry downstream of the old iron furnace — including three hefty rainbows who got the “compassionate release” treatment, meaning I couldn’t seal the deal with the Tenkara rod (a cheapie called Galaxy Ray). That’s what you get for fishing heavy flies downstream with a rod that has no reel.
May 8: Chilly and very slow. Explored the Whiting River in North Canaan, nothing doing; ditto the upper stretch of the Blackberry, where you have to walk around a corn field to get at the stream.
There are two deep chutes next to some riprap where I have plucked some nice fish in previous years but nothing today. Went back to “old familiar” and hiked up a very pretty stocked brookie and a couple of rainbows, out of the pool right below the furnace dam. One of them had the sporting attitude and jumped a couple times. All this with a Dragontail zoom rod, which has become my go-to for fixed-line fishing.
May 9: Woke up to a dusting of snow. Apocalyptic thoughts ensued.
May 10: Cold, windy, intermittent sun and the dulcet tone of a chainsaw and leaf blower ringing in my ears. Caught one Basic Blackberry Bow, tickled a brown, and gave it up after a couple hours.
I am thoroughly sick of the Blackberry.
May 17: Yesterday I took the first serious 2020 foray into the Wachocastinook (aka Riga) Brook, a Class I wild trout stream in Salisbury.
By “serious” I mean clambering in there to the point you either have to keep going upstream until you hit a) an old logging road or b) continue upstream to the falls in order to get out of there.
Or you get to the Point of No Return and, well, return.
I started about 10 a.m. and fished mostly unsuccessfully until about noon, when the switch was flipped and they started hitting things: Deer Hair Sedge and the more traditional and bulkier Elk Hair caddis dries; assorted soft-hackle wets, traditional and kebari; smallish but heavy nymphs, particularly a size 16 Rainbow Warrior.
As per usual the fish were small, nothing topping 8 inches. All wild browns and brookies.
Unhappily the Canon point-and-shoot camera decided to die again. It got dunked earlier this spring and I gave it the bag of rice treatment, and for a while it worked. But it has apparently relapsed and sits, mute and unblinking, on the kitchen counter, awaiting disposal.
Paul Ramunni, owner and operator of New England Accordion Connection and Museum, with a small portion of his accordion collection.
NORTH CANAAN — New England Accordion Connection and Museum is expanding to an upstairs room in the Canaan Union Station.
The “Community Music Room,” as named by Paul Ramunni, director of the museum, is intended to bring people together around joyful music.
In the spirit of preservation and the creation of new memories and stories, Ramunni’s vision for the new expansion of the museum is a place for people with any instrument to get together and jam. The inspiration for this was about a year ago when two students from the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk came to the museum wanting to see an accordion.
Ramunni asked where they were from; one was from Iran and the other from Israel. He recalled, “At that moment, what was going on is what’s always going on over there: their families were in the middle of battles. He said ‘Paul, when we met here for the first time, there was something that connected. It was music. We both agreed that we would never let anything come between us that would ruin that bond.’”
After they left, Ramunni said the idea for a community room struck him. Regardless of background or beliefs, he said, music can bring people together.
Ramunni has more than 650 accordions in his collection, each with its own story to tell.
“When we started collecting,” said Ramunni, “I didn’t think much of the backstory. I was thinking, ‘Hey, that’s a cool little one.’” He soon found out that “there’s a lot of memories packed into each one of these things, because you only played them when you wanted to make other people happy.”
The new “Community Music Room” at Canaan Union Station.David Carley
42 years had gone by since Ramunni first picked up the instrument, and he found himself in the garage of a collector with more than a dozen accordions. He was sending them to a Holocaust Museum in Glen Cove, Long Island. “Those came out of the camps at Dachau during World War II,” Ramunni explained.
“That’s what got me going when I went around looking at accordions, I’d look for the stories. This is history here. It’s not just bottle caps that we’re collecting here. This is what people did with these things, and sacrifices they made. It’s important to preserve,” he stated.
Even the origins of the accordion, according to Ramunni, came from a desire for community. “Since the birth of the country, these things were being made in people’s shops because they wanted music… So, they came up with the first accordions,” which were smaller, wooden contraptions called flutinas, originally patented in 1829 in Vienna, Austria.
The beginning of the 20th century is when the instrument took its modern form with a larger body and piano keys. From 1900 to 1960, millions were made in the United States, and competing companies would distinguish their product with intricate case designs and impressive craftsmanship.
Perhaps more important are the stories imbued within, and as Ramunni shared, “They each have their own personality.”
Bidders at the Sharon Historical Society's annual fundraiser auction consider options of unique cakes arranged on a display table Thursday, July 3.
SHARON — With the soundtrack of thunder on Thursday evening, the Sharon Historical Society & Museum’s Cake Auction fundraiser persisted.
Interim Executive Director Abbey Nova said, “I love seeing the variety of cakes from all kinds of bakers: kids to professionals to passionate home amateurs. And I love how brings the community together.”
It was the second year in a row that the event had been afflicted by bad weather. Despite this, enthusiasm was unaffected.
As bidders gathered under the tent with the sound of rain above, cakes were brought out by auctioneers Brian Ross, Chris Robinson, Danny Tieger and Barclay Collins. Tieger described the event as “whimsical” and how he hoped to “bring a bit of whimsy” himself.
The 28 numbered cakes spread across multiple display tables in the museum showcased a wide range of styles.
The first cake set the bar and was bought for $1,000, which was rather fittingly named “40 Carat Cake,” baked by Mary O’Brien and donated by Mo Dore.
Cake No. 20, "Red, White & Bloom."David Carley
Cake No. 20, titled “Red, White & Bloom: Connecticut in Full Flower,” baked by Nicole Parker King had flower decorations with incredible realism in red, white and blue Fourth of July spirit, bringing “fireworks to the desert table–minus the pyrotechnics,” as written the accompanying label.
Cake No. 19, "Let Them Eat Bread."David Carley
Right beside it, Cake No. 19, “Let Them Eat Bread,” by Myra Plescia, extended the definition of what a cake can be: “The humble rustic loaf of bread is back,” the label declared.
Cake No. 16, “Covered Bridge” by Jonas Coats was a cake diorama inspired by the covered bridge in West Cornwall.
Cake No. 16 was a recreation of the covered bridge in West Cornwall. It was aptly named "Covered Bridge."David Carley
Cake No. 10, “Ode to Mudge Pond,” was made by Sharon’s three selectmen. Baked by Lynn Kearcher and decorated by Casey Flanagan and John Brett, the card said it “evokes the natural wildlife and tranquility of Mudge Pond.”
Each were sold from the range of a few hundred dollars to a couple thousand, showing immense support for the historical society and its importance to the community.
Noah Sher created custom insect artwork at the David M. Hunt Library workshop Wednesday, July 2.
FALLS VILLAGE — Artist Erica Crofut led a bug sculpture workshop on the lawn of the David M. Hunt Library Wednesday, July 2.
About half a dozen children participated.
Crofut came prepared with bug shapes cut from plywood and painted a neutral color, assorted acrylic paints and brushes, and a box full of old shirts for smocks. (A Brooks Brothers label was attached to one of them.)
Crofut told her young artists that they had options. “We’ve got some happy bugs. We’ve got some grumpy-looking ones.”
She encouraged the children to try for realism with their bugs.
“Bugs hang out where?” Crofut asked.
The answers came back. “Leaves. Bark. Awnings. Your face.”
“They try to camouflage themselves,” concluded Crofut. “So design your camouflage for your bug.”
Eli Sher created custom insect artwork at the David M. Hunt Library workshop Wednesday, July 2.Copey Rollins
Crofut was assisted by Alesia Curletti of Housatonic, Massachusetts, and a student at the Berkshire Waldorf School in Great Barrington. Curletti said she has been helping Crofut on a major piece of sculpture destined for the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge.
Crofut and Curletti watched carefully as the artists got down to business, painstakingly painting their bugs one color at a time, in order to keep the process orderly.
“I don’t care if you get paint on my drop cloth,” Crofut said. “That’s what it’s for.”
At one point the entire group paused at the sight of a couple of fawns messing around in a grassy area across the street from the library lawn.
“Where’s the mama?” wondered Crofut.
Everyone held their breath as a car approached, and let out a collective sigh of relief when the fawns fled into the woods instead of wandering into the vehicle’s path.
When we hear ‘invasive species’ around here we think of Oriental Bittersweet strangling trees, Japanese Knotweed clogging riverbanks, Purple Loosestrife choking wetlands, and Emerald ash borer beetle decimating our ash trees. These are threats to our environment that are visible from almost every road, path or hiking trail across the northwest corner of Connecticut. These are introduced species that adapted to our local climate, out-competed our native flora and fauna, and occupied the ecological niche formerly home to local native species.
What is invisible from your car window as you pass across the region is another invasion, one with big health consequences. It is an invasion of infectious disease driven by arthropods that act as disease vectors arriving in our county from elsewhere. Some of the most closely watched arrivals are the new tick vectors that have spread to southern Connecticut in the last couple of years. Most of us are familiar with the black-legged deer tick which has been in Connecticut for millennia and transmits Lyme Disease, Anaplasma, Babesia and Powassan Virus in mice, birds, deer and humans. What few realize is that there are three new tick species that have arrived in the state enabled by the rising global temperatures, movement of host species carrying tick passengers, and human disruption of habitat allowing the new arrivals to become established.
Lone Star Tick, Gulf Coast Tick and Asian Longhorned Tick have all been detected as breeding populations in the southeastern part of Connecticut and if the black-legged tick’s rapid move north into Canada over the last 20 years is a guide, these new ticks can be expected to move northwards at 15-40 miles per year. They transmit a whole new selection of protozoa, bacteria and viruses: Rickettsia parkeri, Heartland Virus, Dabie Bandavirus, Tularemia, Southern Tick Associated Rash Illness, Bourbon Virus, Relapsing Fevers, Tick Borne Encephalitis and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever to name a few. Some of these infections are often mild but some are more severe and some can be life-threatening. We are poorly prepared for these invaders with few diagnostic tests and not much in the way of treatment options, other than the fortunate efficacy of doxycycline, used widely for Lyme, against some of the new bacterial infections.
Ticks are not the only invasive arthropod vectors taking advantage of the changing climate and human-disrupted environments. Mosquitoes are also moving here. There have been Asian bush mosquitoes such as Aedes japonicus and A. albopictus spreading in the state for some years but the acceleration of warming will likely bring new invaders adapting to human-made habitat. The daytime human biter Aedes aegypti thrives in urban environments and its global spread has driven the explosion in Dengue Fever cases over the last couple of years. It is so well adapted to towns and cities that it can breed in the drops of condensation from an air conditioner. Viral infections like Yellow Fever, Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya are transmitted by Aedes species. Across Africa a new invasive malaria-carrying mosquito, Anopheles stephensi, is setting back hard won gains in malaria control. It’s another daytime biter that lives happily in towns and cities and is changing malaria from a rural infection of farms and villages to an urban plague like Dengue Fever. Could it invade here? Why not?
Global factors, mainly warming winter temperatures, are clearly driving these range expansions. To slow the spread of these invaders we need to slow the heating up of our planet by burning less fossil fuel and storing more carbon. But there are local factors too. Losses of native biodiversity due to human activity such as habitat fragmentation, intensive agriculture, and pollution open up habitat for invaders. Range expansion of new species is a natural process that happens in native ecosystems but it is reasonable to assume that an abundant and thriving mix of local species controls the expansion of newcomers through competition. We are losing these resilient ecosystems and the health consequences are unfolding as we watch.
According to Homegrown National Park [homegrownnationalpark.org] about 80% of U.S. land is privately held. A commitment to manage our property for native biodiversity will go a long way to restoring resilient habitat that can dilute the expansion of disease-carrying invaders. Certainly new infectious diseases will arrive in Litchfield County given the planetary changes already set in motion, but the level of impact they will have is still in our hands.
James Shepherd, Section of Infectious Disease at theYale University School of Medicine, lives on Smokedown Farm in Sharon.