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I must get a copy of that CD, (my inner geek is shrieking "I want it NOWWWW!!, OK my outer geek is pretty interested too). I have never met nor fished with Gary LaFontaine but discovered a pseudo close connection recently. In an old book on Trout there was a chapter on caddis flies that Gary wrote. The book predated his CaddisFlies, by about 15 years. The opening paragraphs talked about Gary's efforts to recruit a local to collect samples on a trout stream he was fishing because it had such a wide variety that intrigued him. The trout stream was the Sudbury River in Hopkinton Mass, which flows less than a mile from my home and is a hidden gem in many respects. I fish it rarely, because the stretches away from the bridges are difficult to say the least but I have caught native brookies there over 10 inches long and this year caught a 5 inch rainbowe which cannot have been stocked.

The Sudbury is not known for its trout fishing, or any other fishing. The Sudbury river is best known for being the open sewer that the Nyanza Dye Plant dumpoed heavy metals into for almost a century, aptly enough through a small tributary named, of all things, Chemical Creek.. Those who do not remember, Nyanza was the reason we have superfund sites. Nyanza was the first superfund site and it remains to this day the most expensive reclamation project ever undertaken. The cleanup was succesful, the site is properly capped, there is no more chemically contaminated drainage, Sudbury water quality is quite good. There is only one failure in tis project, from Ashland Mass downstream the river bottom mud is so heavily contaminated with mercury, cadmium and chromium that fish in the Concord river (formed when the Assabet and Sudbury Rivers join in Concord, about 15 miles downstream from the Nyanza site) and even the Merrimac river 20 miles further downstream, cannot be eaten. That situation will not be remedied in my, or anyone else on this board's lifetime. The metals in the mud do not effect the water quality, indeed some of Bostons drinking water supply is taken from the Sudburry Reservoir which is formed just 2 miles from the Chemical Creek outlet. The Sudbury system has become a very productive fishery especially for the Bass and is a wonderful river with many surprisingly wild areas when explored from a Kayak. Even with the metals problem we have to chalk the Sudbury system up as one of our enviromental success stories.

Most interesting, though, is that Gary was fishing upstream of Nyanza at a time when the plant was in full swing and just starting to make the news as the environmental disaster that it was.