Susan managed the first fish of the day with no trouble. I had barely worked my way up stream and started casting when I heard her exclaim, as all fishers do with the first fish of the day, “Hey, I got a fish on!”
It’s no surprise that she’d get into fish right away. She’s quiet. Her cast is slow and precise. She doesn’t thrash the water. And she often pays more attention to what the birds around her are doing than to what the fly on the water should be doing. She just lets it happen, the way fly fishing should be.
For about an hour I worked up and around what I thought was perfect water. All I had to show for my efforts was the fun of catching a couple river chubs. I decided to leap-frog to the other side of the pool Susan was working because she was paying more attention to a family of noisy Baltimore Orioles. Hmmm, more chubs.
Time for a lunch break.
After lunch we moved further down stream to spot that had yielded some trout in the past. After a few hours I managed to pull a couple unsuspecting brown trout out of a deep spot, along with countless river chubs. Susan, meanwhile, was getting plenty of chub action, and lots of laughs, as well.
We decided to call it a day and do some exploring. We wanted to see where the river went further down stream. About a mile from where we had been fishing we saw a large group of tents and RVs on the other side of the stream. We both commented on what a great camping spot it was. Then Susan said, “And there’s a couple guys cleaning fish in the river!”
Whoa, there! Back up. Not only is that a bad idea, it’s hard to imagine anyone pulling fish out of this river large enough to clean.
We found a short dirt road that led toward the campsite and checked out the guys sitting in the stream. In unison we said, “They’re panning for gold!”
A quick reality check showed we were still in Ohio. We pulled into the opening of the campsite and, posted on a little guard house, was a sign, “Swank Claim. Buckeye Chapter of GPAA [Gold Prospectors Association of America].”
These were modern-day prospectors. The camo-colored neoprene waders were a dead giveaway; as were their gas-powered water pumps for the sluice. There were plenty of authentic looking guys running around sporting long beards and floppy hats, however, somehow, the NASCAR T-shirts didn’t fit the picture.
And like most things these days, they have a Web site (www.buckeyegold.com). Here’s what I learned: The Swank Claim covers approximately one mile of the Clear Fork river on the upper claim and one mile of Clear Fork river on the lower claim. This claim is known for burgundy colored garnets and fine flour gold. This claim has also produced, two quartz rocks with gold nuggets layered in them. One valued at $50,000.
The Buckeye Chapter of the Gold Prospectors Association of America was started in 1996. People from all over the state came together to pan for gold. There are three claims in the state. Along with the Swank Claim, there’s the Frazee Claim near Zuck, Ohio, and the Lewis Claim located below Lucusville in the southern part of Ohio.
Although gold is not as plentiful in Ohio as in some of the other states it does exist, you just have to work a little harder for it. Usually gold in Ohio is in the form of flour gold and takes a little more skill to uncover.
Well, who’d a thunk it? And all these years I thought the beauty of the stream was in the scarlet spots of a brown trout or the vivid pink stripe on the side of feisty rainbow trout. Or, the iridescent blue of an Indigo Bunting. Maybe the flash of orange as a Baltimore Oriole flew across the stream.
As we watched the plum of sand, silt and mud created by the prospectors’ activities flow downstream, I realized the fly fisher’s non-consumptive use of the resource was still best—for now and for future generations.
How birders fly fish
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