Dentry: Campers' enthusiasm is as big as all outdoors

Friday, June 23, 2006

"Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery elements are made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration." - Isaak Walton.

PARSHALL - We have the Ike Walton quote compliments of Elyssa Ridinger, 14, of Broomfield, one of the star-student troupe now showing on the Colorado River.

Elyssa topped her application for Colorado Trout Unlimited's first River Conservation and Fly Fishing Youth Camp with Ike's words and another quote reminding us that, "Fishing is much more than fish."

She knows a fat, green cranefly larva when she sees one. This is a young woman who has read Tactics on Trout. She also wrote, in her own words, " . . . one day, it could all be gone if we don't learn to preserve what we have."

Hello Mudda, hello Fadda never was like this.

Here is a summer camp unlike any before, with courses in entomology, a naturalist who knows a green-tailed towhee when he hears one, lots of fly-fishing instruction and trout-related fun.

And not a single iPod.

CTU accepted 17 students into the camp, which has been tenting this week at Williams Peak Ranch, at the invitation of owner Mike Miniat. Each day, classmates and teachers venture forth to the Colorado River to fly fish, turn over rocks and learn how underwater bugs can tell us what the fish are saying and whether streams are healthy.

Like any student body or camp, there are quiet members, talkative ones, honor students, average students and a class clown or two. But each soul shares a love of the outdoors and a yearning to excel at fly-fishing.

The students, 14 to 18 years old, were admitted into the weeklong camp based on sentiments they expressed in letters to CTU and with glowing recommendations from teachers and other adults. Some are accomplished fly fishers, some are rosy-cheeked beginners.

Several of them see careers in wildlife management, a few want to become outfitters. At least one - against financial advice - would accept work as an outdoors writer.

Quite a few students also wanted to be out there wading in the riffles because urban living deprives them of the chance.

Speaking of chance, Chance Marble knows he enjoys a head start (see that rustic cowboy hat and confident casting technique). But the 15-year-old ranch dweller and 4-H member from Nathrop said there is more to learn.

"If you want to be a really successful fisherman, I would say do it (learn about entomology)," Chance said Wednesday. "I'm interested in it."

Try this on for a reason to take a kid fishing. From the camp essay of Weston Reynolds, 15, of Harrisonburg, Va.: "In a sport dominated so heavily by middle-aged men, I am often disappointed by the lack of young people who fly fish."

In another essay, Sarah Dixon, 14, of Highlands Ranch, declared her ambition to become an environmental engineer. Imbedded in her memory, she wrote, is the sad image of a mountain pond poisoned by mine drainage.

"Ever since, I have wondered if I could help to restore life to the lifeless pond," Sarah wrote.

OK, it's a cliché: These young adults are our future. They might even be the last hope for defending this nation's dwindling natural spaces against the inexhaustible ravages of paving, development and "growth."

"The purpose of this is to bring youths into conservation," said Sharon Lance, a CTU trustee and its award-winning former president. "Seventy percent of our curriculum is conservation, and 30 percent is fly-fishing.

"One of the big strengths of our camp is that each of these kids have to go back to their local TU chapter and their high schools and run a conservation project."

Colorado is one of only three states that has started river camps for youths. The others are Montana and Pennsylvania. More states' TU councils are expected to join and they would without delay if they had witnessed the vital enthusiasm at Camp CTU.

As with many propitious gatherings, we met at the tailgate of a pickup. Insects were on center stage (entomology counselor Bill Edrington, of Royal Gorge Anglers in Cañon City, presiding).

The chief curios were prehistoric-looking stonefly nymphs, huge ones wearing wing cases that looked like triple capes.

"That's next year's crop of Pteronarcys," Edrington said.

Among other critters the campers seined in minutes from a riffle near the mouth of Byers Canyon were free-swimming caddis larvae, pale morning dun mayfly nymphs and three translucent fry, which Edrington declared to be wild rainbow trout, hatched in the river about two weeks ago.

"You just caught the smallest trout you'll ever catch," he said to Ryan Kophs, 14, of Aurora, when Ryan gingerly tweezered the tiny, 1.3-mm fish into a sample container.

When interviewed for this column, Ryan - already a fly fisher - withheld no angling secrets: "It took me about five minutes to get it," he said with a mock swagger. Except this wasn't fly-fishing. This was tweezer fishing."

There were other light moments, including the time when R.J. Gaither, 15, of Littleton, had to sit down in the river to keep alive a small trout that had gone down his waders, sort of. Coming to his rescue was Brian Roberts, 16, of Fruita, who, after only three days of instruction, had been casting a fly line like Lefty Kreh.

So much talent. At the end of the day, you wanted to rent a bus and round up some more kids, especially some like Ljubisa "Koko" Kokotovic, 15, who lives in Lakewood with his mother, his father having died in the war in Bosnia.

When interviewed for this column, Koko's words were typically concise. Why come to CTU's river camp?

"Because I like the outdoors," he said. "A lot."

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com