The Leonardo da Vinci of Fly Fishing... And the Sickness He Sees in The Bay's Biggest River

Sometimes people think water quality is an issue of secondary importance, after the economy -– with pollution only hurting fish, and maybe a few vacationers. But the fact is, the paychecks and daily lives of lots of hard-working people are welded to their waterways. The following story provides a powerful example, and raises questions about the impact on fish of a common agricultural herbicide called Atrazine.

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Near the Susquehanna River in Middletown, Pennsylvania, a handmade sign hangs on a small, vinyl-sided home. It says “Clouser’s Fly Shop.”

Inside, the Leonardo da Vinci of fishing flies toils away under a bright light at a desk. Bob Clouser is 71 years old, with a snowy mustache. He’s got a fish hook gripped in a vice. And he delicately ties thread through tiny black eyes and a golden tail.

It’s one of his famous Clouser Minnow flies, crafted by hand with animal hair and sold over the Internet to fishermen around the world.

“We have squirrel tails, calf tails, deer tail hair…all kind of things can be used to imitate some type of fly,” Clouser says.

Clouser explains one of his secrets:  “You don’t want your flies looking like the prey they eat, but you want them acting like the prey they that they eat.”

Three decades ago, as Bob and his wife were raising his five children, he suddenly got laid off from his job as a meat cutter. Instead of sinking into despair, Bob returned to the playground of his youth, the Susquehanna River. There, he reinvented himself as a fly fishing guide and maker of innovative lures.

It was the perfect career for him. After all, his father had taught him where to find fish in the river when Bob was six years old. For 25 years, Bob ran a booming fishing guide business with his son and wife. And he dreamed of handing over the whole operation to Bob Jr.

But five years ago, a mysterious illness swept through the river, according to the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. Disease killed off 60 percent of the young smallmouth bass in the waterway, which is the largest source of fresh water in the Chesapeake Bay.

“That’s when everything here went haywire,” Clouser recalled. “We had a lot of dead fish floating along the shoreline during the spawn at that time. And that was enough to shut me down, altogether.”

Bob still makes a living selling flies to fishermen elsewhere. But he no longer fishes in the river near his own home.

More fish kills followed in 2007, 2008 and again this year. Scientists have found that baby bass in the Susquehanna River seem to have lost their resistances to disease, according to Geoffrey Smith, a biologist with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. And so bacteria and parasites that are normally harmless are killing the fish after about three months. Many fish also have ugly lesions, but it’s unclear what is causing them.

”What is suppressing those immune systems?" Smith asked. "That’s kind of been the million dollar question, so to speak."

Smith is working with a team of more than 20 state and federal researchers on a theory that a combination of hormone-disrupting chemicals in the river might be screwing up the disease fighting systems of the fish.  They are sampling the river for everything from prescription drugs to perfumes in soaps. Particular scrutiny, Smith said, is being focused on a weed killer called Atrazine that is used on many farms.

Some studies suggest Atrazine can disrupt the sexual development of fish and frogs. And scientists have also found that at least half the male bass in the Susquehanna have eggs growing in their testes, said Vicki Blazer, fish pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Fish Health Lab in West Virginia.  This condition is called “intersex.”

“One of the things that we found was that there was a high incidence of intersex in smallmouth bass in the Susquehanna, as we have also seen in the Potomac River,” Blazer said. “And co-occurrence of the fish kills with the intersex has made us question whether some of these chemicals could be involved in suppressing the immune system.”

Bob Clouser is not a scientist, obviously, and he has no independent evidence. But he has his suspicions about which chemical is hurting the fish. "I think Atrazine is another DDT," he says.

A spokesman the manufacturer of Atrazine, Syngenta, declined to comment, but referred me to a scientist in Canada who does research for the company. The scientist, Keith Solomon, professor emeritus and the University of Guelph, questioned the technical reliability of the studies that have purported to show links between and Atrazine and hormone disruption in wildlife. He said “the jury is still out” on the question.

“In some studies, they see no response; in others, they report responses,” Solomon said in an interview. “So when you average a yes and a no, you end up with something that’s equivocal. That’s basically the situation at the moment.”

The bottom line: nobody knows for sure what is screwing up the fish in the Susquehanna River.

But Bob Clouser knows one thing.  The river he inherited from his father -– the cascading ribbon of blue, full of life, that flows from the forests of upstate New York all the way to the Chesapeake Bay -- he will not be able to pass on to his children or grandchildren.

And that has spawned a sickness in the heart of a great fly fisherman.

“When I was a kid, the water sparkled, clear,” Clouser remembered. “There was layers and layers of blue damselflies across that river, dancing all day long. Today, the water has a still, dead, look…and  you can’t even see in six inches of water, in some of the low water places of the Susquehanna. That’s how bad we have it here.”

But Clouser, an outspoken clean water advocate, has never been one to just brood on a problem.  Back in the 1980s, he and allies successfully pushed Pennsylvania to change the size limit on catching smallmouth bass, so they would be better protected.

These days, Clouser is writing to Congress and urging lawmakers to pass a new federal law,  the Chesapeake Clean Water Act. The bill would create new financial incentives for states to create strong pollution reduction plans and hold them accountable for meeting their goals.

“We need to get the Susquehanna River cleaned up and the Chesapeake Bay cleaned up,” Clouser said.  “Every one of my kids loved fishing.  But today, I have no grandchildren who like to fish, because they are bored  -- they can catch no fish."

 Harry Campbell, a senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said that he has a lot of respect for Clouser.

“Folks like Bob and his fellow fishing guides are really the people on the front lines, sounding the alarms on water quality issues like this,” Campbell said.  “They are like the Paul Reveres of the river.  And it is our job to get to the bottom of their observations and address them.”

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Article and photo by Tom Pelton

Senior Writer, Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Comments

[John Koontz]

The jury is not out! We are killing the Bay. We don't need a new Chesapeake Bay. We jusyt need to enfor the Clean Water aCT. Farmers rule and the new bill lets stay outside the law.

[mulberry outlet]

I like you on facebook and follow through google reader!